Memories, Daydreams, Reflections - Part 2: "Santa Claus, Superstar!"

We finally departed from the state around noon on Thursday. Of course we slept kind of late – a slightly habitual affair since working became a past time – and we needed coffee and the sorts to get started. Upon arriving at Hou’s we had some trouble with the trailer. Oddly, it wouldn’t fall on the damn latch, but we made an important discovery that morning: WD40 fixes everything. After solving that minor inconvenience and WD40ing a few more things, we were off to pick up Drew. A few more goodbyes were said, and it was off to Madison.

Madison was about a 300 mile drive, and definitely not the most exciting drive. If you’ve been through Gary and Chicago, then you’re not going to see anything new. Of course no 300 mile trip would be complete without traffic jams and listening to the theme song from every 007 movie. Oh, and Starbucks. Just so you’re forewarned, I’ll bring that up about 500 times if you’re reading this shit. So anyways, after getting confused in an odd housing addition, we finally found the place that we would be crashing at in Madison. It turned out that Drew had a second or third cousin and they were willing to open up their place to us for the evening. So we arrived and were introduced to Mike, a dude that is just a few years older than us, and a very cool and generous fellow. His friend Ted was also hanging out around the house, and would be joining Mike at the show. More on Ted and Mike later…

I should mention that we were introduced to a really good beer upon arrival. They hooked us up with a Wisconsin brew called “Spotted Cow”, which is a dark and light beer mix. Damn good beer, and I miss that part about the dairy state. After that, we set off for the venue. The venue was pretty nice, and apparently they just installed a new light and sound system. The sound folks were cool, we set up, and rendezvoused with one of the local bands for awhile. Finally we took the stage around 10pm, and we rocked the joint silly. We received a very nice response for a small crowd and managed to sell 4 CD’s. Not bad for a first evening. Now here is where it gets mildly crazy…

I don’t know if anyone else reads Playboy, (seriously, I do read the entire thing…more on that later), but I just happened to read that University of Wisconsin was selected as the number one party school by Playboy in May 2006. And where do you think we were 1 mile away from? Of course…so Mike and Ted were familiar with the area, and promised to show us a good time. We needed to stick around the venue for awhile to make sure that we got paid. On the Brightside, the band received all the beer they wanted. On the bummer side of it all, that free beer was Pabst Blue Ribbon! So I decided to have some of that. Of course I had not eaten a meal in about 24 hours, so a few brews took its toll quickly. I found myself hanging with Ted quite a bit as he was quite the extroverted dude, and we ended up wandering around talking to everyone. Then there was this lady that seemed to have a thing for Ted, me, and any another dude that was within 20 feet. So anyways, next thing I know we’re doing Jaegarbombs with her and the bartender lady that was really nice. Though this lady was persistent…once she started staying some weird stuff involving a stripper pole and me, and me naked I migrated towards the band much quicker!

We finally got paid, Ted started making some calls and we were off to see the rest of the town. So Ted, Mike, JR and me all jumped in a cab and were off to the downtown area. Of course every bar just happened to be shutting down at 2am and it was a little before 2am. We decided to walk around and see if we could find something else going on, and Ted persistently made phone calls to no avail. Eventually we stumbled into a Q’doba, and grabbed a giant burrito. That was the first meal I had in about 30 hours, so it was quite amazing. The night finished with us arriving back at Mike’s in a cab, and stumbling onto a rather comfy air mattress. Ted was singing random songs, and amusing the hell out of us even though it was pushing 3 or 4am. Finally I fell asleep during his song wishing he were a Swedish fish swimming back to Sweden.

So our first day in Wisconsin was an interesting one, but could it get more interesting? You’ll have to read number three to see….