Staring Down The Path North American Tour Journal Day 14 & 15 November 23 & 24, 2011 New York City I had to mentally prepare for our arrival in New York.  I would be waking up on the bus in a location unknown.  It turned out, Sam, our driver, found a fantastic spot on an overpass above a subway transit area.  It’s proximity to a 24-hour shop & deli was ideal and the police do not mess with busses & trucks parked on the side of the street.  We are parked on 11th avenue near 30th street and have a great view of the empire state building.  Navigating through the city...

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Staring Down The Path North American Tour Journal Day 13 November 22, 2011 Cambridge, MA We left Rochester at about 6:00 am and headed towards Boston, which would be one of our shorter drives.  We woke up to Mark yelling about the fact that the bus satellite did not have the channel that carried the Manchester City game.  He attempted to stream it on the computer, which halfway worked, and the rest of us watched the Manchester United soccer match on television. Before we slept a few hours, we boarded the bus and listened to music on the iPod, all of us tightly packed in the bus living...

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Staring Down The Path North American Tour Journal Day 12 / November 21, 2011 Rochester, NY We wound up leaving Chicago around 5:00 am for Rochester.  My parents met in Rochester, which eventually led to my place in the universe.  I really wanted to take in some sights and visit some places in Rochester I hadn’t seen in many years, but it was not to be.  We arrived an hour late for load in at The Water Street Music Hall and had to rush through sound check once again.  The taste of the deli at Wegman’s Grocery and the smooth custard at Abbott’s would have to wait till my next...

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Staring Down The Path North American Tour Journal Day 11 November 20, 2011 Chicago, IL We drove many hours more than we should have in the middle of the evening in order to make up some time lost in the storm in Wyoming. After making it through the state of Nebraska, we stopped off at a Days Inn Motel right inside of Iowa near some large casinos. It was 3:00 am by the time I checked our driver into a room (for which he would sleep about six hours) and then I retired to the snow & dirt covered bus for a total of five hours sleep. I met Sam in the lobby the next morning, so I could...

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Staring Down The Path North American Tour Journal Day 10 November 19, 2011 Travel Day / Wyoming to…? Day nine ended with the bands pushing our tour bus up a hill to a Best Western Motel. The fortunate side of it all was the fact that I had requested a pit stop for the bands to eat. If we had not gotten off that last exit in Wyoming, we would have been stranded on the side of the road outside of Evanstan. Wyoming closed all the roads due to heavy snow and icy conditions. The other fortunate side of things is that I got the best night’s sleep I have had in over a week. I rented...

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Staring Down The Path North American Tour Journal Day 9 November 18, 2011 Travel Day / Somewhere Between California & Wyoming On The Way To Chicago I woke up in Nevada after leaving San Francisco at about 2:30 am.  I was a bit melancholy having to say goodbye to my son, Josh last night.  I half seriously invited him to quit his Job, get on the bus and tour the rest of the US with us.  He could have been a great help and it would have been nice to have family aboard.  Half way through Nevada, it started snowing heavily, but a little ways after, it subsided. We needed...

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Staring Down The Path North American Tour Journal Day 7 November 16, 2011 Oakland, CA We arrived to the venue in Oakland early. The New Parish club was near downtown Oakland in the same vicinity of the epicenter of the Wall Street protest.  It was also across from a homeless shelter.  The homeless problem is a sad reality, but can also become a nuisance after being asked for things over and over again.  I had to stop giving spare funds away, because, after all, our band had to eat as well.  San Francisco had a much bigger problem with the homeless and it seemed to create a very...

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Staring Down The Path North American Tour Journal Day 6 November 15, 2011 Los Angeles, California The trip from Phoenix to LA is relatively short and also meant we weren’t going to sleep too much again.  I think I’m getting accustomed to waking up early now.  It has been a while since I had been to California and I had forgotten how beautiful the mountains are and how awesome the weather is in the winter.  We got to the world famous Troubadour five hours early and had time to kill in LA.  I called an old high school friend, Ryan Smith, and we met for Lunch along with John...

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North American Tour Journal Day 5 November 14, 2011 Phoenix, Arizona Sam, the tour bus driver, woke me up at 4:30am to get $600 to put gas into the tank so we could make it through the desert. He then talked my ear off for an hour about the fact that he is really a bass player and not a tour bus driver. I’m hoping he is a really good bus driver for at least the next few weeks… Since I had only slept an hour, I decided to try to sleep while the bus was moving. It only lasted a couple of hours until we reached the next truck stop for coffee. A stray dog walked up to the bus as we were...

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Staring Down The Path North American Tour Journal Day 3 & Day 4 November 12 - 13, 2011 Dallas, Texas.  It was a short, 4 hour, drive to Dallas from Austin. We left at the unreasonable hour of 7:30am after going to bed at 4:30am in front of the venue in Austin.  Three hours of sleep was not going to be enough to get me through, but I had to endure.  We had a warm welcome at the club in Dallas on arrival from the show promoters and loaded in at 2pm.  This club really had its act together, especially in the sound department.  The engineer got the sound perfect for the show and the room...

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