both of these places have a good thing going.
when we left off, we were “resting” at ron’s house in plainville, il. and by “resting”, that meant celebrating ron’s birthday at 7:30am with a few bottles of homebrew and pancakes (with grade b maple syrup from new hampshire). that’s a good way to start off the day.
we then drove 10 minutes west of his house and went for a 6 mile run. we could see progress rolling through the corn fields. what was a farm a year ago is now a bustling suburb with homes for sale. the fields we ran in yesterday will most likely be a parking lot on our next visit.
after a rediculous birthday dinner celebration, we headed over to the hide out and ron went to his 10 year all-you-can-drink high school reunion. an all-you-can-drink high school reunion is an interesting social experiment. the hide out is such a great venue. it reminded me of the late, great luna lounge: really cool staff, plenty of free drinks for the band, and the people of chicago go to the venue just to hear music. i spoke to a bunch of people who didn’t know who was playing that night, and they just wanted to see a couple bands kick it. ben, zannie, gina (pretty much the whole katz extended family and friends), and tony of buttermilk fame came out and got right up front. pretty sweet.
after we said things closed the night of live music, we all unloaded into the back alley and decided the evening was still young. tony treated us to a night of insane stories of chicago and endless pours of wine. after our farewells, we climbed into the car and headed towards our meeting place to pick up ron from his “drink because you graduated high school” party. we gave him a call because we had no idea where he was, and the dialouge went something like this:
“ron, where are you?”
“i’m on north and elston.”
“ron, there is no way you are at north and elston because that is where we are, and we don’t see you.”
“well i’m on north for sure…i think. i’m on the other side. the west corner.”
“what’s the cross street, dude?”
“there isn’t one?”
“did you have any drinks tonight?”
“i think i’m drunk. and i love everyone. i’m on north for sure.”
“and what’s the cross street. what kind of drinks, ron?”
“i’m near this big building. near the water. i love beer. and vodka. and whiskey. definitely whiskey.”
after driving up and down on north avenue for about a half an hour trying to find our drunk birthday boy, we tracked him down.
we woke up nice and early so we could make a pitstop at the planets largest truck stop (thank you, grandma’s kitchen) and iowa city before our final iowa destination. the car music set list included marvin gaye, al green, david bowie, grateful dead, and boards of canada. we stopped by a great record store called record collector, but we had to rush through because we wanted to make sure there was enough time to get to des moines. we were unfortunately greeted with a note from the club letting us know our show had been cancelled. these things happen, but we were pretty disappointed. we’ll get to play for the people of iowa the next time through.
we just added a show in denver, so we’ll still get some more shows to play. and now we’ll get an extra day’s rest before omaha so that show will be a fun one. more pictures here. and we’re off…
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