watermelon helmet

Ok, so I'm still playing catch up. After staying the night at my parent's house we took off for Pocatello Idaho. We were supposed to play in Boise this day, but the show ended up getting dropped because the venue is having some financial troulbes or something. So Brandon or Brendan (I never did figure out which) from aftermath booking hooked us up with a show at a senior citizens center in Pocatello. After a very hot, long and uneventful drive (besides the $1 watermelon fest in Bliss Idaho) we arrived just in time for the show.








The senior citizens center was indeed a senior citizens center, which was a little disconcerting, but it turns out they just rented out the venue and we weren't actually playing for senior citizens. I was both very excited and very disappointed at this news. It probably worked out for the best though. We played and what the crowd lacked in quantity they made up for in quality. They were very receptive and danced like there was no tomorrow. That kind of energy is always appreciated. We made some good friends and had a very good time that night. So as I mentioned before Cody bought this huge watermelon at a gas station in Bliss Idaho. As we were packing up I came outside and found Guy, Al, and Cody sitting on the sidewalk around half a watermelon eating with spoons like a bowl of icecream. Sadly, I am alergic to watermelon so I of course laughed condescendingly and put something in the trailer. As I walked back Cody picked up the hollowed out half melon and drank the juice from the center, and slammed it onto his head. Probably no one else will find this funny, but after 7 hours in a van, your sense of humor gets a little bit crazy. So we laughed of course. Luckily we got it on film, so maybe we'll make a tour dvd or something when this is all over and you can see for yourselves. Now the real adventure begins. We got offered a place to stay in Rexburg Idaho, but it was an hour and a half north of Pocatello, and we were playing in Salt Lake City the next night which is south. We decided it wasn't worth the strain on our very limited gas budget and went out in search of a place to stay instead. We heard there was a park near the Idaho State campus where we could stay, so we drove around and asked some kids by a dorm if they knew where it was. They replied, "no, but you guys played pretty good tonight, so you should come hang out with us." I couldn't believe they were actually at the show. We just asked some random guys quite a ways from the venue. So we responded to the call of destiny and hung out in the parking lot of the dorm for a while. We kept dropping hints that we needed a place to stay, but all the encounter yielded was some freshman year of college nostalgia. I kind of miss the dorms. So we drove around some more and finally found this really nice park. We set up camp and I talked to some local kids for a while. Evan, Dave, and Cody were sleeping behind the restrooms, Al and Grant were in the van, and Guy I were about 100 feet away from Evan and those kids talking. It was 2 am and Guy, and I heard this clicking noise. We looked at each other, hopped out of our sleeping bags, grabbed our stuff and high tailed it to the parking lot, just as the sprinklers turn on. We turn back and see Cody and Dave trying to wake up Evan, who is very confused and very wet at this point. He finally wakes up enough to realize what just happened, and gets his stuff to the parking lot. He is soaking wet, his sleeping bag is soaking wet, and his pillow is soaking wet. Now Evan isn't usually the type to take these kind of unfortunate circumstances lightly. We were of course making fun of him, but trying not to be too blatant about it to see how we would act. I ask everyone if we want to try sleeping in the parking lot or pile in the van, and press on and try to find a real campsite. I finally ask Evan what we wants to do, because his sleeping bag is soaked. He is like, "We can stay here, I can just sleep on my......towel." After that suggestion the pure ridiculousness of the situation and he busts up laughing. We then finally all let lose and laughed for a good ten minutes or so. It was great to be able to understand how funny that moment will be later and laugh at it while it was happening. So we finally decided to move on. We wrung out the stuff as much as we could and hopped in the van. After about a half hour we found this truck stop campground type thing, which was actually a big gravel parking lot with some weeks on the side. We were too tired to look for anything else so Al, Grant, Cody and myself slept in the van while the rest of guys slept on the weeds. We finally got to sleep at like 3 or 4 in the morning. It was a very eventful night. Ok, time to move on and no time for grammer/spell check.





Peace out!

Matt