Sacto-Facto

After my long bus ride, I ended up in Sacramento around 9pm. I was gettting picked up by my friend DJ Rick, of Terminal Boredom fame, and I had never met him before so I was a little worried I'd miss him, but he grabbed me in his white boxy car and we were off.
He took me to a taco place, but I wasn't hungry since I ate some ill-advised Burger King during my bus trip from hell. After he had a few tacos and I had a beer we were off to a house show!

The show featured a few punnnnk bands including Hot Face from Portland and Religious Proteins and Stimulus from Sacramento (BLOGGING HAS GOTTEN VERY HARD THANKS TO THE "NEW" MYSPACE AND I AM VERY UPSET ABOUT IT).
The house was cool and had this home-made hot tub thingie in the backyard. It was way too small for a show though and I really couldn't see anyone in any of the bands during the show. I did, however, get to meet Andrew and Liz from G. Green, who I had interacted with on the internet but never in real life. Also, Ben Greenberg (of Pygmy Shrews and Zs fame) was there for some reason, but I was really tired and dillusional from the bus and had trouble having a conversation with him. Oops!




After the show was over Andrew and I piled into Rick's car and we stopped by his house to pick up his lovely lady Melissa, and then we headed out to a bar that Rick promised us we'd be impressed with.
The first stop was The Pied Piper, a total divey hole-in-the-wall which was awesome. I bought the first round: 2 Bud Lights, 2 shots of Jim Beam and a rum and Coke all for $12!!! Crazy, also, you could smoke inside, which apparently is only possible if the bar has fewer than 7 employees and they're all related? Anyway, it was a cool place.


After hanging for a few rounds we went back to Rick's place and I got to meet his adorable cats: Tulu, Ree Ree and Bo...

Trouble at Donner Pass!

So it finally happened, I finally had my first really hellish ride on the Greyhound and now I feel like I know what it was like to be a pioneer, desperately trying to make it to the east coast, and experiencing terrible tragedy, like sitting next to an annoying dude for hours with only Burger King to eat. Yes, things got bad in the Donner Pass.
Annnyway, after getting dropped off at the SLC bus station I got in line at the gate to wait for the bus... it was not good, everyone else waiting was pretty disgruntled, a lot of people had been on the bus for hours and hours, after numerous delays and re-routings, and seemed pretty psyched to get back on the bus. Unfortunately, the weather was bad and the bus was re-routed because of certain closed roads.
The mood on the bus was pretty friendly, which was good because we were completely full, no free seats on the entire bus.

I tried to sleep as much as I could after leaving Salt Lake City, but the ride was bumpy and I kept waking up. Plus, the Israeli ex-pat sitting next to me kept accidentally cuddling with me in his sleep.
As the sun rose over Nevada I woke up to see... well... nothing. That's right, it was actually impossible to see out the windows of the bus due to all the snow.

Everyone on the bus started getting angry, as the bus slowed to about 10mph, and people started screaming at the bus driver and saying things like "DON'T YOU DARE STOP THIS BUS" and just getting super angry. I was pretty scared that the bus was going to crash, as the road was not visible... After a few harrowing miles, all of a sudden there was a break in the clouds, the sun came through, and we could see. The entire bus erupted in applause and we all were happy that we weren't going to die yet.
Unfortunately, we ended up pulling over in the town of Winnemucca to assess the bus and pick up a new family.

Everyone was way pissed that 6 more people (2 parents and 4 kids) were going to get on the bus, and we were pretty mean to them, until we heard their story... they had been driving and their car flipped over on a snowy road and pinned the entire family (including all 4 kids) inside. Luckily, none of them were harmed, and from then on everyone on the bus started calling the kids "The Miracle Babies."
From then on everything was pretty easy until Reno. It was kind of slow and we were a couple of hours late, but nothing dramatic.
At the bus station in Reno things started getting weird again. Everyone on our bus was pretty huddled together, gossiping and speculating about what would happen next, but everyone thought it would be bad. After an hour and a half in Reno (it was supposed to be 30 minutes) we all got back on the bus, Sacramento bound.

When we first got to the road that led up to the Donner Pass, it was closed and we basically had to park on the freeway (along with a ton of other trucks and shit) for about an hour. Eventually they opened the road and we were off.
Unfortunately, our troubles were far from over. The ride up the mountain was pretty perilous, just slow and snowy... and I got to see people put on snow chains for the first time. Some dudes in the back of the bus started smoking pot and some little kids started crying because of the smoke, it was mad dramzzzz.
We stopped towards the pass at a Burger King, and at that point we were far behind, but progressing steadily. Once everyone was back on the bus and ready to leave the rest stop, the bus's tires started spinning and we were unable to move. As if we were in a scene from a movie, all the men on the bus jumped up and ran off the bus and worked together to push the bus until it broke free of the ice.
After that, against all odds, the worst was still not over! We made it out of the rest stop, but when we approached the freeway entrance there was a stalled tractor trailer blocking the entrance and no one could get by... we had to turn around (which took forever in the snow) and find our way back to the other exit and take the freeway the opposite direction for a few miles.
Eventually, about 7 hours late, we made it into Sacramento. Man, it's rough crossing the country!

Salt Lake Pretty

While waiting for the bus at the Denver Greyhound station, I ended up meeting a friendly trio of dudes, they had all been on the Greyhound for about 48 hours together and were all headed to Salt Lake City to go to training for truck driving. They were nice and funny and seemed to be amused my me. It was kind of comforting to have some big dudes to look out for me on the bus.

Once I arrived in SLC, I bid adieu to my trucker budz and met up with David, my very nice SLC host. I had met him once at Silent Barn, when he came through to visit Kevin, but we didn't really hang out then.
He took me to grab a beer at this local movie theatre/bar called Brewvies to grab a post-bus-wind-down beer (something that has become a necessity to me in the past few weeks). David got mad at me when I tried to order a Bud Light (my favorite beer, so sue me!) so he made me order a craft beer... it was pretty good but I don't remember what it was called.


After one beer and some quality chatting we hopped into David's Jeep and drove to his house in Kaysville, a little town not far from Salt Lake. He lives in a nice big house that his parents own, and it was a pretty night with snow all over the ground.

Once inside, I got to meet David's adorable cat and we hung out and listened to records for a bit. David has a really great collection of punk and garage records, and the evidence of extensive mailorders from Siltbreeze, Florida's Dying, S.S. Records, and Goner was visible. We listened to some cool stuff and talked about people we knew in common and he showed me Destroy All Movies, a really cool glossary of every movie that has ever had a punk in it, but I was sad to see they missed Drive Me Crazy, a movie that depressed me a lot in middle school because the popular girl reforms the punk rock boy and he realizes he's happier that way.


In the morning I woke up and got to meet David's parents. They were super nice and had seen me on TV so they kind of knew me already. I ate a locally grown apple and a hard boiled egg from David's sister's chickens, it was delicious. David's mother is from Germany and she used to run a German Deli. The Deli had a cookbook and she showed it to me and gave me a copy. I will cook delicious German food when I get home. I think she really liked me, which will be good for when David decides to marry me... JUST KIDDING DAVID, DONT WORRY.



We finally left the house and I made David take me to see the Great Salt Lake. We went to Antelope Island to look at nature and all that cool stuff. We parked and walked down the beach to the shore of the lake... it smelled pretty bad. I tried to run up and taste it but David stopped me... now I'll never know for sure if it's actually salty or if that's just a rumor. Maybe next time.





After that we picked up my stuff and headed out to do some sight seeing in SLC (after David played me some music from his old band The Zillionaires). We first stopped in a "cool" coffee shop and then hit two record stores. First was Slowtrain, which was the kind of record store that carries mostly mainstream indie stuff. It wasn't bad but definitely not the kind of place that makes you want to dive into the bins and shuffle around until your fingertips get sore. Second was Raunch Records which was a teenage punk's wet dream. They also sell skateboards and skateboard parts, and have an extensive collection of band t-shirts and stickers. The owner was a really nice guy who seemed to know every customer... when David walked in he told him about some record he got in that he would like, and then when a 14 year old girl walked in he told her he got in the stickers that she wanted and this chick was fucking thrilled to get them. The kind of place you would totally love to hang out in high school.





We then went to meet up with fellow Termbo User Jared and go eat at the Blue Plate Diner, the third Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives featured restaurant of my trip so far. It was pretty underwhelming, I didn't see anything that interesting on the menu so ended up just getting a cesar salad with salmon. It was fun meeting Jared and bullshitting about music.



After that we had several hours to kill before my next bus so Jared, David and I went to Twilite Lounge to have a few drinks. It was a cool place, but eventually Jared had to leave to go back to school so David and I were on our own.

David and I headed back to Brewvies to drink a bit and watch a free showing of Lost in Translation. I had never seen it before and I enjoyed it. I can't believe that Bill Murray was a ghost the whole time!
David then dropped me off at the Greyhound station around midnight and I was sad to leave. I really had a great time in Salt Lake City, David was maybe my favorite person I've "met" so far on my trip... SORRY EVERYONE ELSE, I just have a soft spot for old, record collecting weirdos.
Gonna miss you, SLC, now on to Sacto...

Boulder???? I barely know her!!!

After a pretty uneventful ride on the bus I ended up in Denver, Colorado around 11am. My brother Noah picked me up at the bus station and we drove back to Boulder together. My brother is 21 and we get along well but we're very different... he's into bluegrass and funk and jam bands and snowboarding.. and I'm not. In the car on the way back the only thing we could agree on was some old Less Than Jake.

We drove back to Boulder and met up with my aunt Merrin and my cousin Grace to have brunch at Walnut Cafe. I got huevos rancheros. They played some Teenage Fanclub, it was cool.


After brunch we just went back to my brother's house and hung out with some of his friends while watching a bunch of eps of Gang Wars on TV. Eventually, it was time to go out for dinner with my uncle Charlie and his new wife Lira. We went to Ted's Montana Grill and it was pretty awesome... I got a bison steak with asparagus and green beans, it ruled. Nice to see the fam.



After dinner my brother and I went back to his place to try to decide what we were going to do with our night. I had been to Boulder many times before (because of family there) and really had never found anything as far as garage or punk and wasn't too optimistic... and my brother sure didn't know about anything.
I talked on the phone to my friend David who I was going to be staying with in Salt Lake City the next day, and he told me that Circle Pit, the awesome Austrailian band, was playing that night in Boulder, so I looked up the adress of the venue and convinced my brother that we should go. He had never heard of the venue and was curious to see what was going on.
We pulled up to Astro Land, a hole-in-the-wall DIY spot off the beaten path in Boulder. I was super psyched to find some cool punnnnx in this hippie wasteland... my brother walked in and said to me, "Whoah, it's just like being at Silent Barn!" and it kind of was.


I approached the guy who seemed to be running the show and talked to him. He told me about his band School Knights and told me that Astro Land was only about a year old. I was just so excited to find a cool DIY punk show and people that I could talk to about music and stuff, it was a really cool show.





Some bands played who I can't remember, but then an awwwwesome band called Lust Cats of the Gutters played and really blew me away. They were a girl two-piece and just played angry, loud, raging punnnnk rock, which I always appreciate. They have promised to send me an mp3 I can post soon!



After Lust Cats was the main event, CIRCLE PIT! It was pretty nice just to see those guys, since last time I saw them was in New York. They played and sounded really great, but unfortunately the PA overheated (too much roccccck) and I had to leave so my brother wouldn't have to drive back to his neighborhood too late. Really great, really fun show though. So glad there's something like that in Boulder!





After the show my brother dropped his car off at home and we walked over to his friend's house where we drank some whiskey and I finally met his on-again-off-again girlfriend. NO OFFENSE to my bro, but I got a little overwhelmed by the bro-ness and walked home and went to bed pretty early.


Overall I had a really great time in Colorado, better than expected. The next morning I was off on the Greyhound again to Salt Lake City!