West Coast Tour - Day 8

We woke up at in Portland at Adam’s for the third, and final, day in a row. He, unfortunately, had to stay home for the rest of tour due to some crucial dental surgery, so we sadly had to say goodbye. It was really awesome having Adam along with us, and it’s definitely not going to be the same without him, but in the immortal words of Bruce Hornsby, “That’s just the way it is. Some things’ll never change.”

No less, there is a silver lining. We took the trip down to Humboldt County today to play in Arcata, and a good chunk of the drive was through the Redwood Forest, down the 199 and the 101, along the coast. Virtually the entire drive was about the most beautiful scenery I have ever scene in my life, and I’ve been to three of the Hawaiian islands. The size of these trees is just mind-blowing. Probably the most amusing part was the scent of jizz that kept popping up at random points throughout the forest. My explanation is that it was from all of the nature boners everyone would get driving through this place, because holy fucking balls, it’s incredible.






We made a couple of stops along the way, and still managed to make it to the show in decent time. It took maybe three to five minutes after we got to the show before we saw people getting high, and the more people showed up, the more were getting high. And people would just give us weed out of nowhere. Emmett and Jay were in heaven. I mean, so am I though. This is the first time I smoked at all before we played, but I just took one hit, so it’s not like I was out of it.

This show was just fucking nuts. Kids got super crazy for every band. When we played, John got six kids to do a triangle, and pretty much immediately after that, the triangle got toppled. This place is super nuts and kids definitely seem to have a good time. It’s pretty weird for a guy from Phoenix to see everyone getting high on the driveway, on the street, and in the middle of a packed show. I remember Jay saying, “I think this is my favorite place in the world.”

During the show, John, Chad and Michelle went and got some amazing pizza, and brought some back for the rest of us. Half of it had tofu ricotta, which was just ridiculously good. I kind of want more. After the show, we went back to Chad and Michelle’s place where they treated us like kings. We all ended up very, very, very…tired.

West Coast Tour - Day 7

We woke up on Adam’s floor again, and got ourselves together to grab food at the Paradox Café, which we all knew was going to be outstanding since most of us had been there before. And it was outstanding, indeed. We even had the same waitress I had last time I was here. I don’t remember her name, because I probably have one of the worst memories out there, but she was really nice, both times.

After Paradox, John and Kellen took one of the vans to Seattle while the rest of us hung out in Portland to wait for Adam to finish his dental appointment around. Adam got back a little after one and we piled into the van to cross the bridge to Washington. We got word from John and Kellen that traffic was really bad once you got into town, so that kinda sucked, but by the time we got there, it appeared to be cleared up pretty well, so we got in only and hour or so after them, even though we left closer to two or three hours after them.

We went to Araya’s, an amazing Thai place that has a buffet for super cheap, from what I understand, but we got there after the buffet closed. Kellen showed up a few minutes after we got there, and we proceeded to devour copious amounts of wonderful food, which has managed to be somewhat of a theme for this tour. After we ate, we went to the West Seattle Legion Hall, where the show was. There were already some kids milling about and the show wasn’t anywhere near starting, so it was nice to know kids would be there.

Quite a few friends of the band and just awesome people in general live in Seattle, so it sort of goes without saying that we had a really good time. The cops came in during the band before us, and I got a little worried we wouldn’t be able to play, but it turned out they just had to close all the doors and windows of the venue to keep the noise down. It was really bright in this place, and that always gives an awkward atmosphere to shows, but it was pretty fun, no less. And just up a hill from the show was an amazing view of the Seattle skyline, which is pretty damned awesome, as you can see. (Click to enlarge.)



After the show, we split up into the two vans again. Jay, Emmett, Adam and I went back to Adam’s place while Kellen, Mark and John spent another hour or so in Seattle. I found it ironic that I decided to take the ride back an hour earlier because I somehow ended up awake until after the other guys made it back to Adam’s. Seattle is an outstanding town, and I would really love to make my way back there.