Sadly left Bishop this morning, but was sent packing with care packages from the locals with some of new favourite Lemonade, books, food, drinks, vitamins, chocolate, batteries…dayamn.
Man, I simply cannot express how glad we are we came to Bishop. I’ve ranted enough over the last couple of days about the treamtment….but man…the views!! Sheesh… When I originally drove down from San Fran to LA on the I5 (the fast way), I was bored out of my mind…but driving inland and around is absolutely stunning. We’re driving through desert, we’re driving through snow, we’re driving by lakes, we’re driving through forests.
We got to drive by Mono Lake, a lake that along with “Groom Lake”, me and Nik have been pretty obsessed about for a while. Somebody from Bishop, recognises us 3 hours away in Mono Lake, crazy. We chow down on the bagels our bishop buddies gave us. We get our first little flurry of snow on this drive and were loving it.
PIC - Monolake
Man, San Fran is so sweet. We arrive around 6pm, thankfully we rocked up the carpool lane. Unlike LA where you only have to have two in the car to use the Carpool, in San Fran, you have to have three or more…so the carpool lane is pretty much empty, meaning in rush hour, we laughed at all the fools and drove on by….also, it means you don’t have to pay some of the tolls to go over the bridges….of which there are many. This was the first time on tour I really got lost. So many bridges I got confused….we drove over at least half a dozen before finally getting to the Golden Gate, which was fairly disappointing actually.
Lower Haight street is kinda the Cuba/K-road type area. man, we were there for like 30 mins, and i, no lies, saw at least 30 different people carrying guitar cases. Got our first case of celebrity today when the boys spotted Joel, ex-Brian Jonestown Massacre (Tambo player), man…pretty sweet spotting, though I guess you could just go see his new band anytime in SF…but yeah, we are small town hicks and seeing anyone half famous is awesome.
We were playing at the Rickshaw Stop in SF, a pretty sweet venue…like sorta San Fran Bathhouse size, which reminds we me forgot to go to a bathhouse…damn. We were a little worried about the size, especially when 5 mins before the band were going on stage there were like 5 people in the venue, but it was one of those magic shows where the venue starts filling up as the band starts playing…so halfway through the set, heaps of people were there. Kick ass set tonight and made some great friends, including Jesse, who got more then he bargained for when he came up to tell Over the Atlantic how much he liked them when we asked if we could all stay at his place, thankfully he was sweet as.
We ran out of time to check out the “Full House” house, infact we barely spent anytime in SF which was funny seeing it was one of the cities we were looking forward to most. We just had two monster drives either side.
When Jesse got home home we discovered his flatmates had just had a home delivery from San Fran’s “Green Cross”, a crazy home delivery medical marijuana service, check out their insane menu http://www.thegreencross.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5 includes the “Mac Daddy”. Haha. We just go to sleep while Jesse and his flatties watch Seinfeld re-runs on a bedsheet sized screen.
It’s so easy to see why Americans are so obese, man, fast food here is so cheap and soooo good. Everybody has $1 menus, like Mcdonalds where you can get a double cheeseburger or McChicken for $1, or a whopper junior at Burger King, and you can get really decent Burritos from Taco Bell for like $1.39. On the other hand, fruit is crazy expensive. We’re trying our best to eat healthy, but man, it’s tough. We crank the Taco Bell for the second time today. Trader Joes do these really amazing mixed nut “trail mix” kinda things that we are living on for snacks..not cheap, but they last a couple of days and rule, highly recommended. Its pretty easy to live on $10 a day for food, man, the US is so advanced when it comes to food…aside from fast food being cheaper and better tasting, the Microwave stuff here is amazing…you can actually get microwave pizza that tastes good! And like you can buy microwave meals that are really tasty for like $1 each. Buying some veggies and mixing them in with these is def a good way to go. We also have a power converter that can run off the cigarette lighter so I’m looking around today for a cheap Jug from Op-shops so we can boil water in the car and make soups etc…
We buy a box of cereal every few days and buy a little thing of milk each morning, usually costs less then $1 or so…we then find a random spot to sit down and have breakfast. Breakfast is actually turning into my favourite times of the tour. For breakfast after the SF show we actually went to a cafe in SF and when Ash and Nik walked in two schoolgirls went up to them and went “wow, you guys are so cute! Are you in a band?” . Its funny how much America loves “celebrity” and just by being a completely non-celebrity musician on tour you still sign autographs and people are so enamoured. The cafe even gave Nik and Ash some free Burritos.