Wife Week

As I write this blog, I sit at a picnic table just outside our bus behind the venue at Virginia Beach. It is approaching noon, and the weather is perfect. Sipping my cup of catering coffee, I reflect on the last 7 days. This has been one of the best weeks ever. Amber got to come out here on the road with me and it was a blaster. We got to hang out in New York City for a couple days, catch a few concerts, go shopping, and spend a lot of much needed time together. When we first saw each other, there was this initial feeling of, “Oh yeah… you ARE a real person and not just a voice on my phone,” but it didn’t take long to wear off. Amber amazed and surprised me with a few things: she got her hair done and got her nose re-pierced. Even after flying a red-eye, she still looked smokin’ hot.

The first day was pretty uneventful. We attempted to walk around, but after getting about ¼ of a mile from our hotel we got dumped on by the New York clouds. At that point we decided to go back to our room and order a pizza. Enjoy a picture of us here:

The second day in New York was much more successful. We decided to take the subway everywhere instead of a cab, so we saved quite a bit of money. For the whole day, we only spent $13.50 to get around the city. It was a good thing too, because we needed all the money we could get to keep the muggers from taking our phones and bags. We only got mugged twice, but we managed to talk our way out of giving all of our stuff to them by telling them we had connections to the Chicago mob and that… ok, I’m joking. We didn’t get mugged at all. All we did was walk around, go shopping, share a couple meals together, drink coffee, and go to a concert. A friend of mine sings in a super-duo called The Civil Wars (see video at end of this blog) and they just happened to be playing in the city on our day off. Most of you know that I’m a critical perfectionist so this next statement may come as a shock to you, but The Civil Wars were flawless. Amazing. It was a great day and night with the wife of my youth.

Day three was a show day, and we played at the Jones Beach Amphitheatre. Pretty cool venue, but poorly designed. As you can see in the picture below, it is right on the water. The bad part about it is that the lower level floods all the time, and this night was no exception. Everyone in front of the stage was standing in water. You can imagine how load-in and load-out were. Good thing there is a crew that takes care of that. :)

The weather was still cool and wet, so I had a little hot cocoa date with this hot girl I found backstage.

After the show, Amber did her first overnight bus ride with us. Since neither of us are huge individuals, we decided to try to share a bunk. It was tight, but after being apart for so many nights, we were willing to make sacrifices to make it work. Sacrifices like being able to bend my knees at all while trying to sleep. By the 3^rd night drive, we had the bunk sharing down. I should add here that a bunk is smaller than a twin bed, and there is only about 2-2.5 feet of clearance from top to bottom; basically, it’s like sleeping in a coffin. If I had to be stuck in a coffin with someone though, I would definitely choose Amber as my coffin-mate.

All in all, Amber saw 7 concerts while out with us: The Civil Wars, Madi Diaz, Skillet, Creed, and Theft (3 times). I’m not sure which concert was her favorite, but I’m pretty sure I know which guitar player was her favorite. Hopefully Amber will write her own blog on here about her week with us, but I have a hard time getting her to. All of you that have either her phone number or email address, you should bug her about it repeatedly until she does.

To wrap this blog up, I would like to share a something I’ve learned over the years of my travelling: names of places are funny. Every morning when I wake up, I reach for my phone, open the weather channel app and see what the day has in store. The app uses gps to locate where you are to give you the most accurate info, and when I located myself the other day I was in Coxsackie, NY. It’s just down the road from Climax, NY. This reminded me of other humorous towns such as Blue Ball and Intercourse, which are both in PA. Lastly, and possibly the strangest, is a state park in Kentucky: Big Bone Lick State Park. It can be found where Big Bone Road intersects with Beaver Road. I kid you not.

Lovely Lady Lands

The waiting game. Lets be honest, I have been playing the waiting game for the past 26 days; but as the hour draws near, I grow restless. I have been home a total of around 80 hours in the last 936, and in that 80 you have to account for all the time spent sleeping, building the shed, and all the other little things that use up our time and cause Amber and I to be away from each other. What I’m trying to say is that I haven’t seen my beautiful wife much lately. What has been keeping me sane is a lot of time spent on the phone and iChat, making sure that Amber’s picture is the last thing I see before closing my eyes every night, and the far off thought that I will be reunited with her again in the future. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that future is in a few long, arduous hours.

Here I am, riding on the bus while she is flying through the air, and I can’t sleep. I attempted to go to bed early, but Bo seems to be lacking when it comes to graceful driving (more on that later). Mixing a rough road with the anticipation of a hug from my not-so-rough wife makes for a very unrestful night. It’s funny to think that she could be getting better sleep sitting in her airplane seat than I am laying down in a cushy tour bus. I did get her a window seat, though. Enough about that. I need to change the subject before I go crazy with excitement.

Please allow me now the opportunity to tell you a little bit about our new driver, Bo. He has been with us for about a week now, and the verdict is in: I miss Lem. Bo seems to be a nice guy, but he is like an unstoppable rebel force when he is driving. I don’t know if the roads are really that bumpy or if he is actually running over people that get in his way. Either way, he somehow managed to shave two hours off of a 13-hour trip a few nights ago.

Our first encounter with him was interesting. He started driving and immediately lit up a cig. Sorry Bo… not on this bus. Suddenly the smoky hotel room smell that hit us the first time we entered the bus made sense. This was Bo’s bus. He complied with our “no smoking on the bus” rule and kept on trucking… or bussing. The second encounter was no better. He got on the bus and Matt asked him how his hotel was, and Bo responded with a string of colorful words to describe how he felt about said hotel room. Lem? Are you there? We have since found out that Bo is ex-military, he was in Vietnam, and in the winter he transports convicts on the bus. No wonder is a little “rough around the edges.” I wasn’t aware that translated into the roads though. I swear he took the bus through a skate park the other night… half-pipe and all.

The show at Lake Winnipesauke was great the other night. It was the smallest crowd of the tour so far (somewhere in the 3000s) but we managed to sell 55 CDs… a record for Theft. After the show, the venue lit two fire pits backstage and put out all kinds of s’mores stuff. They had the traditional stuff—grams, mallows, and milk chocolate—as well as some new things, such as strawberry mallows, dark chocolate, peanut butter cups, and York peppermint patties. I tried a s’more with a peppermint patty, and I’ll tell you what… pretty darn good (excuse my language). I suggest you try it next time.

I suppose I should try to get some rest before my lovely lady lands. Enjoy your week and don’t ever take your spouse for granted!

Baby Steps

Yesterday was a very relaxing day off. We are in the lovely New Hampshire, staying just off of Lake Winnipesauke. The weather here is perfect, so we took advantage of it. Here is how the day unfolded:

-Got off the bus around noon and went for a little run.

-Took a dip in the pool and read poolside for about an hour.

-Austen and I went to the pub across the street and got some lunch.

-I walked around the shops for a bit.

-Matt, Ryan and I went into the little town and played mini golf, rode go-carts, and played a few video games.

-The three of us went back to the hotel and I ate my leftovers from lunch.

-Ryan and I went in the hot tub, which had way too much chlorine in it, so when he turned on the bubbles there was about 3 inches of foam on top of the water.

-I went back to the hotel room, cleaned up, watched TV and finished the night with talking on the phone to—you guessed it—Amber.

Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? It was like having a day of vacation. If you’ve been following our tour schedule, you may have realized we went from Scranton, PA to Lake Winnipesauke; or, maybe more appropriately, from The Office to What About Bob. Some of you will understand that…

I leave you with a few memorable quotes from What About Bob:

“What if I'm looking for a bathroom, I can't find one, and my bladder explodes?”

"Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm a schizophrenic... and so am I."

“Isn't this a breakthrough, that I'm a sailor? I sail? I sail now?”

“Good morning, Gil. I said, good morning, Gil.”

“I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful...”

Theft Tour: Episode II

Road Ramblings

It’s been a little while since I last posted a blog, and for that I apologize. It’s just that I haven’t felt like there is anything that has been really noteworthy in the last few days. It’s all kind of the same old thing: play a show, ride on the bus, miss Amber, etc.

The shows have been getting better since that lighting incident. In fact, our show last Saturday in Indiana was our best one yet. We didn’t have any technical difficulties, we all played well, and the crowd was great. The only negative thing I can say about it was the weather: extremely hot and humid. Very wet.

The bus travel has been getting better and worse at the same time. At first, I was having a lot of trouble sleeping while the bus was moving. At every bump, I would jolt awake in fear of the bus rolling… it must have something to do with that van wreck I was in. Anyway, I no longer do that. I still wake up with each bump, but it is no longer out of fear; it is simply because a bump interrupts my slumber. I have been sleeping pretty well the last two nights though. I’ll bet it’s because the humidity has been sucking the very life out of me.

The bus has gotten worse, however, in that we had to say goodbye to our bus driver, Lem, the other day. He was apparently only filling in for the guy who usually drives the bus we are in, so we now have Bo. By the way, if you ever want to drive a tour bus, you are going to have to shorten your name down to one syllable. We were sad to see Lem go. He was a super nice, southern guy with his gray hair combed back and a black mustache who wanted nothing more than to be an Oakridge Boy. He’s actually going to be driving their bus next week. Go get em’ Lem.

In other news, I was in Cincinnati last week and had dinner with Joel, Kristy, Nevaeh, and Jesslyn Matthews. It was fun seeing some familiar faces out on the road, and I even got a free pair of Toms out of it. Actually, I haven’t tried the coupon yet, so we still have to wait and see if I will really get another pair of Toms. Since Joel manages a Trader Joe’s, he brought me 3 bags of vegetable chips for the bus. Not a bad deal. I should hang out with them more often. :)

That’s about all I have for you in this update. I guess there were a few things for me to talk about. Normally I wouldn’t be able to elaborate on such weak topics, but I have been living with Amber for 3 years now. Maybe she is starting to rub off on me. By the way, I get to see her in 5 days. Oh, what a reunion it shall be…

A Poor Performance and Personalities

Sioux City, Iowa. Hot. Humid. Stormy. Sunny. Windy. Calm. Birthplace of our worst show yet. This was a show I was looking forward to because we would be playing indoor, as opposed to the outdoor arenas we have been playing. Being that we are the opening band, the sun is still out for our set so it’s not as cool as playing in only stage lighting (in my opinion). Maybe if I just change my perspective a little and take into consideration that the sun doesn’t hang around for the other bands, it would make me feel better. The sun likes the band I’m in better. Back to the show…

Please allow me to tell you why our show was so bad. The lights. I know I’m starting to sound picky—I want stage lighting, but the lights made our show bad—but it’s a little more complicated than that. The front of the stage is lined with lights that shine up into your face, and the lighting guy decided that those were the only lights we were going to get on this night. The only problem is that they were so bright, we couldn’t see our pedal boards, our fret boards, or even the audience. There were times that I missed pedal changes and came in on wrong notes because I was literally momentarily blinded. Between songs, Matt (singer) tried to talk to the crowd, but it was useless because we couldn’t even see them. Another contributing factor to our terrible performance was at one point during one of the songs, one of the band members (I’m granting him anonymity) messed up, which caused me to get lost, so I screwed up royally and we had a momentary train wreck. We were able to salvage that, luckily.

To top off this amazing show, those lights that I mentioned at the front of the stage started falling off. The light crew was really angry and blamed us, but fortunately I set up the flip camera behind me during the show and managed to capture the whole event happening. Watch:

As you can see, Matt simply stomped his foot and the lights started to go. I was able to show the video to the tour manager and crew, and our bacon was saved, so to speak.

Speaking of saving bacon, this next paragraph will have nothing to do with it. I took a personality test yesterday for fun, and the results are in. I am an ISTJ. Reading the description of an ISTJ is like reading the blueprint that God had when he made me, according to Amber. It is pretty funny how accurate it is though. I had Amber take the test too, but hers is not as spot on. It’s still fun to read if you have some time. She is an ENFP.

Eric: http://personalitypage.com/ISTJ.html

Amber: http://personalitypage.com/ENFP.html

My Latin Translation

Since today is a day off for the band, I figured it would be a good time for a day on in the blog world. This will be brief as I don’t have much to update you on, but at least it’s something. Last night, we had a show at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. It was pretty cool hanging out with some Army and Air Force troops, and we even got to share the stage with the Red Rocker himself: Sammy Hagar. Josh (brother-in-law) asked me if I could get his autograph, but, in all honesty, the only time I saw him was when he was on stage. Sorry Josh. There was no mingling. But it was cool nonetheless.

I would also like to take a moment to recognize my amazing wife for all that she does. She has now officially completed her Bachelor’s degree from WSU, and will be graduating Suma Cum Laude… that is Latin for “Smarter than the almost all of the other graduates.” I’m very proud of her, as you should be, for all of her hard work and dedication. In fact, that is the way Amber does things. When she cares about something, she will put her whole effort into it and it will turn out great. Whether it is doing an art project or an essay, singing, dancing, coaching, tutoring, wedding planning, shower planning, being a wife, being a sister, being a daughter, being a friend… whatever she does, she’ll do it with all of her heart. Many of the things she does tend to be more “behind the scenes,” which is why I’m using this blog to give her credit where credit is due. She’s an amazing person, and she’s even learning to take care of the house stuff while I’m away.

If you know Amber, you probably already know all this stuff, but again, I want to give her the credit she deserves. I can’t wait to see her. She’s my favorite.

Sorry to those of you who are getting sick of all this sappy stuff. I’ll try to be funny again soon.