Tour-pollo 13: "San Antonio, We Have a Problem"

So today marked the beginning of the URIZEN Texas Mini-Tour, and the official start of our summer of touring... and I don't think it's possible that any more shit could have gone wrong! Truly it was the Apollo 13 of tour kickoffs.

Let's start from the beginning, shall we? The fun began with us making about a thousand new friends that all looked a lot like this:

Hello there.

In the time since our last excursion, the UriTrailer became less a transport unit for musical equipment and more an apartment complex for legions of wasps. They were none too happy about us trying to reclaim our property, and an epic battle ensued. Many wasps were killed, much time was wasted, and much sunburn was acquired.

But soon, the trailer was loaded and were on our way. Smooth sailing from here, right? Man... did you even read the title of this blog entry?

Once we got to Dallas, we noticed a little problem: the van was very much overheating. So we checked the coolant, and hey, it was bone dry! Throw some coolant in there and problem solved... right? *sigh* No... not right.

So after some fresh coolant, some stop leak, and a new radiator cap, we were still blazing hot, so we had to kiss our ice cold, wonderfully breezy A/C goodbye and crank up the heat to keep the engine from es'ploding.

Back on the road, heat blazin', windows wide open and loud as shit, but at least we're on our way to San Antonio at last.

Well... almost.

Oh I'm sorry, did you guys want to drive on me?

The left tire on our trailer just fuckin'... disintegrated. So we pull over, jack it up, take off the pile of scraps that was once a tire, and throw on the spare. But wait! The spare is totally flat! Hooray! So... trailer is jacked up again, wheel is removed, and half of the party is left behind to defend the crippled trailer. The rest of us take the van in search of air, but everything along the interstate is conveniently out of order. We finally find air in fuggin' Abbott, TX (birthplace of Willie Nelson!) and head back to our near-dead roadside associates.

Alright, alright... we change the tire, we hit the road, we finally put some miles behind us, and all is well. I mean, except for the fact that we're four hours outside of San Antonio, and we're set to hit the stage in four hours. Aye aye aye!

Don't be sad, Matt, we'll get there someday.

The rest of the trip actually went off without any problems, and we arrived at Clicks with about an hour to spare. Despite taking 10 full hours to complete what should have been a 4 or 5 hour trip, the day of bullshit was totally worth it! The club itself was awesome, the staff was friendly and generous, and the crowd was excited and rockin' out despite it being after midnight. We met some awesome new friends, hung out with a few old ones (Rik Buddha in da house!), and spread a great deal of CDs and shirts across the land of San Antonio.

But the best part of the entire trip so far...?