DANIEL'S WINTER MAYHEM TOUR DIARY ------------------------------------PREVIOUS | NEXT

When, I finished up writing Day 1, it was around 5:30 AM. So, as the time came for us to hit the road, I had about 4 hours of sleep. Groggy and pretty cranky, I got all my stuff ready, packed it into the van, grabbed a Cup Noodles, and munched on that while we waited for Vektor to finished up their packing and what not. Then, we had to pick up David from his parents house.

Once he was in, we started the drive Albuquerque. Roughly about a 7 or 8 hour drive. The scenery was pretty cool, when there was light to see it. Lots of desert shit, of course, but still pretty cool. Another self-appointed job that I have made myself take responsibility for is navigation. Or Co-pilot if you will. I make sure Mario, who is driving the entire tour if he has his way, is good and ready to bust our necessary missions. My main goals are to have all directions ready and written down, have the maps handy when needed, to DJ the tunes, and most importantly , to keep him awake. Pretty much, if he’s driving, I have to stay up and make sure he doesn’t kill us.

There’s nothing much to say about the drive, really. The only real pit stop we did was to get some food at a Subway. And after I purchased my pastrami sandwich w/pepperoni (awesome, I know), this couple who were sitting at the tables called me over. Suspiciously, because you never know who wants to rape you, I went to see what was up. But all they wanted was to know what band we were in and if they could get an album. I was like, “Sure!” Hobbling back to the van, sandwich in hand, I opened the trailer and grabbed a CD for them. Do I know how to sell merch or what? Haha! Just fooling.

But anyways, we all ate our sandwiches and joked around in the van for a bit then headed back on the road. That’s when I started zoning in and out. I couldn’t keep my eyes open for the life of me! I think I slept for almost 3 minutes, but thankfully that’s all I need it seemed. Cause I was jimmy-leggin that very same night!

When we hit the Albuquerque city limits, Blake requested we play Weird Al Yankovich’s song of name after the city. “Eleven minutes of Albuquerque awesomeness” is how Blake described it. Song was fucking dummmmbbbb! Hahahaha! It had some chuckling parts, but over all Weird Al is weird as hell.

Soon after that, we arrived at the venue, where Taylor from Dread, a local band from that area, greeted us. We then proceeded to unload everything and get it ready to put inside the venue. And whilst I was in the trailer moving shit around and handing people everything to take, my back was in severe pain. I think I might have pulled something, because it hurts even now. Not too bad, though. Thank God for small favors. But it bothers me from time to time. Fuck it though.

I set up merch like usual, and was welcomed by a group of kids, roughly between the ages of 10-15. It didn’t really look like they’d be packing bucks to buy a shirt or anything. But the majority of them did buy patches, so that’s cool. Then the littlest of them came up to me and asked, “How much are the shirts?” To which I replied, “10 bucks little dude!” And he gave me this sad ass face that sad, “Aw rats.” So, I asked him how much he had on him? “Five dollars,” he answered. I could work with that. I told him to fork over the 5 bucks and we’ll call it a deal. So, he went to his older brother it looked liked, who was looking at Vektor merch, and asked him for his 5 bucks. But apparently his brother used some of it to buy patches. I was like dang. The kid only had 3 bucks and he was all bummed cause he couldn’t get a shirt. Being the nice guy I am (I am the nice one after all), I just said for him to come back and I’ll see what I can do for ‘em. Soon enough he showed back up, and I had a game for him. I’d give him 1 question and if he got it right, I’ll sell him the shirt for whatever money he had in his pockets. I asked, “Who does Bruce Dickinson sing for?” And without hesitation, might I add, he promptly responded, “Iron Maiden!” Very impressed, because the kid had to be in elementary still, I sold him the shirt as promised for the little he had. He was pretty pumped and immediately slapped his new Exmortus shirt on.

We got our gig on after a pretty wicked sets from Dread, Ultimatum, and of course Vektor. Dread was pretty impressive live! I heard their stuff on Myspace before, and they have a good live act to back it up. Ultimatum, I hadn’t heard before, but they were pretty tight as well. They did a sweet cover of Metal Church’s “Ton of Bricks”. Our bunch of songs turned out well too. We sounded pretty good on stage, aside from my minor tuning problems. Argggg. But other than that we were happy with our performance. “Entombed” is getting better every time we play it.

After we played and everything was loaded back in, we headed to a local Wal-Mart to possibly get some Z’s. After some quick chow from the McDonalds inside, we all piled back in and decided to hit the road again. Try to get a little of the drive for the next morning out of the way. I picked a good rest area near the border of Texas for us to crash, but Mario had gotten too tired driving, and we decided to pull over at the nearest one we came across. The first one, however, was jammed packed with trucks. We had no room for us. So we kept driving. The second one that showed on the radar was closed. At this point Mario is getting more and more tired by the minute and I was running out of shit to keep him awake. Lucky for us, I asked Balmore for a Jim Gafagin album on his iPod and I gave that a play, hopefully giving him something to laugh at rather than fall asleep to. We ended up having to go to the very rest area I choose earlier.

That was the first rest area of the tour so far. We found decent enough parking. Those of who needed to shit, shat. The rest got as comfortable as we possibly could. Me and Balmore demanded Mario get his own row to sleep in for driving, to which Mario was surprised! Haha! When everyone was in their areas we joked around more and laughed our asses off at dumb, random shit. But it was funny and enjoyable. What wasn’t enjoyable was the place I slept. I slept in the seat I sat in the whole way: front passenger seat. Fuck, it sucked so much balls. I had to wake up at least 20 times that night. My neck and throat hurt so bad. I’ve never slept that horrible in my entire life before. Stupid front seat. Stupid, stupid front seat.

Quote of the day: “I’m dieing, Larry!” - Mr. Orange