July 30 2009 "end of the road"

Tension feels high and everyone had a rough sleep. Last day of tour. Almost done. Its go time. We ate breakfast at a 50's diner and it proved to be excellent. A trip to yet another record store was successful. Ten hours or so to kill was easy. I sat on a random lawn near where the van was parked. I tried to lure a family of kittens into my grasp. They were not impressed nor did they fall for it. I retreated to the van heartbroken. We were eagerly awaiting the show. Of course it was raining heavy outside. We confined ourselves to the dirty inner workings of FDR and huddled around todd as he repeatedly tried to catch the elusive Zaptos. Not. even. close. Seventeen tries later we managed to burn up enough time for the doors to open to the venue. The load in was down a gnarly flight of stairs, made much worse by the torrential downpour. Good Things from Dauphin greeted us and we traded merch and hung out. I like to think of them as the Hominid of Dauphin. We went out for a quick bite to eat and ended up missing the opening band which I felt shitty about. Good Things thrashed onstage while the movie Thrasher played behind them on a projector. Gsts made a tremendous mess on stage with the help of everyone else rolling around and getting ignorant. Fun set. We played and someone ripped the scab off my skateboard wound so I ended up bleeding on anyone that came into contact with me. Seth rogan did vocals tonight. The sound guy looked like a metal reject. no shirt, eye liner, nipple tattoos. leather pants. Nice guy though. We were hellbent on getting home TONIGHT. We packed up and took pictures. Said goodbye. Todd and I drove through the night while Matt and Taylor passed out in the back. Even though we had just spent two weeks with each other Todd and I were still ripe with conversation, it was nice. We knew we had a show to play the next night in Edmonton. The van can stay packed. Get home. Three way hug. Say goodnight.

July 29 2009 " seth rogan"

Awake and sweaty. Looking out the window, we were in the ass end of a long drive to Saskatoon. 2 more hours to go. We had today off also. With nothing on the agenda, we wandered around the city like zombies and eventually found an overpriced sushi place that served mediocre sushi. We shopped for records while listening to intense death metal playing on the speakers above. Back at the van Matt somehow took a turn for the worse. Catching whatever sickness I had been spreading to everyone else all tour. He expressed his interest in going to a doctor while others, myself included, decided to catch a movie. Todd was at the black magic pyramid jam where he received the number of a girl who's house we could crash at. However, when we called this number, there was no answer. A few more calls and more answering machines and we decided to crash in the van. We found a low heat alley to park in and got comfortable. I took a sleeping pill from Todd "the pusher" Skitsko and got drowsy. At some point during the night we were unpleasantly awoken by the sounds of young hooligans trying to open the doors of the van. Thanks to the sleeping pill, I was so drowsy I didn't give two shits.

The kids moved on and I fell asleep to the sounds of the cars on the freeway below us.

July 28 2009 "I gave Durells name to homeland security'

We slept in much later than anticipated. But it didn't matter because my sleep was shit. Damn you mucous man. I stumbled out of bed miserable and shaky. Everyone was up eating and watching footage from last night. After a very long pack up and goodbye we headed out. The gsts mobile sans Reuben but + Durell sped off ahead and fdr sans Durell with extra Reuben got stuck in the ditch courtesy of Taylor Geddes. Now thats Geddes like lettuce not spaghetti or breads. Off to a bad start. It couldn't get worse. Or could it? Yes it could and it did. Somewhere along the way back to Winnipeg. Taylor drove us directly into the hot little hands of homeland security. Aka the US border. Here's a tip: if its not planned during your adventures, it is advised that you avoid the US border like a crazed bum throwing handfuls of infected syringes. They took our identification after we tried to explain we just made a wrong turn. Then they told us to park our van in a giant bay. Then they tore our luggage and gear out and searched the van. They questioned us thoroughly. All we wanted to do was pull a u turn. About an hour after being detained, they gave us the green light, but kept our dignity. One thing thats funny about all of this, Taylor was in his underwear while driving and spent the hour or so being detained as such. On the way back after some tension filled moments, we reached the US to Canada border. They, like the US border, took our id. questioned us thoroughly and removed all of our equipment and belongings from the van. A relatively short 30 min later and we were back on the road. I took the wheel and began a 9 hour exile death drive the FUCK out of Ontario's bipolar landscape. We caught up with Gsts in Winnipeg. They blew a tire and were parked outside canadian tire for the night until it opened. We left them in Winnipeg (peace you punk bitches) and Matt drove through the night.

I fell asleep listening to the van barrel down the road.