November 26

Yesterday was a day of little remark or astounding occurrences. We had to wake up at 8 am in the freezing dead fall weather of Wisconsin, petrified from the arctic moisture of the great lakes. Our trailer has a bent axle so the front right tire on it wears away faster than wal-mart shoes. I noticed the tire had done so and had little hope of lasting the 20 hours of driving we would have to do in the next 2 days. Additionally, as we were descending the hill in the van, it let out a crude grinding noise telling us all very rudely that we need new brakes. When it rains it pours. We drove all day, tracing essentially the same route we had taken to get up to Wisconsin. I knew that the following day would be Thanksgiving, making it impossible to get a new tire or new brakes. We tried stopping at 2 different places on the day’s drive, both revealing the startling fact that it would take several hours wait time to get what we needed. Everyone was out yesterday getting their cars tuned so they could drive across the state to grandma’s house for her famous pumpkin pie and family recipe gravy. We weren’t though. We had shows to play. We made it to Mt Vernon, IL for load in and played a pretty normal show, other than the fact the kids moved less and looked more dead than zombies on Xanax. We loaded out and fortunately Heavy Heavy let us borrow their spare trailer tire in case we were to have a blowout on the overnight drive. I drove from 11 pm till about 6 am and had some entertaining fatigue hallucinations while cruising the dark highways alone at the wheel. My good friend Erin kept me up with silly text messages about her night on the town with her friends, drama and cheese steaks. That in combination with bottomless sunflower seeds and McDonalds coffee made me wired, weird and work-focused. I also thought about how I want to take out a loan and go to Hawaii and write an introspective book about the trip, also a few songs. I did a lot of thinking on the drive. We also listened to an audio book about a lone fur trapper and his adventures in the wild west. It was entertaining but in a very laughable sense. Eventually I made it to a somber closed down gas station and traded drivers, finally able to rest my burning eyes. I woke up to the most eerie fog, something straight out of Tim Burton’s world. It was beautiful and twisted. We had to switch out the tire and made it safely to South Carolina. Next…my Thanksgiving adventures at Golden Corral.