January 11, 2004 - Erie, PA Day 2

So after a day of music at one venue, we're told all the speakers will be held in another venue on the other side of town. Luckily they told us that the night before and we didn't drive all over town again the next day.

The speakers were very hit or miss. Some of them were good, and you could tell they do this for a living. Others sounded like they made up a speech in the car on the way over. There was no time limit, which was a good thing for the pros, but a bad thing for dipshits that rambled on and on for an hour about how eating roadkill was still technically vegan. At this point in the trip, I needed a little time off. It had been a hell of a week and I couldn't stand being in the back corner of a large room, not being able to see a damn thing. So I took off. I walked about a block and a half to the first Starbucks I could find, sat down and just relaxed for an hour or so. I made sure I was back in time for Rod Coronado. He was basically the only reason we didn't take off that morning and start our trek of a 35+ hour drive home. He was the last speaker and well worth the wait. He spoke for about an hour and made the second day worth seeing.

As soon as he was done, we piled in the van and started our long, long drive home. The highlight of which, was that we drove 45 minutes out of our way to hang out with Wayne at Fazolli's in Grand Island, Nebraska. He hooked us up with some sweet breadsticks.

We rolled in to SLC at about 5am Tuesday morning after leaving at 11 Sunday night. I climbed into bed for a quick nap, but had to be up soon. I had class at 10 am.