Expanding Universe: A Tale of Tampa

Friday, July 1 2011
Now look... I'm not usually one to judge something based entirely on one experience, but with that said, I'm pretty sure Tampa is a shithole. Now if you're from Tampa or you like Tampa or you have family from Tampa, please don't be offended. I'm sure there are good people and good places in Tampa, just like with any place in the world. But the Tampa we saw yesterday was just a rundown desperate shithole with shitty people and shitty places. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning.

Expanding Universe: URIZEN vs. Old Man Ocean

Thursday, June 30 2011
The "next day" of the tour began right after the Charleston show, as we had no hotel for the night, but also because we were eager to get to Jacksonville to hit the beach for our day off. Since the drive between Charleston and Jacksonville was relatively short, we dragged our feet by hanging out at Walmart for a while, gathering $1 kites with which to build our epic, patented 6-tier kite monstrosity. 

After Walmart, we hit the road. We all wanted to experience a proper east coast sunrise at the beach, so Thomas planned to pull over to an oceanside stop around 6am for us to have a look. Unfortunately, we ended up outside of Savannah, GA just before sunrise, and we learned a harsh lesson about Georgia beaches: 

Expanding Universe: Like Regular Carolina, but Further... South

Wednesday, June 29 2011
From the moment I booked the South Carolina stop of this tour, I had a weird, bad feeling about it. I couldn't place what it was exactly, just this feeling that something was going to go wrong. But waking up this morning proved to be not only uneventful, but very pleasant! In a final act of hospitality, the Damasks provided us with an enormous bag of delicious bagels, and packed the numerous leftovers for the road, along with some bananas, a bunch of cookies, and various other goodies. 

Thomas and Julio were ecstatic.

But gut feelings usually happen for a reason, and at around 3pm on the drive down to Charleston, I finally found out what was going to go wrong. To make a very long story short, the club we were supposed to play at decided to bump the show in favor of... 

Expanding Universe: Son of North Carolina

Tuesday, June 28 2011
The hospitality from the Damasks continued today in the form of free pizza and a TV, on which we watched a documentary about rumspringa, followed by more sleeping on the floor.

He might just be planking.

Eventually we were forced to leave the comfort of this temporary home in favor of a show at Night Light in Chapel Hill, so into the van we piled, and on the road we went. The road from Raleigh to Chapel Hill was, of course, accompanied by a torrential downpour, as has been the tradition during this tour, and it pretty much always lets up right before we arrive at the club, so I guess we should be happy about that.

Expanding Universe: From Beautiful Green Mountains to Horrible Red Stoplights

Monday, June 27 2011 
The goal for today was to complete the unforgivingly long journey from St. Louis to Wilmington, and we still had a good 8 hours, a punctured trailer tire, and some Appalachian mountains to deal with. With the tire quickly patched and switched out, it was time to put the Macho Van's little V6 heart to the test and see how it dealt with mountain ranges. 

...Prepare for Van Death

The result? 

Expanding Universe: Superman and Friends

Sunday, June 26 2011
Woke up this morning and waded across the hotel room to take a shower. Decided to wake everyone else up with Erasure's "A Little Respect" and was treated with a 98% nude dance from the banana-hammocked Gabe.

Not pictured: Gabe

 No show today so we took our sweet time traveling between St. Louis and Knoxville on the way to Wilmington for a show on Monday night. That meant some casual dining at Taco Bell, some upscale shopping at Wal-Mart, and of course, a stop at one of America's most revered landmarks. Yeah, you know what I'm talkin' about...

Expanding Universe: Onward to St. Louis

Saturday, June 25 2011
We departed from Fort Worth at about 3am and began a long sleepy journey through Oklahoma and Missouri. The trip was largely free of difficulties, as the formerly overheating Macho Van was now ice cold and problem-free.

The fuel gauge, however, is still quite broken.

 There were only two problems to speak of. The first is that we somehow acquired a metal shard of some sort that is slowly draining one of our trailer tires of precious life. The other problem was the return of...