March 13, 2005 - Sacramento, CA

The drive from Portland to Sacramento was by far the worst of tour. Everyone was tired and trying to sleep in various spots of the van. I was the last one to get in after buying gas, so I got the shittiest spot in the van. It’s right behind the passenger seat and there is no way to get comfortable. I tried for about an hour. Finally, I just bit the bullet and tried to squeeze down to the floor between the first and second bench. It was hard, but at least I could stretch out and fall asleep. After about an hour of driving through canyons and mountains, it started to get really cold on the floor. I looked around and found Clint’s blanket, so I wrapped myself up and fell back asleep. About 45 minutes after that, Clint is reaching over from the seat in front looking for his blanket. I decided to be hospitable and give it up, but as he was pulling it off he realized that I was using it and felt bad because I was on the floor, so he let me keep it. Apparently, while Brook was driving he encountered fog that was so thick he couldn’t see more than five feet in front of his face. Didn’t really matter to me, because all I wanted to do was sleep. When the sun came up and we rolled into a gas station, Bill decided that he wanted to drive. He was really excited about it and jumped into the pilot seat and we headed the rest of the way into Sacto.



We got to Sacramento about 11am with nothing to do, so we repeated our form and went to Tower Records & Books. It’s a good place to kill an hour or so. After that, we hit up the Thai restaurant that we skipped over the last time we were in town. This one was much better, and we regretted our decision from last time. Still having several hours to kill, we found a mall with a movie theater and watched HITCH. It was alright, but not $10 alright.

After the movie ended, we piled back in the van and headed over to West Coast Worldwide. A few of the bands had already shown up, including Bring It Down. Now here’s the thing about BID: I like them as people. I’ve never had any problems with any of the kids in the band, and they’ve always been nice to me. But on this tour, they started getting on my nerves a little, and everyone else’s nerves a lot. Apparently, when they found out we were going on tour with Aftermath, they started setting up a tour of their own. The only problem was they were going on the same tour we were. Wherever we had a show booked, they’d get a hold of the promoter and get on the show. We were both working with Mike Hood, so when they got on the Sacto and Redding show, we didn’t mind, but they got on our Phoenix show and our Cedar City show. I still can’t place why this bothered the hell out of any of us, but it did.

The show was good for a Sacto show. There were about 50 people there. That’s pretty good considering we aren’t an old school two-step band. After the show, Mikey Hood hooked us up with the kids in the band Set it Straight who were down to let us stay at their house up in Redding. We played there the next night, so we were fine with driving up there, and they seemed like cool kids. After we got paid, we piled in the van and headed on our way. About 15 minutes after we’d left, Brook got a call from Mikey Hood. Apparently they door guy had given us too much money, and Bring It Down was acting like we stole from them or something of that nature. That added a little more fuel to the fire, but we told them we’d work it out with them the next night.

About 20 minutes outside of Redding, we were driving behind Set it Straight when all of a sudden we see sparks fly out from the bottom of their van. They start losing control and swerving back and forth across the highway. We keep our distance just make sure everything is okay, and they pull over to the side of the road. A few of us jump out and take a look. None of us are car experts, so we just kind of guess at the problem for a minute, but the bottom line is that it’s not going to start and they need a ride. We decide to roll it up the highway about half a mile to the next exit. They didn’t want to leave it on the side of the highway all night, and I don’t blame them. So, Harry gets behind the wheel and me, Clint, Dan, Matt and the other two from their band start pushing. We get the van going pretty fast, and we try to ask Harry how fast it’s going. One second, the guitar player is next to me pushing, then the next I look over and he’s gone. I glance back over my shoulder and all I see is him rolling head over heels down the hill on the side of the road. We all notice it at about the same time and start hysterically laughing. We laugh so hard that the van starts losing its momentum and we struggle to get it up the off ramp. As we finally roll it into a restaurant parking lot, we look back and see our van just pulling off and their guitarist walking down the side of the road. We load all their equipment into the van and we get everyone to Redding no problems. I’m still not sure what happened to their van.