Expanding Universe: The Journey Begins

Friday, June 24 2011
If there is one phrase that best describes the condition of our trusty (/not trusty) van, The Macho Van, that phrase would be: riddled with problems. Since we returned from our mini-Texas tour, Macho has been in and out of various shops to fix various problems for various costs. The one constant, however, was that the Macho Van was overheating, and no amount of work ever seemed to fix that.

Pictured: Every tour by every band ever.

On Friday afternoon, I picked up the van for the last time before hitting the road for the eastern leg of the Expanding Universe tour. But before we could even strap on the trailer, that bitch was overheating once again. With no time left, we geared up and prepared to hobble across the US in an overheating van with the heat a-blastin' all the way across America. We had no choice; this tour was happening one way or the other.

But for once, Luck was on our side. No, man, not luck, we've got horrible fuckin' luck... I'm talking about Cody Luck, the totally badass dude who replaced the van's goddamn radiator in the parking lot of Tomcats West hours before our performance! Yes, that's right. This guy is so awesome that he just shrugged and provided us with a few hours of what would be at least $70/hour of labor in exchange for some Whataburger chicken strips. And you would think that just finding one dude to do that would be miraculous enough, but two?!? Oh yes. Two. Los Bastardos' own Wes Howard sacrificed his time and clothing as well to assist Cody in this act of pure Uri-based philanthropy. Without a doubt, these two are 100% responsible for our safe journey across the country, and we couldn't possibly thank them enough.

With our minds finally cleared of van-based frustration, we were able to rock an excellent kickoff show at Tomcats West before loading up the gear once again and setting sail on a 12-hour nighttime adventure to St. Louis.