January 5, 2004 - Grand Island

Chris and Clint got up at 7:30 and went to the transmission shop to see what the damage was and how much it was going to cost us. They said they'd take a look at it and call us in a few hours. We try to keep sleeping, but at 10:40 AM the door opens and some lady walks in. Now, had we been rock stars or movie gods, this story might take some kind of eventful turn. But no. The lady looks about 40, about as unattractive as you can get, and wears stone washed jeans and a flourescent yellow parka. She asks what the hell we're still doing there and that we're supposed to be checked out. Nick asks what time checkout is, she tells us 11. We tell her we have 20 minutes left, she mutters something about too many people in the room and shuts the door. We get all our stuff, load it in the van and head across the street to our new home away from home: Fazolli's.

We're all starving because we haven't eaten anything but frozen bread and shitty Walgreen's chips for the past 16 hours. Thank God for this place. Spaghetti and all you can eat breadsticks. Plus, we took over the part room in the back so the rest of the GI population wouldn't get mad at Lil Nick swearing. Clint gets a call and we find out what the damage is. The transmission is shot. A new one is going to cost us $2,000.

We think about our options for a minute, and figure we're renting two mini-vans, ditching the trailer and driving back to SLC. Then Clint's mom agrees to loan us the two grand and our trip starts looking better. So we sit at Fazolli's for a while, then hit up some of GI's finest. Like the mall and K-Mart. Then we returned the van and got another hotel room. We were right next to Fazolli's, so we went back for dinner. The transmission shop tells us the van will be ready by 11 the next day. That gives us barely enough time to get to Milwaukee for our show with Wings of Scarlet. We hang out at Fazolli's until it closes, and try to convince Nick to hook up with the breadstick girl. She asked if we were a band. Brook told her we were. She asked what we sounded like. He said "Kinda like Dave Matthews Band, but heavier."

I guess she wasn't into it because she didn't come back to the hotel with Nick.