"the machine says I have to talk to you"
I am back in Washtenaw County! It feels very surreal being here. The rest of our tour was very exciting. We visited our friend Lacey in Olympia. She painted us pictures and fed us rice and beans. It was really fun. We also visited out friend Kyle in Seattle, with whome we played video games and talked about religion and the federal justice system. I also got to visit one of my favorite cats -- Basil -- in Moscow. I fed Basil some of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich one night and he returned the favor by delivering a dead mouse to me while I was sleeping. We got into a car accident in Seattle shortly after being denied access to the Space Needle for lack of funds, which was kind of exciting in its own right. Nobody was hurt and the cars seemed relatively okay with exception to some bumps, dents and missing turn signals.
I am really confused about whether I am alive or if the airplane I was riding in crashed into the side of a mountain somewhere in Montana. The experience of riding in an airplane again was every bit as fucked up as I expected (sans the part where I expected the plane to burst into flames as soon as it left the ground).
Tara & Justin & I woke up early last Friday in Seattle and got rizzled on the way to the airport, where they dropped me off. It was really sad saying good-bye to them. We grew really close during our 2 weeks together, especially the last few days of our trip, and I felt kind of shocked when I realized I wouldn't see them until June. Then shit got really crazy. The crazi-ness was sort of my fault since I was the one who accidentally bought a ticket for a flight on May 22 instead of April 22 and didn't realize it until I was in the airport on April 22. When I walked inside I found the long line I had to wait in to get my boarding pass. When I got to the front of the line I found out I had to use a push-the-screen computer machine to turn my internet ticket into a real-life boarding pass ticket. I pushed the buttons when it told me to, but after a moment or two the machine told me that I had to talk to a person. So I found one and said, "The machine says I have to talk to you." The person told me to hold on for a minute while she helped some other people; then she came back and talked to me. She looked up my flight on a different computer, and then told me that I was not on it. We were both kind of baffled, and I started to have a bad feeling in my stomach when she said, "Oh, I figured out why you're not on this flight. You bought a ticket for May 22!" Then the feeling in my stomach became more pronounced and the person said, "You can go talk to someone in customer service and they may be able to exchange your ticket." As I was waiting in the very long customer service line I began to think about what it would be like to live at SeaTac airport for a month. I never saw that movie about the man who does live in an airport, but I imagined that living at SeaTac -- even for just one month -- would probably blow. I imagined myself getting really hungry and eating liquid soap out of the dispensers in the bathrooms and trying to sell tourists all kinds of things they really don't need, like pieces of toilet paper and empty bottles I found in the garbage. When it was my turn to talk to a customer service person, I explained the situation and the person said, "Oh, this happens quite often. I think the flight today is full, but let me see if there's another flight later today or tomorrow you can get on." My stomach was kind of worried because I was thinking about how people were meeting me at the airport in Chicago later that evening and how a later flight would fuck up all our plans for the weekend and I was also wondering how I would get in touch with everyone to let them know that I was living in the airport and probably wouldn't have any way to get in touch for a month or so, but then the person at the desk (who was looking at a computer) said, "Well, it looks like there are a couple seats left on this flight. You have two options -- you can switch your reservation and pay a $50 fee, or you can fly stand-by for free." Then the person looked around and told me that they would recommend that I fly on stand-by since the flight wasn't full yet and it was less than an hour before the flight left. I counted all 3 of my dollars and then told the person I would like to fly stand-by, and she handed me a boarding pass after consulting with her supervisor for some time. After the customer service desk, I waited in another long line to check my guitar, then I went to security where I was informed that I had been selected at random for the super-size security check. I got into another line with the other suckers, and then we had to take off our shoes and hats and jackets and whatnot and have all our gear checked and our bags opened and searched (they were a little weirded out by the contents of my bag, I think) and they metal-detectoring my crotch 47 times because the button on my pants kept setting off the metal detector wand machine. When I finally got through security it was 12:33 and my flight was suppossed to leave at 12:37 so I booked ass to the gate where I was leaving from. Everyone else was already on the plane and luckily enough, there was room for me, so I got on and sat down. Then we flew and we didn't crash and then we landed and hung out on the runway in Chicago for over an hour waiting for a gate that would have us so we could unpack ourselves. It took a long time before Chris, Keelan and Jason found me, and vice versa (we were waiting for each other on seperate levels at the airport). When we did find each other it was kind of late so we drove very fast to the part of Chicago near DePaul and played a show at the Bourgeois Pig with Emily Powers. Then we went back to our friend Ashley's apartment complex and rode the elevator to the 56th floor and got on the roof. The wind was crazy and the view was sensational. I stuck my feet in the hot tub and then we took the elevator to the bottom floor and walked to a bar.
The next day we drove to Duluth. We played at a series of events that was going on there called the Free Democracy Summit. After the show was over, we went back to Maria & Taryn's house (the people who arranged for us to play there) and watched an incredible film called Motel Hell. The next day we went to Cambridge, MN and played in the back of a coffee shop called Cafe Caffeine during the afternoon. It was a lot of fun, and afterwards the people who owned the shop took us out for food and drinks with some other people from the town. Then we went back to their apartment above the coffee shop and had a smoke with them and then climbed on the roof and spent the rest of the afternoon having fun until it was time to drive back to Michigan, which took us about 12 hours. I got home yesterday morning and was suprised to find my room clean and re-organized thanks to Lindsay. It's fun having a room-mate in the literal sense of the word again. Now the plants have their own table, which is what they really wanted all along I think.
I am really confused about whether I am alive or if the airplane I was riding in crashed into the side of a mountain somewhere in Montana. The experience of riding in an airplane again was every bit as fucked up as I expected (sans the part where I expected the plane to burst into flames as soon as it left the ground).
Tara & Justin & I woke up early last Friday in Seattle and got rizzled on the way to the airport, where they dropped me off. It was really sad saying good-bye to them. We grew really close during our 2 weeks together, especially the last few days of our trip, and I felt kind of shocked when I realized I wouldn't see them until June. Then shit got really crazy. The crazi-ness was sort of my fault since I was the one who accidentally bought a ticket for a flight on May 22 instead of April 22 and didn't realize it until I was in the airport on April 22. When I walked inside I found the long line I had to wait in to get my boarding pass. When I got to the front of the line I found out I had to use a push-the-screen computer machine to turn my internet ticket into a real-life boarding pass ticket. I pushed the buttons when it told me to, but after a moment or two the machine told me that I had to talk to a person. So I found one and said, "The machine says I have to talk to you." The person told me to hold on for a minute while she helped some other people; then she came back and talked to me. She looked up my flight on a different computer, and then told me that I was not on it. We were both kind of baffled, and I started to have a bad feeling in my stomach when she said, "Oh, I figured out why you're not on this flight. You bought a ticket for May 22!" Then the feeling in my stomach became more pronounced and the person said, "You can go talk to someone in customer service and they may be able to exchange your ticket." As I was waiting in the very long customer service line I began to think about what it would be like to live at SeaTac airport for a month. I never saw that movie about the man who does live in an airport, but I imagined that living at SeaTac -- even for just one month -- would probably blow. I imagined myself getting really hungry and eating liquid soap out of the dispensers in the bathrooms and trying to sell tourists all kinds of things they really don't need, like pieces of toilet paper and empty bottles I found in the garbage. When it was my turn to talk to a customer service person, I explained the situation and the person said, "Oh, this happens quite often. I think the flight today is full, but let me see if there's another flight later today or tomorrow you can get on." My stomach was kind of worried because I was thinking about how people were meeting me at the airport in Chicago later that evening and how a later flight would fuck up all our plans for the weekend and I was also wondering how I would get in touch with everyone to let them know that I was living in the airport and probably wouldn't have any way to get in touch for a month or so, but then the person at the desk (who was looking at a computer) said, "Well, it looks like there are a couple seats left on this flight. You have two options -- you can switch your reservation and pay a $50 fee, or you can fly stand-by for free." Then the person looked around and told me that they would recommend that I fly on stand-by since the flight wasn't full yet and it was less than an hour before the flight left. I counted all 3 of my dollars and then told the person I would like to fly stand-by, and she handed me a boarding pass after consulting with her supervisor for some time. After the customer service desk, I waited in another long line to check my guitar, then I went to security where I was informed that I had been selected at random for the super-size security check. I got into another line with the other suckers, and then we had to take off our shoes and hats and jackets and whatnot and have all our gear checked and our bags opened and searched (they were a little weirded out by the contents of my bag, I think) and they metal-detectoring my crotch 47 times because the button on my pants kept setting off the metal detector wand machine. When I finally got through security it was 12:33 and my flight was suppossed to leave at 12:37 so I booked ass to the gate where I was leaving from. Everyone else was already on the plane and luckily enough, there was room for me, so I got on and sat down. Then we flew and we didn't crash and then we landed and hung out on the runway in Chicago for over an hour waiting for a gate that would have us so we could unpack ourselves. It took a long time before Chris, Keelan and Jason found me, and vice versa (we were waiting for each other on seperate levels at the airport). When we did find each other it was kind of late so we drove very fast to the part of Chicago near DePaul and played a show at the Bourgeois Pig with Emily Powers. Then we went back to our friend Ashley's apartment complex and rode the elevator to the 56th floor and got on the roof. The wind was crazy and the view was sensational. I stuck my feet in the hot tub and then we took the elevator to the bottom floor and walked to a bar.
The next day we drove to Duluth. We played at a series of events that was going on there called the Free Democracy Summit. After the show was over, we went back to Maria & Taryn's house (the people who arranged for us to play there) and watched an incredible film called Motel Hell. The next day we went to Cambridge, MN and played in the back of a coffee shop called Cafe Caffeine during the afternoon. It was a lot of fun, and afterwards the people who owned the shop took us out for food and drinks with some other people from the town. Then we went back to their apartment above the coffee shop and had a smoke with them and then climbed on the roof and spent the rest of the afternoon having fun until it was time to drive back to Michigan, which took us about 12 hours. I got home yesterday morning and was suprised to find my room clean and re-organized thanks to Lindsay. It's fun having a room-mate in the literal sense of the word again. Now the plants have their own table, which is what they really wanted all along I think.