Free Crack With Every Room

A: Marconi, after the harrowing escape from death’s cold clutches, decided it was time to confirm our hotel reservation for the evening. He calls ahead to the hotel where we will be staying. In asking for directions, however, he soon realizes that when he called the national reservation number this morning, the ass-tard who fielded the call made a reservation for us in AsheBORO, not Asheville. So now we have no hotel room.

Another quick phone call and we’ve secured a room at an Econo-Lodge nearby. Fine.

We pull into the lot, where the sign in front proclaims “newly renovated”. However, none of us were able to discern where exactly these renovations were. Perhaps the front desk has a fresh layer of formica. Who knows.

Marconi comes out, and waves us around the side of the building. He’s walking alongside the van as we’re slowly creeping around to find the room. It is at this moment that we start seeing what could be considered clues as to what may occur in the next few hours.

As we turn the corner, I see on the second floor top level, hanging over the railing, a shady young man of Latino descent. He looks suspicious, but relatively innocuous, and we continue the creep along as Marconi is also starting to take in his surroundings.

Then I notice the next red flag. There is a rather angry looking gentleman sitting in a lawn chair outside his room, near the first guy. He has a look that says “this is home” and consequently “I’ll kill you for being here”. Great. Good feelings about the evening are beginning to wane.

Then comes the coup de grace. Two members of the Wu-Tang Clan are perched on the staircase going to the second floor, looking real hard at the van and all of us. Clearly we have overstepped our bounds in a big way here and they’re going to let us know that just as soon as our little sissy feet hit the pavement outside the vehicle. I have seen this kind of scenario before, usually in places like Newark, and I can assure you, it’s never a good thing.

Alienwhere: “Oh, I really don’t like the look of this at all.”

Lioux: “Yeah, this is getting real shady real fast.”

Elle: [contemplative silence, followed by a *sigh*]

It is at this point that Marconi again approaches the van, and he opens the door, with a slight look of puzzlement, which quickly cements into realization, followed by understanding, followed by assessment, when Elle decides to share her feelings.


Elle: “We are NOT staying here.”


Marconi: “Ok then, I guess I’ll just go ahead and cancel the room then.”

I don’t think we’ve ever made any decision as quickly as we made this one. I promptly turned the van around, and we hopped across the street to a Day’s Inn, which was CONSIDERABLY less perilous than our first choice.

We started to think about what might have transpired had we stayed at the Econo-Lodge.

Marconi: “I think if I asked for crystal meth in that parking lot, I could have probably had a few offers.”

Lioux: “Are you kidding me? Like kids to an ice cream truck.”

Given that we’ve been losing sleep every night we’ve been on the road thus far, we would have been guaranteed NO sleep, and also that all of our gear, the van, all money we have, Elle, and our lives themselves would have been stolen.

Being on the road is fun and all, but you really have to know when something smells fishy.

L: Totally, Alienwhere! You just know when something is NOT right.

Highway To Hell

A: As I hadn’t driven in a day, after Elle did the first leg of the trip out to Asheville (FYI, also the proving ground for one Miss Veronica Corningstone) I said I’d pick up the leg into town. We had about 140 miles left, I guess, and the drive into Nashville was so pleasant, just long, straight stretches of interstate, I figured, eh, why not. Lioux was furiously typing away yesterday’s posts, and it was that perfect time of day, right around 4-4:30 PMish.

Well, this decision would prove to be just the first of my many bad decisions yesterday. Within about 45 minutes, we entered what looked like the skies of Hades as the light trickled away from Earth and was replaced with dark-ass clouds and TORRENTIAL rain. The kind of rain that, while driving a car, actually makes you almost want to jerk the wheel into a ravine just so you don’t have to drive in it anymore. I am a total rain sissy, so I drove pretty slowly, but not too slowly, because we still had a date to keep in Asheville. After the rain subsided, I took a deep breath and steadied myself for the rest of the trip.

But my solace was short-lived. We entered the Great Smoky Mountains, and began what was one of the most harrowing journeys I have ever been privy to in a motor vehicle. I had to navigate approximately 30-40 miles of the windiest, most scariest, possible rockslidiest, big rig overpoweringist and otherwise f-ing DEADLY highway I have ever seen. There was not a single straight piece of road for the entire distance. It was all bendy and gross. Every time I found a tiny piece I thought I could use to get around a truck, I would lose my line of sight because it would start bending almost immediately and I would be forced to retreat behind the rig again. Over and over. It started to be kind of comical, but then that feeling quickly evaporated when I realized that the road just kept going.

Then another truck entered DeathRoad and got in my way immediately. This truck was carrying huge chunks of tree and log, and looked as though it could drop one onto our hood and flip the van right over at any second. More of the tug-of-war with the road, I finally pass it. Whew.

THEN we notice there’s an accident investigation scene a little bit ahead. We come up to it, and there is this big honking 18-wheeler completely flipped up on its side. It was insane. I don’t even know how that could have happened.

We finally emerge from this hellish trial and everyone confesses that they were freaking thankful as hell that they didn’t have to physically drive just then. I start to feel like a bit of a hero, although I think I may have pooped a little in my pants, so that’s not really heroic.

COMPLETELY needless to say, I had a nice, fat whiskey as soon as we reached the hotel.

L: I’m actually glad I had the laptop to keep my occupied. It was pretty funny as I sat there clickity clacking away on the keyboards preparing posts. I was completely distracted aside from the occasional glance up when Alienwhere, Elle and Marconi would be freaking out about this or that.

On The Run

After getting back to our room after souvenir shopping, Alienwhere and I not only realized our emergency ration kit whiskey was dangerously running low, but that the club we were playing that night (which we’ve played before) only served beer.

[Panic].

For those of you who don’t know, Alienwhere is a whiskey drinker, and my drink of choice is vodka.

While at the front desk getting a toothbrush to clean his shoes, Alienwhere inquired where the nearest liquor store was. THANK GOODNESS there was one not to far from the hotel so he and I grabbed the van keys and went off on our liquor run.

A: heh. It was called “Frugal McDoogal’s Liquor Warehouse”. You can only imagine how awesome that trip was…

The Load-In

A: Having gotten the van secured, it was time to pack that puppy up. We generally don’t go overboard carrying equipment we don’t need, but even still, between the gear we can’t perform without and our belongings for a week and change, we’ve got a lot of crap to carry. There’s no getting around it. So we laid everything out on the studio driveway and stared at it for a while, quietly thinking how this was going to happen. I actually experienced a moment of sheer panic, when I thought to myself “there’s no goddamned way all of this is getting in this crapbox”, but quickly allayed my own fears when we started putting stuff in right places. Nevertheless, this pack job was akin to putting a game of Jenga back together. There’s a ton of pieces, and there’s really only one good way to put them in order, so figure it out. You can see the results of our Herculean effort here: