Sacs-Giving

Thanksgiving is obviously an awkward time to be on the road. I've actually never spent a Thanksgiving away from my family, so that was kind of weird to me, but I was really THANKFUL to Melissa for letting me spend the big T-Day with her family right outside of Sacramento.
We all woke up early to cook things to bring with us. I made some brussels sprouts with bacon and red onions, Melissa made a veggie lasagna and a turducken. We loaded up in the car and headed towards her grand mother's house.
I had a great time! Melissa's family was super nice to me and all the food was great. Her niece Abby is totally adorable and a total diva.










After we ate I watched Toy Story 3 with the younger kids... man, that movie is pretty dark! There's a moment where all the toys come to terms with dying and accept their fate and hold hands solemnly! Crazy!
We then went on a walk, it was nice out and there was a dog.


The next morning I boarded a bus to San Fran... Thanks for being great hosts Rick & Melissa!

Lucky Sacky

Woke up on the second day and tried to do some blogging... I was crashing in a room that belonged to Kyle (of Ganglians fame), but he was off on tour so I had the thing to myself. I eventually made it downstairs and DJ Rick was chilling there, watching some TeeVee, and we decided to go get some late breakfast.
He took me to Black Bear Diner which is some regional chain... like a frontier version of Cracker Barrel kind of? I got ham and eggs and the ham was ridic.

Then Rick took me around to some touristy stuff, Old Sac was cool (and sounds funny), then we stopped at some "hip" coffee shop and met some very young punks that Rick knew outside.


Rick then told me he had the perfect place to show me so we hopped in his car and drove out. Rick was a great person to stay with because he's an obsessive information sponge and just knows things and everything, especially California. In the car ride he told me all about California history (especially relating to touring bands) and a crazy story about shows he booked for Dead Moon and Elliot Smith's old band Heat Miser when he just a young lad in college.
We eventually got to Locke, an old Chinese town a little bit outside of Sacramento. People still live there but it pretty much looks like a weird ghost town. There were a bunch of cats everywhere and they even have a bar called All The Wops that was unfortunately closed while we were there, but I got to ride a dragon.








After Locke we headed back to Rick's place to see Melissa/hang with the cats/watch HGTV before hitting a grocery store to shop for Thanksgiving things. Man, I had heard rumors about California produce but never really took it too seriously... ummmm... it's insane. Vegetables just look different in California, make New York veggies look gross!



After shopping, Rick and Melissa insisted on taking me to their favorite pho place, Pho Saigon. I actually had never had pho before, I guess it's not really common in New York, but apparently there are a ton of Vietnamese restaurants in Sac. The Pho was good.

We then went to pick up Andrew at the random weird record store he works at... the kind of place that sells things like Taylor Swift records on vinyl and weird/fancy beer bongs.

We then embarked on part 2 of DJ Rick's Great Dive Bar Tour 2k10. We drove around to a bunch of places, a few were closed for the holiday, and one (The Swiss Buda) was closed for a private 40th birthday party (which we were very bummed not to be invited to).
We did get into a few notable ones. The first one was The Cinch and it was pretty much just grossss and kind of scary. Andrew had half a burrito and all the weirdos at the bar were giving him a hard time about not sharing it with them...



Second was The Trap, apparently one of the oldest dives in Sacramento. It was a total hole in the wall and had really nice staff and didn't serve liquor. It seemed like most of the regulars were just pissing off the bartender and he was happy to talk to us.




Last was On The Y, a pretty authentic metal bar that was playing cool music and was pretty full for Wednesday night.

Then it was home to rest up to give some thannnnnxxxx.

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!