day 11:
drove from dallas to el paso, which is about 600 miles. it took about 10 hours, and $270 in gas (our van gets horrific gas mileage). our show was pretty good – maybe 30 people, and the other bands were pretty good, especially the crowd the town and everyone. stayed with a friend in las cruces, new mexico, and slept like a log.
day 12:
got to tucson around 4, which i’ve been looking forward to all tour. the girls went out to eat with some relatives of the O’s, and joe and i went for our first round of viva burrito, my all-time favorite 24 hour mexican drive through. i’m a little dismayed to discover that they now 1) employ people who speak english, and who are totally inept, and 2) use pre-packaged salsa. small complaints aside, the burritos were awesome (and such a hit with joe that we ended up going back twice more in the 48 hours we were in town). then we were off to tattoo artistry, as is my custom when in tucson.
joe, not particularly enjoying the process (collar bones are a bit unpleasant to get tattooed).
my latest.
after getting tattooed, we decided that we had earned another burrito, so we went back to viva. meanwhile, the girls spent the evening in the hottub. tour is rough.
Day 13:
katie, joe and mandy spent the day with the same relatives as the previous night (they went to sabino canyon – see mandy’s blog for more on that), and i spent the day visiting old haunts in tucson.
my first stop was bookmans (a sweet used book and record store), where i picked up a copy of barbara kingsolver’s High Tide in Tucson, and when i started reading it, i found this:
not terribly surprising, since she lived in tucson, but cool nonetheless.
after bookmans, i got some pizza at magpies (which tastes much better when you haven’t had it for like 2 years), and stopped by savers (a big thrift store). i did not find the pair of pants i was looking for, but i did stumble across this:
i think i should have bought it. on the way home, i passed a business i had forgotten about:
went back to the house, did some laundry, and then when everyone had assembled, we went to yoshimatsu with my aunt and uncle. it was delicious. then: showtime!
a bunch of friends came out to the show – here’s me and some of them:
during our set, scott took a bunch of pictures of us with my camera:
it was really great to finally play a show in my old hometown… one of my favorite shows ever.
Day 14:
got up early, got yet another round of burritos for the road, and made our way towards san diego. on the way out, we passed another humorously named business:
i slept a good bit of the way to yuma, but woke up in time for a familiar site (just pretend those dunebuggies are dewbacks):
the yuma sand dunes, which you may recognize as tattooine (only the special edition scenes were filmed there – the originals were filmed in death valley and tunisia).
we made good time to san diego, but when we arrived at the venue, we found out we had to play first. lame, since we set up the show and asked all the other bands to play. but it worked out fine – we had as good a crowd as anyone, and the sound at the venue was great! stacy and aria showed up right after we started playing, and now the show just ended, so we’re headed to their house to stay the night.
