Loco

Last night, as the five of us collapsed on cheap mattresses in room 335 of the Red Roof Inn in Alexandria, VA, I asked Marisa if Red Roof Inns were drastically cheaper than other just-off-the-interstate motels – she said no. I said, ‘They should be.’
It was 3:30am, and we’d been driving since 10:30pm, packing ourselves, tetris-like, into our glistening new tour van (referred to from this point on as ‘Pheobs’) after a weary, sloppy practice. Frank is still bleary-eyed from 2 weeks in China, and the rest of us are exhausted from the WAITING. We all had trouble falling asleep. There was no continental breakfast.

It’s now 4:40pm, and we’re hustling down I-85 with full bellies from ‘Locopops’ in Durham, NC. Let me tell you about Locopops – they’re the most incredible popsicles we’ve ever had. We want them to be our band sponsors. We tried: chocolate rosemary, avocado (!), cucumber chile, peanut butter banana, summer peach, rootbeer float, pomegranate blueberry, passionfruit margarita, mojito… etc. We ate a lot of popsicles. It made everything a lot better.

We want to make it to Athens sooner rather than later. Our first show isn’t until tomorrow night in Jacksonville, bur we wanted to take our time and hang in Athens for a while – at the rate we’re going, our Athens time is quickly dwindling. Thanks to pea-sized bladders and insatiable appetites, we’ve been stopping every 45 minutes. We can’t help it.

Note Marisa sipping sun tea (sweet! We’re back in the south!) purchased from a man on the side of the road (also in Durham) who was also selling incense.