walking around town

the center of clearmont ferrand is pedestrian only. this was our first cafe morning in france, hanging out with folks from the show the night before. Parking here is very expensive, we spend about 30-40 euros a day on parking and tolls. Thankfuly the venues take this into account and all pay pretty well. Everywhere we've gonefolks have been super nice and hospitable.
 
 
 
 

clearmont ferrand, and the black cathedral

at one point we got so loud in this little cavern that a couple of folks were covering their ears. oops. we'd never had that problem before. I have to be careful about stomping my foot. We played with leopold skin and tayed with demetri in his lovely attic apartment that looked out over the city and had a view of the black cathedral. a cathedral made entirely of volcanic rock. the acoustics in that room were so amazing, you could hum a note and hear it echo forever.
 

paris

scottish football fans invaded the streets of paris for the weekend france/scotland game. we first found them singing and drinking in outside of an irish pub near bastille. We walked around the parks near the eiffle tower and the louve museum, we bought a loaf of bread and fed the crumbs to these cute little brown birds untill a swarm of pidgons took over. over by the eiffle tower a group of woman with no shoes begged for money going from tourist to tourist. I saw a young woman walk up to a muslum man and speak to him in arabic. he gave her some coins and immediatly the rest of the woman all crowded around him. he gave them all the coins he had. In the grass near the eiffle tower the scots were playing pick up games of socker. The games were intense, hundreds of drunk scots, shouting and cheering. I can't imagine the french/scot game being more exciting. This one particuralydrunk fellow started messingup the game by stumbling around and slide tackling everyone. it was imossible to tell what team he was on. eventualy he got into a fight and kicked one of the goalies in the leg. The whole crowd of scotts booed and yelled at him to get out, eventualy singing, “are you english in disguise!” over and over.

 
 
 
 

la fleche d'ore

means the golden arrow in frence. this venue is built in an old abandoned train station. They are a bar but bars in europe are basicaly the same as all ages venues. anyone can get in. The show was free, they had 5 bands playing and each band got paid and fed an amazing gormet meal. crazy.

 
 
 
 

french graffitti

 
 
 
 

french bikes are sexy

so everyone in paris rides these public bikes. you can rent them for a euro a day (about $1.40) or pay 30 euro for a year, plus a 150 euro depoit on the bike. then you take the bike anywhere you want for up to a half hour at a time. at the end of every half hour you have to park it atanother one of the stations or pay an hourly rental charge (something like another euro an hour). during the day they also have these special trucks that redistribute the bikes to empty stalls around town.

 
 

birthday party, paris

we go to a park where mrogan's nephew is turning 1 year old today. The park is full of famlies, picknicing and playing games together. You can drink in parks in paris so lots of folks have glasses of wine. We meet morgan's mother who works at a print show in barjole and is an amazing painter, and her father who is a computer engineer. morgan teaches us how to say "i don't understand what you're saying, and i don't care" in french. dangerous knowledge.

 
 
 
 

longest trip ever

There is a long cue of planes waiting to leave JFK airport and weleaveabout an hour late. This little boy laughs and smiles as the plane accelerated and lifted off. We get to the london airport and our plane is already an hour late. The plane stops in the middle of the field where a bus has to come and take us off in two trips. We almost make it to the first bus but it fills up just as we get there. At this point I'm worried about several things. One, we will miss our bus to paris. Two, danielle will miss the bus to paris. Three, customs will figure out we are a band and send one or all of us back home. we finally get on the bus shuttel and this little girl pukes on the floor. We were offered chicken and rice or beef and vegetables on the flight. I think she had the chicken and rice. The escalators and speedwalkways are all broken down and we see graffitti on the walls of the airport. There is a huge line at the check in gate. WHile in line I hear this guy complaining to his travelling companion. "what I don't understand is why I got 1.4 mill while you got 1.6 mill." when the other guy denys this he says, "don't lie I saw the reciept!". they check our passports and ask us a few questions. Micah gets asked why he's taking the bus instead of the train. He answers, because it's cheaper. oh, by the way, order your train tickets at least a week in advance. It gets way more expensive the last five days before you leave. We get to the bus station and daniell magicaly appears just as I'm about to go looking for her. Whew! The bus ride is 10 hours long. Longer then the plane ride. Our driver gets loston the way to the chunnel. Unfortunatly he doen't speak french or english. They have to shut down all ten lanes of this toll road to let us pull a U-turn to get to the chunnel. The chunnel entrance is right by the cliffs of dover. We get in this special car for buses. And the train takes us across. Danielle had fantasized about traveling through a glass tunnel at the bottom of the channel with fish swimming aroung. Our experience was much more Tron, then The Little Mermaid. Oh well. We drive through the french country side to paris where our host and traveling companion morgan finds us trying to work the ticket machine in the subway station. Morgan takes us through the maze of exits to Erwan's apartment right by the place d'republique. We climb 8 flights of worn stars to erwan's home. Erwan and Morgan run waterhouse records and released euro versions of all of the june madrona albums. They set up the french part of the tour and did all of the press for it. totally amazing. We hang out and eat some pasta then pass the fuck out.

 
 
 
 

the day we leave

jess and lauren live in this adorable apartment on the lower east side. Jess is co owner of terrorbird media, a radio and new media promotions firm that kicks ass. Lauren works for kill rockstars. I met her when she was slim moon's personal assistant in olympia. She is chris schiel's best friend forever (chris used to play cello with us and now manages tom lab). So yep imagine the cutest couple you ever saw living and working together in perfect harmony. Thats what it felt like. We finally got the cds for battleground all mailed out and got some snacks for the plane ride. We took a bus, a subway, and an air train to JFK airport then said goodbye to danielle who had a different flight. Micah and I took british airways. I was worried getting through customs they stopped us for the big rolls of cds. Then let us through. Plane rides are super intense for me. So many people all crammed together. I managed to get some sleep though.

 
 
 
 

geek paradise, nyc

So I'm a big role playing nerd and Igotreally excited about seeing all of the swords and armor at the met. Its so amazing for me to think about all of the time and energy that went into making all of these things. How everything we used or wore used to be made by hand.

 
 
 
 

plesant beech, nj

We meet up with leah in plesent beech, nj to drop off our car on our way to new york city. Leah used to play banjo in june madrona and it is reallywonderful to get to see her and hang out in her childhood home. Pleasent beech is a vacation communnity that blows up every summer. The whole beech is private property. You can't go to the ocean with out a special permit. Leah tells us about how she used to race across the beech into the ocean. Once you get past the waterline it is public property again. "go ahead call the cops, I don't care!" now leah has to work at one of those resorts, checking people's passes. It's sucky but she can make lots of money quickly, then not have to work so much when she returns to olympia. Danielle picked up a bunch of classic sci-fi novels from her friend in chicago. I'm addicted to Ender's Game right now. I read it when I was a boy, now I see all of this stuff in it I didn't see before. It's about a boy who gets trained to become a starfleet comander to fight off an alien horde. I finish it on the train ride to new york.

 
 
 

danger danger house, philly

there's a huge city hall with ben franklin on top right in the middle of downtown phillidelphia. I try to imagine ben walking around downtown philly, and what it must of been like back then. We play in the backyard of this huge old house. They grill hotdogs and kabobs. The beer flows like water. This fellow named Corndog opens up. He's totally amazing, kind of reminds me of sandman. It turns out they are friends.