It is 6:44 AM. Two hours later than the expected departure date. Durell, with more pep then I can handle at this time in the morning, has already played an air guitar solo with his mouth 2 times. I can imagine thousands more to come so I threaten to write down every time he does one. He says he wont do one ever again. We'll see. Getting our shit in the van and gassing up took so long, but goodbye Edmonton hello interior British Colombia. There isn't much to do on the road if your touring mates are not in a talkative mood. When it gets too dark to read or if your shitty mp3. player runs out of batteries, one thing that I like to do is sit and reflect on all the times I've been on these roads Do you ever wish you could record your thoughts? If i could, then right about now my thoughts would be crying shitting and sleeping. What am I talking about. I'm already off to a bad start, in more ways than one. What I mean is I'm starting tour off with a freshly diagnosed throat infection. I hope it wont get in the way of having to scream like someone kicked my newborn baby in the ribs...but I'm sure it will. Right now we are on our way to Langley BC driving down the yellowhead. The only road in Canada. We all seem to be lost in our own little worlds. I'm staring at the road and the disappearing prairie fields. Listening to Todd struggle through an impossible nap. We reach the BC border at 11:30 mountain time. Fitting. Get it? Mountain time? We're surrounded by mountains higher than Durell. Its really really hot out. Certain parts of my anatomy feel like hot silly putty mashed into my thighs. Continuing towards Chilliwack, despite the viscous feeling in our pants, the plan is to pick up ol' Taylor Geddes along for the ride. The ride being two weeks in a van, a sausage van. The show tonight is at "the thrill house" and I think we're the opening band. Update. I'm totally wrong. In the midst of figuring out how to get to the thrill house, the venue changed locations several times. After about an hour of this, I was skeptical as to whether the show was going to happen or not. Luckily, Gsts! (formerly guests. Gsts is cooler or something) got a show set up in an Abbotsford basement. And now because of the flip floppiness of the shows location, Gsts and us were now the only bands playing. Awesome. We abducted Taylor and some large boxes containing his distro items, and headed off to Abbotsford to meet the Gsts fellers. Upon arrival we were greeted with some equipment to bring to the show. After a maze-like drive to a little house on the side of a dirty road, we unloaded, set up, and the show began... Gsts had changed a lot from the last time I had seen them, last year they were a 2 piece. This year they have 4 members and maintain a violent, quirky stage presence, which is very entertaining to watch. I'm concerned to be going on tour with these guys. The basement we played in was like a bomb shelter. Concrete everything. Actually, I have no idea what a bomb shelter looks like. But with the power of my imagination this is it. The perfect venue really. My initial fear of not being able to perform vocally vanished 3 seconds into the first song. The strep seemed to have made my vocals sound better and after strangling myself with the microphone cord, the set was done. After packing and mingling with the Gsts guys and some people in attendance at the house, we also said goodnight to Cory and Andrea, some friends from Edmonton newly recruited to Vancouver's "growing number of people i know". Taylor gave us instructions to Ruben's house where his parents would put us up for the night. We were greeted by the largest dog on the planet little did we know he was a pussy. First impressions are bullshit. Ruben's parents welcomed us in with a delicious looking breakfast spread consisting of sandwich building supplies and veggies. (Edit: it wasn't breakfast at all, I don't have an eraser to change what I wrote.) After chowing down and setting up sleep zones, we socialized into the night.
I passed out listening to the sounds of my new friends talking to my old friends.
