I’m excerpting (ok, stealing in its entirety), a blog post I love below. It’s from Achachay!, a band touring the US in support of lowering the drinking age and promoting their music. It happens to be my little bro’s band, but even if it wasn’t, these blog posts about mishaps and adventures on the tour are some of the most engaging, funny, and well-written accounts of life on the road I’ve ever read. Read this sample, then click to achachay.com for more–he posts almost daily!
Day 6: FLORIDA! My name is Florida!
It was 3AM by the time we had loaded up and pulled out of the Celtic’s lawn parking lot. At least seven hours from Atlantic City Florida and one broken headlight still waiting to be replaced, it would seem as if we had quite the night ahead of us. Surprisingly, the 330AM-1130AM drive passed without incident. I felt electrified the whole time until about 7 when I decided to drink a Red Bull. I felt absolutely no increase in awareness, concentration or energy. Instead after about 20 minutes I felt an intense crash and had to pull over to switch drivers. Ryan and I flopped into the aft cabin while Roni and Michael dutifully moved into the front seats. Unbeknownst to sleeping Ryan and Jordan, Michael fell immediately back asleep and left Roni driving at 730 by himself. Fortunately, and despite our best efforts to the contrary, Roni still hasn’t shaken the corporate lifestyle and remains an early riser.
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Ryan cools his head
Florida was a dream. It was so awesome catching up with JP, my friend from studying abroad in Spain who I hadn’t seen in almost three years. His band Saltwater Grass was also incredible. They’re a six piece in the vein of String Cheese Incident and Widespread Panic – but a little funkier. Great energy, great jams, I just had to dance to the music. Plus they’re all a bunch of really nice guys. In fact all of JP’s crew was really cool. From the moment we arrived rubbing sleep from our eyes they welcomed us, hung out at the beach with us, throwing frisbees, running around like fools, and guiding us to the best fish tacos I’ve ever had. Atomic Flying Fish Tacos in Atlantic Beach Florida are a must – upon mentioning them right now Ryan erupted “those were awesome!”
What could be better? Catching up with old friends, going to the beach, eating delectable food, playing music, dancing to another great live act, and going to a hilarious after-party. Yeah after the show we all headed over to a house and got rowdy. And by rowdy I mean we sat around telling ridiculous stories and making up songs about people at the party. Hoff from Indiana – we’ll never forget what you do with baseball bats.
I can only speak for myself, but hanging out with JP made me realize that I am living my dream. Not just because we’re getting to showcase our brilliant Achachay! compositions in front of new people every single night, but because I get to travel around the country catching up with old friends and meeting the people they love. From Aaron and Evan and Anna and Darren and Clory and Beth and the whole Houston crew to Julie and Lea in New Orleans, to JP in Florida and Meeker in Raleigh, and all the people in the Northeast and Midwest that I can’t wait to spend an afternoon with, this lifestyle is indeed exactly how I want to spend my time.
Two more interesting tidbits.
(1): We got in the paper!!!
(2) The Fly’s Tie specifically asked us not to mention lowering the drinking age. Crazy right? I understand that they get a lot of pressure from the local fuzz and have to be really hard on IDs and whatnot, but we’re not supporting illegal behavior. We support changing the legal rights of adults. So we kept mum about it. I mentioned that there was something we normally talk about that we couldn’t and people should check out website to find out more. Barely anyone even asks us about it. More on that soon.
Regardless we’ll definitely be back to the Fly’s Tie, and we’ll definitely be playing with Saltwater Grass again.
Funny, poignant, easy to read and love. What more could you want in a blog? Visit achachay.com for more.