Warped Experience 2010

Currently Listening To: Comeback Kid - Symptoms and Cures

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back here. I had a very interesting weekend...it all started on Thursday when my good pal, Nick Peterson, invited to watch his friend's football game at the University of Nevada, Reno versus Cal Berkley on Saturday. Of course I took the ticket. I get a call around 1pm on Friday, Nick says the game is tonight instead of Saturday. We took off as fast as we could and made it to the game at half-time. The Wolfpack smashed on the Bears 52-31! We didn't get back until late Saturday night. It was a great little road trip! Believe it or not, Reno is not so bad, yeah i said it hahaha. (No sign of Lt. Dangle unfortunately). Anyway, I decided that today I would share a story from my summer working on the Vans Warped Tour...

So, if you didn't know I spent the summer working for my friend, Brian Dorry (check out Hooligan Skateboards), selling skateboard decks on the traveling punk rock festival the Vans Warped Tour. It was the honestly the most fun, spontaneous, hard working, dirty, kick ass party I have ever been apart of. During the two month tour, I traveled with the infamous punk rock band, Riverboat Gamblers, on a tour bus which was also shared by a dude named Chris, who owns a clothing company called, "Choonimals", as well some cool kids working for a the MusicSkins company, (props to Frank, Jesse, "FJ" Ali, and Lucy). Ohh yea I almost forgot about the little trouble maker employed by Evil Ink comics (she will remain nameless for the sack of embarrassing someone). Traveling around the country with these people in such small living quarters is not the easiest thing to get used to, but because every one was so down to earth, it was supper easy for every one to get to know each other and develop lasting relationships. As I sit here, typing and reflecting I can only laugh and smile at all the bizarre and hilarious antic that went on. Which bring me too this heart warming story about a a buss breakdown that turned into the most fun and random "day off" from the tour.

Touring is not a particularly easy job to do, as some people want to believe. The piece of equipment that takes the biggest beating on a road trip like this, without a doubt, has to be the tour bus itself. It is also one of the most important pieces of equipment to keep in proper working condition, first priority for the bus driver is keeping his people safe and its hard to do that with a damaged bus. Let me back up a moment and explain something a little further...We started out with one driver named Shelby. What we didn't know about our driver was that she was a tweaked out (seriously, this woman was on meth), pathological liar that was unable to get us to the venues on time, who didn't take care of keeping up the bus to proper working standard, and who was just awkward to be around. She was eventually replaced by a radical dude named Joe. Anytime something needed fixing on the bus, he was on it; regular ole handyman. So after Joe took over, he had realized that Shelby had caused a substantial amount of damage to the bus because she was not careful or skilled in keeping up in proper working condition. During our 12 hour drive from Charlotte, NC to St. Petersburg, FL we broke down three different times. The first breakdown occurred in Savanna, GA, we had been stuck in a parking lot there with a broken fan belt since 3am. It was 8am and we had to wait several hours till we could get someone to fix it for us. We were in a lot of trouble because we were super behind schedule and we were beginning to come to the conclusion that we might not make it to the show that day. I was not really that upset about not setting up that day, the real part that was making me sad was that my parents and brother were going to come up from Sarasota to come visit with me and take me out to a nice dinner. As a result of the breakdowns, I had to reschedule the visit with my folks for two days later in Orlando. So I figured out that mess, but we were still stuck in Georgia, not any closer to the next show. After the fan belt was fixed we got back on the road at 1pm, but after about 45 minutes of hard driving, the bus overheated and shut itself down, we were again broken down on the side of the highway. We came to the conclusion that we were not going to make it in time for the Gamblers to play the last set of the night so we decided that we were going to make an afternoon out of our shot day and end up going to the beach and have a BBQ in Daytona

After several more beers, Ian, Fadi, and Rob of the Gamblers decide that we all need to go out to a strip club. It took some convincing, but we got a solid group of ten of us to go romp on down the street to some place that we all knew was going to be a trashy joint no matter what. We all hoped into a cab and told the cabbie to take us to any good strip club that was close. He said that there were only two close and only one of them was a topless bar. We wanted the whole nine yards of course so we went with the place that was a little further away but we would be able to see some boobs. When we walked into the place, we discovered that it was nearly empty, we all took seats at the front of the stage and proceeded to order strong, cheap cocktails and gawk at the finest strippers that Daytona Beach had to offer. On a Friday night in Daytona Beach you would really be shocked at what was on the table, it was interesting to say the least. I will say this though, if you are a fan of the clubs in Vegas, this will not satisfy you, hahahaha! Now that is saying a lot, if you have ever been the Rhino (best strip club ever!). I will not go into further detail about what went on in the "klassy" joint, but i will tell you that it wasn't pretty.

Looking back, I had such a great time with everyone that was on that bus. We all came to the conclusion that we were blessed to have been put together on this tour because sometimes you can get stuck with people that you do not see eye to eye with and that can cause big problems in such a small living space. I love and miss the Gamblers, "Choonimal" Chris, my MusicSkin hommies, and Joe the bus driver. Thank you guys for an unforgettable summer! i hope you guys don't get sick of hearing about all the crazy happenings on the dirty tour including, selling skateboards in a hurricane in Houston, Henri being escorted off stage by Lyman in a headlock, fishing for a crocodile in a lake in Orlando, and stupid kids asking me questions about BMTH at the wrong time. Thanks to everyone who has been reading this thing. Thanks for the support!

love,
goddam