I would like to preface this blog with, "I'm an idiot and I lost my battery charger for my camera so I can't take anymore pictures and have to steel them from Katy but we both know that we forget about her camera constantly." That said... lets move along.
After spending two GLORIOUS days in Portland we had a really hard time leaving. The other thing that made it hard to leave was that we were dreading that night with a great passion. After the show in Eugene we had to book it out of there so that we could make it down to San Francisco the next morning. Why did we have to drive through the night to get there? Well, we had a little slip up (mostly my mistake) where we booked the Eugene show for 10PM and the San Fran show for 11AM the next morning without looking at how long it would take us to get from one point to the next (it's an 8 hour drive... just to let you know). Oops. The plan was simple: drive through the night (driving in two 4 hour shifts), get to San Fran, playing the show, crashing on a friends couch for the after and then go exploring. Simple enough right? Well, here's where another snag of poor planning came in. We decided to tour the north in the winter. As you saw from a previous post, we had done some tough traveling from Chicago to Minneapolis but that was flat and pretty easy to navigate and they treat their roads with plows and sand and salt... California, on the other hand, is mountainous and they don't do a single thing to the roads... bummer.
The story begins with Katy taking the first shift with driving and me sleeping in the passenger seat until my shift. This lasted for about... oh, an hour before Katy reached over and grabbed my leg asking, "Are you awake?". Of course, I had the smart ass response of, "I am now" but was taken aback to see that we were in the middle of a little snow squall on the highway. My initial reaction was, "Well, SHIT." Our pace when from zipping down the highway to almost a crawl as we tried to avoid sliding off of the road. We had breaks in the weather which we could speed up a little bit but the snow kept coming back... and not only that but there was some INTENSE fog where you couldn't see ten feet in front of you. What the fuck California? Pick one type of weather or the other!
After Katy's shift on driving it was my turn to take the wheel and brave the elements. At this point, it seemed to have died down and it looked like smooth sailing from there... but oh, were we wrong. It got 10X worse than before. We apparently had just missed a huge front that came through the mountains that had dropped about 8 inches of snow on the ground. Since California doesn't treat their roads the only thing that kept them clear were the tractor-trailer trucks speeding down the highway splashing powder and slug everywhere.
The only thing that California and Oregon allow you to do in this inclement wintry condition is one thing: chain up. Before and after every mountain pass they have "chain-up" zones where you're allowed to pull over and throw massive chains around your tires. Being from the Northeast, this is EXTREMELY illegal and really bad for the roads so naturally we didn't have any heavy duty chains hanging out in the back of the wagon with all of our equipment. We switched to the AM weather emergency station to hear what we were supposed to do. It said that all vehicles were required to have chains on their wheels unless they were 4-wheel/all-wheel drive sedans/trucks/etc and if you didn't you would be turned around at any chain-up check-point. This got us very worried... Katy owns a Volvo V70 which has a traction control option but no 4-wheel drive option (like the numerous amounts of V70 X-countries we have seen on the road) so we feared we would be turned around at the check-point. As we arrived at the check-point we didn't even have to stop as the guy waved us on to our almost certain death. I'm not sure what this guy was thinking... maybe: "Oh, they made it this far, I think they're worthy to pass" or "Oh, what the hell, this'll be fun"... whatever it was he was thinking he obviously had a severe lapse in judgement because our car did not pass any of the rules that were required of us....
We pressed on bravely through the wintry mix at a terrifying 15-25 miles per hour through the night hoping that we would make it through the mountains without slipping into a gorge or being run off the road by an 18-wheeler. Eventually, we notices the time and decided that it wasn't worth it to make it to the gig... our lives are much more important (sorry, Coffee Adventures). We pulled in to a small mountain town where they were just starting to clean up the roads and parking lots of snow... so we drove around for about an hour waiting for a grocery store parking lot to free up so we could steel a couple hours of sleep.
We woke up the next morning to a little bit of sunshine and beautiful view of fog filled valleys and snow capped mountains as Katy coasted her way down the mountain to the flat lands of Redding, California... it was here that we tried to figure out what we were going to do for the night. It wouldn't be worth it to go all the way to San Fran since our next gig was in Sacramento... only a couple of hours away... so we tried to find some friends to crash with in the area. We eventually found her friend, Jenny... who lived an hour outside of San Fran. When we arrived at her house we were greeted by some warm and welcoming people we knew we had made the right choice. They fed us dinner and we talked about all music things and whatever else came up in conversation.
Jenny then took us out on the town to show us what it was like. I so turned out that her friend was hosting an open mic that night over in San Rafael. We decided that we would go there and see if we could snag a slot and advertise the show in Sacramento. There were some great acts... a lot of hip-hop guys there, a girl who sang songs a capella (changing keys every other verse) and the most adorable father/son act (by father/son... I mean the father was probably in his early-mid 60's and his sound was late 30's-early 40's) who played old country tunes. The crowd was so supportive and fun! We had a great time playing and I think we may have made a few fans... open mics... you always surprise me.
After a good rest and a shower we're now read to head up to Sacramento and play (what is looking to be) a pretty kick ass show with Agent Ribbons! And then we're off for a couple of REALLY long driving days headin' back to the east coast... I'm sure I'll have some good stories about the south-west :)
Cheers,
Luke
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