photo update: i’ve uploaded the last of the pics i have from tour to the flickr page for those of you who have been checking them out…i included some “closing credits” to the tour of sorts…we messed around with my camera while we were waiting for our food at a restaurant the last night…so thus, lots of random pictures…enjoy!
so the last show of the tour…it was an interesting and bittersweet day to say the least…after waking up kind of late at owen’s house we packed up and headed to the beach…pensacola is right on a bay but there’s a thin strip of land out past the bay that borders the gulf of mexico…it’s a pretty neat drive over long bridges to get out there…we spent a few hours there…coby trapped nate in a beach chair by piling sand on him…he got chris and i to join in and you can see the results on the flickr page…it was pretty comical…after we got all beached out we retired back to chris’ girlfriend hailey’s house…there we got some much deserved showers and rest…
we then went to this pretty alright pizza joint called “ozones” and just generally acted tired a lot cuz we all were pretty whipped at this point…the show that night was at a place called “the handlebar” and it definitely lived up to it’s name if you get my drift…it was kind of a honky-tonk bar but boy did the kiddies show up…next to cornerstone i’d say this was one of the biggest turnouts of the tour…not that they were there to see us…they were mostly there to dance and get drunk to the local band that played after us, reynosa (sp?)…i wasn’t a huge fan of their music and we all just pretty much wanted to get home as their set dragged on into the wee morning hours…we didn’t go on until 11pm and then discover america went on at midnight…we did end up selling a good bit of cd’s and a few t-shirts which was cool…i know this because i inherited much of the merch duties (along with matt) since ashten couldn’t make this last week of the tour…she was definitely alot more skilled in the merch-y ways than we were…
we ended up finally getting out of there at like 2:30am…said our goodbyes to chris and started on the road towards home…just to cap off the craziness of the tour we had another hairy event happen just outside town…i had stopped at a gas station to top off the van and grab some red bull for the drive…i went inside to pee quick while the guys were waiting in the van…i came out of the restroom to find the glass front door to the station shattered…the very door i had just walked in a few minutes prior…matt ran up to me saying that some guy had just drove by and shot like 5 times into the gas station! at this point none of us were that amazed…these crazy close calls just went right along with how things went on the tour…none of the guys actually saw the shooter, i guess he sped away quick but the guys all heard the shots….i think a guy in a parked car had a ricochet or something hit his arm…it was late, we were tired so we just got the heck out of there…i feel kinda bad now that we just left that guy…but as soon as we pulled out the cops flew right by us on their way there…
so after that crazy ordeal the rest of the guys settled in to sleep while i drove all night til about 9am when we reached nashville…that red bull really helped plus the drive through alabama and tennessee was pretty amazing (just a few of the highlights: a big sign that read “go to church or the devil will get you!” in someone’s yard plus a billboard for “big jim’s boobie bonanza”…you can just imagine what goes on there)…i actually didn’t even really feel that tired when we stopped in nashville but coby agreed to take over from there and as soon as my head hit the pillow in the backseat, i was out…i woke up once or twice on the way back but slept for most of the 8 or so hours from nashville back to ohio…
well this is where i wrap up the entire tour into a few cute little phrases that sum up the entire experience…i’ve determined that would pretty much be impossible, however…but i’ve had to encapsulize the whole trip to nearly everyone that’s asked me in person how it went…so here’s what i usually say: we had the time of our lives…the trip was filled with many, many incredible experiences that also included a few potentially bad situations as well…but ones that actually ended up turning into some pretty great stories in hindsight…
i’m bad at summing things up but i guess that’s why i decided to do this blog in the first place…you guys were right there along with us the whole time…and thanks to those of you who kept us in your thoughts and prayers as well…judging by the few close calls we had you can be sure those prayers were not in vain…
thanks for reading, everyone!
God bless,
ryan
p.s. - there’s too much merch for the church!
p.s.s. - aw, this ought to be a rippin’ good time…merch sales are gonna be through the roof!
p.s.s.s. - tour inside jokes!!
######Note: This post is from a tour blog that I dutifully kept during the summer of 2007 while touring with the band State Bird. It lives on solely so that one day I can prove to my children that I was once cool.