Adventure #44: Summer Tour 2012: Casper, Wyoming

The drive across Nebraska is really nice if you're not the sort of person for whom the sight of acres upon acres of dead corn fields dried up from drought causes existential crises about the unsustainability of American agriculture. Otherwise, it's great. It's also a great drive if you're in the sort of car where the gas gauge has any bearing on reality.

So we're in a 1995 Ford Aerostar that gets roughly 21 miles per gallon. It has an 18 gallon tank. So when it hits an 1/8 of a tank, that should mean “start looking for a gas station, but you'll be fine as long as you find one within 47.25 miles.” Not so for the Rusty Shackleford. We made it about 7 miles before it sputtered off to the side of the road. OK fine. Joshua and I both have AAA and we still had an hour of flex time before we needed to be in Casper, Wyoming. We learned the hard way that the gas gauge on the car is sort of arbitrary and that 1/8 of a tank = empty. But otherwise, we'd be fine. This is Pen Pen waiting patiently for roadside assistance.

So Joshua calls AAA and informs them we're at mile marker 2, right before the turn-off for exit 1 on I-80 on the Nebraska side of the Nebraska-Wyoming border. Jennifer the not terribly competent AAA employee proceeds to put him on hold for 20 minutes, then comes back to inform him that it's impossible, and that where we were simply didn't exist. Also insinuating in no uncertain terms that Joshua might be lying for some nefarious purpose. Some sort of Joker-Batman conundrum? The world will never know. This was news to us, but we had spent a good chunk of the drive discussing time travel paradoxes, so we were totally in the right frame of mind to be told that where we were didn't really exist. This is Pen Pen in a time travel paradox, somehow existing both now and a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Oh wait, did I say we were in the right frame of mind? Because no we definitely weren't. We were now almost certainly going to be late for the show and stranded in the hot Nebraska sun 3 tantalizing miles from the nearest gas station. Just close enough to be walkable, but far enough that if we attempted it we'd never make it anywhere even close to on time. 2 mind-bogglingly frustrating calls to AAA and about 45 Tom-Petty-on the-ukelele-filled minutes later (during which not a single person stopped to ask if we were OK...so much for midwestern hospitality...) a guy from AAA shows up. Re-fueled, we set off back on the road, slightly embarrassed for having run out of gas 3 miles from a gas station, but mostly late. We finally got to the venue only 30 minutes late and set about playing some folk songs for the surprisingly awesome patrons of Casper, Wyoming. This is Pen Pen strutting in to the venue 30 minutes late like the rock star he is.

This is a song I wrote one time. You should download it and share it with your friends.

Adventure #43: Summer Tour 2012 Lincoln, Nebraska

Joe, the guy who booked our show in Lincoln, Nebraska, had been unceremoniously fired from booking at Cultiva about a week ago. He let us know the show was still on, and we could still stay with him, but he wasn't welcome on the premises. So off to a good start. The show was sparsely attended, to say the least. But we made the most of it. There were a handful of people who were there and into it. And anyway, we kind of knew that was going to be the score going into it.

We headed back to Joe's to hang out, have some down time, and most importantly watch Zoolander. Joe brought us out to a house warming party for a friend of his, where the common refrain was “oh, I wish I'd known there was a show at Cultiva. I would have gone!” So it goes. This is Pen Pen admiring Joe's impressive VHS collection.

We decided the next day to stick around Lincoln for another day instead of driving halfway to Wyoming and taking a day off there. Lincoln's actually a pretty rad town. We had lunch at this bookstore and got into a heated political discussion with a guy who kept informing us he was “apolitical.” I'm actually still not totally clear on what we were disagreeing about. After lunch, everyone told us we should hit up the Nebraska History Museum downtown. So we did that for a bit, then headed back to Joe's. Had another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat and didn't get up until the next morning when we all had to go to Wyoming. This is Pen Pen making an old-timey phone call to Rosy.

This is a song I wrote one time. You should download it and share it with your friends.

Adventure #42: Summer Tour 2012 Omaha, Nebraska

The brake line went from “huh, it probably shouldn't be using so much brake fluid” to “oh crap we're all gonna die!” on the doom-o-meter en route to Omaha. By the time we pulled into the venue the brake line was completely depressurized. Joshua found a shop that could take a look at it in the morning, so we promptly set about the business of rocking. There was one other act for the night; a husband and wife folk duo from Nashville called You Knew Me When. Which was good because it was a Monday night in a dive bar in Omaha, and it became apparent pretty quickly that we'd be each other's audiences. So we tried out new material on each other and were generally self-depreciating jackasses. It was kinda fun.

Joshua's friend Becky (who I'm pretty sure hates me for no discernible reason) suggested we hit up an open mic after the show. The audience was infinitely larger if only because 8 doesn't divide by 0. We found out later that both Andrew Bird and Mumford and Sons were in town, so pretty much any audience for vaguelly folkish alternarock in Omaha was otherwise preoccupied. We headed back to Becky's place, where she continued to hate me for no reason. But hey, her roomate had a cool oldschool VW bug. So, you know... Omaha! Jazz hands. This is Pen Pen, punch buggy gray.

This is a song I wrote one time. You should download it and share with your friends.