Omaha, Nebraska - January 4, 2004

We were invited to play the Total Liberation Fest in Erie, Pennsylvania. We'd never been east of SLC before, so we were excited with the exception of one thing: Who the fuck decided it was a good idea to schedule a fest in Erie in the middle of January?
Either way, we were game. It's not like any of us had anything better to do, and it sounded promising with Undying, Purification, Freya, etc... So we set up a little tour to get us out there and we were set. We just had to buy a van and find someone to play bass, because Chris had real job, and a wife and like a child scheduled to be born the week we were gone. You know, grown up stuff. So Brook Aftermath decided to fill in on bass. He doesn't actually know how to play or anything, but he wanted to come. Plus, who really needs the bass? I saw Unearth once without a bass player. They sounded fine.

We got a van like three days before we left, and we rented a trailer the day we were leaving. It was a 13 hour drive from SLC to Omaha, and it was snowing, so we left Saturday night. That gave us about 24 hours to get there. We figured we'd need it. About 45 minutes into our trip, I started getting cold in the back of the van. I told Bill to turn the heat on in the back. He said that it was. Guess what? The only part of the heater that worked was the defrost. Score for us, eh? I was the only one that brought a sleeping bag, so I was the only one that wasn't freezing to death during the night.

Somewhere in Wyoming we get pulled over, and four cops surround the van. We had to scrape ice off the inside window to see, but we did. Apparently there was a new law that you're supposed to change lanes if an officer has someone pulled over. We didn't know, and so that's why the entire Wyoming police force stopped us. They gave us a warning and we were on our way.

Around noon on Sunday, Brook is driving and the engine makes a weird noise and we stop accelerating. Our transmission is out. In the middle of fucking Nebraska. Brook uses his brother's AAA card that he stole and we call for a tow truck. They tell us that only two people can ride in the truck and they won't take a trailer. Which means 6 of us on the side of a highway with a trailer in the bitter cold. The tow truck guy gets there, feels sorry for us and tells us all to stay in the van. He puts the van with all of us in it on the back of his truck, hooks up the trailer and takes us to the nearest town.

Welcome to Grand Island, is what the sign read as we passed by. The tow truck dropped the van off at a transmission shop and charged Brook $45 for hooking up the trailer. It's sunday, so the shop is closed. Clint, Bill and Chris head out looking for an auto parts store. The rest of us wait in the freezing cold van and try to watch Family Guy on Brook's mini DVD player. It gets too cold and we set off to find somewhere to hang out. You know what the only thing open in Grand Island, Nebraska on a Sunday is? Fucking McDonald's. Eight vegan kids stranded at McDonald's for 4 hours. Finally we get ahold of a rental car place, get our heads and guitars out of the trailer and haul ass to our show in Omaha which is two hours away. We get there and there's a storm East of Omaha and all the roads in, except the one we came on, are closed.

7 people at the show. I fucking counted. The promoter, his girlfriend and five friends of the opening band, Bloodcow. Let's talk about them for a minute. Imagine somebody really, really liking Pantera and someone else really, really liking the Dead Kennedy's. Well, put them together and you have Bloodcow.

We make $17 and head back to Grand Island to get a hotel and find out how much our van will be. The only hotel still open when we get back is infested with Roaches, but we stay there anyway. Semi-warm hotel with roaches vs. freezing cold van wasn't a tough choice.