First impressions can be deceiving

Posted by Jamie

If you believe in omens, and you were in this band, you’d be high-tailing it back to Portland. The good news for us is that we don’t…not really…

To be short, the day started with a giant game of hurry up and wait. On little sleep and littler patience, we all excitedly/sleepily show up at Jamie and Jason’s house to begin the arduous task of loading up the Aremis, our 40 feet of finely crafted school bus. We needed to be on the road by 10 AM to get to La Grande (not Le Grande, as I’ve been corrected multiple times…my bad…) by 3 o’clock for a radio interview. We, being Rayn, Jamie, Jason, Dave, Joaquin, Eric and Lilly (Rayn’s dog…who was supposed to be shaved to keep down on the hair, but was, in fact, not), busted our asses and got out of my house by 10:15. Not bad by Leaving the Scene standards. But then we have to stop and get gas ($75 dollars worth of gas, I’ll have you know). Then we had to stop by Dave’s bank and let him make a deposit. Then we got kinda turned around trying to get onto I-84. So about 45 minutes later, we finally get onto the interstate. Busting ass at a cool 55 mph, we head off to the east. We’re all having fun and laughing and getting used to our kick ass bus and making our beds and setting up the stereo and such.

Fast forward about three hours. We fill up our tank, which we assume should be about half full (considering we should be getting 8-12 miles per gallon). WRONG! After an additional $111.00, we do some quick math (ok, not THAT quick. I’m terrible at math) and discover that we are making an amazing FIVE MILES PER GALLON! Holy hell. We might as well just walk to our venues and light dollar bills on fire on the way.

So there’s that. Yay for that. I fucking LOVE that. So we continue onward, looking forward to making it to La Grande to have TWO radio interviews, and a show, which is supposed to have been booked for a month, and is some sort of big ass celebration that is gonna have 10 bands playing.

Sooner than later, we realize that A) there’s no fucking way we’re gonna make it to La Grande in 4 hours, and B) the Aremis hates hills. Phone calls are made, and we trek on, hoping to make it by 4:00 at the latest.

After a delightful 50 mile trek UPHILL doing 20 mph because our bus is fat and old and hates hills (much like my grandmother (that’s a lie, my grandma’s dead)), 4:30 rolls around, and we make some frantic phone calls and discover that the radio DJ has gone home for the day. So we park and walk to the venue for a 5:00 load in. 5:00 arrives. Then 5:15. Then 5:30. Then 5:45. So we finally make a phone call to the booker at the venue who informs me that to his knowledge, the show for the night had been cancelled. This would account for the whole “there’s no bands around, no one in the club, and no kids to come WATCH the show” thing. The booking guy (Derek I believe...) was very very nice, and walked over to the venue for us to try and just open it and see if anyone wanted to come in. No one did. We didn’t even bother setting up. He made a phone call to the second radio station person, who never answered her phone. After a quick deliberation, we decided to just say “Fuck it” and take off for Couer d’Alene. We hop back into the bus after a delightful meal of “cold burritos” (which consist of tortillas, cheese, beans and various forms hot sauces, but no forms of heating said food), and start up the bus. And the bus proceeds to make a noise that sounds like rrrRRRRrrrwwwwpphhhll….(translation, for those of you who don’t speak old ass bus, was that the battery, for some unknown reason, being completely drained.) Thank you for this, bus, you really shouldn’t have. After a few declarations of going to get help that included Rayn saying “I have boobs, I’ll come help”, and Joaquin giving it one more try, the damned thing starts up all by itself. Don’t know why. Maybe Aremis just wanted to mess with us. Maybe it hates us. Maybe it’s just telling us “HEY! I’m a god damned SCHOOL BUS from 1981! Let me die! I’m not a damned tour bus you young whipper snappers!”

Regardless. We’re on the road now, we’re again doing 20 mph up some big ass hill that we’ll have to cross AGAIN in two days, and we have no show for tomorrow, so we’re gonna go swimming instead. Maybe information that would have been good to know a couple of days ago, we could have delayed this whole thing. Oh well. We’ve always had really good luck on tour. ‘Bout time we had some of what’s coming to us. That which does not kill us…only makes me hate things. And I’m a fairly hateful guy. That’s all for tonight. Until good morrow.