bear meets pavement

for those of you that know me, know that I have been on tour with wfj!. well here's an update. after leaving portland we played several shows and then got sucked into the blackhole, known as st. paul, minnesota. the only good thing to come out of st. paul, besides the transmission being rebuild, was this stuffed bear that jrd won from one of those claw like booths stuffed with toys.

st paul story...
the van fell victim to transmission sickness and marooned us for three days while the great folks at aamco rebuilt her tranny. words can not explain how st. paul sucked the living soul out of us. for three days we lived in this broken down van parked in the lot at aamco and the folks in these parts are not friendly, exception being the aamco guys.
we made our chicago show by renting a kia van which only had room for us and the amps, thus i played on someone elses drums, which was a blast ( thanks to mike from snowbeast). we then drove back the same evening in order to get back to the van that was hopefully going to be done, which of course was not finished until eleven the following morning causing us to rush to our Kalamazoo show.

needless to say, after three days of utter boredom we departed from st paul headed to our kalamazoo show. shortly after arriving into kalamazoo the worst happned. we got what the cops around here call, "t-boned." basically we got hit in the rear driver side of our van by a car going around sixty mph, thus we were flung in the air and did a 180 degree turn. it was unreal, i think there was a moment of weightlessness before we came to a grinding stop. the jolt of the impact caused the backdoor of the van to open sending the bass amp flying out about fifteen feet and along with the amp, the stuff the bear also flew out. the bear will be missed... apparently one of the guys saw a police officer pick the bear up from the pavement and placed the bear on the car that hit us...very national geographic moment.

as we calculated the damage, which was: broken bass amp, broken guitar amp, broken cymbal, bruised arm, bruised heads and a really bruised ankle...all the equipment still worked and after another four days of downtime at beardo's fathers house... are wounds have mended.

we have acquired a new van, all the amps are fixed. ankle, arm and heads are all better. finally we are glad to announce that the tour will continue. we have about twelve more shows that we are going to finish. wish us luck and we will see all of you when we get home.

-m
p.s. I miss and love you very much Renee. xoxoxoxo