Show Journal 2006-02-24
I’ll begin by saying we were so stoked to play this show. Kill The Kids? The Confederats? Bend? All Ages? A house party? We had been chomping at the bit for weeks to play this show! Getting out of Portland absolutely sucked this evening. Dave and I got stuck at work late, so we ended up loading the van with two people which always sucks. Then it took about an hour to get to Justin’s and get out of the city limits. We were already an hour down when we hit Hwy 26. There was a huge accident that tied up all lanes of traffic outside of Sandy. When we got to the top of the mountain there was snow and ice which is always a treat. Question. If given the chance to kill someone and get away with it, who would it be? I had long pondered this question and after cresting the mountain I finally met him. It was a truck driver. I don’t know his name but he drive his 18 wheeler down the mountain ranging between 30 – 40 mph the whole way. I’m all for safety but the road was bone dry after 10 miles. There was a line of cars about 20 deep between us and the truck and many, many more behind us. This went on for an hour. Seriously. A full hour. People started losing their minds. People made multiple cars passes in the dark around corners. Other people wouldn’t let the passers back in because they wanted to pass too. It was insanity. I’ve never so many near accidents in my life. Every 2 or 3 minutes some asshole would finally try a ten car pass and have to slam on the brakes. At one point Dave got on our CB and started telling him “pull that big slow sun’bitch over”. If you know the drive down 97 you’ll appreciate this. You know the long straight away after coming out of Mt Hood Forest? We were at the far end of that (still behind the truck) and there were headlights lined up behind us the entire road. That’s literally almost a two mile backup. It was nuts. We finally got around him and started hauling ass to Bend. We were about two hours behind and were calling the promoter and other bands telling them to stall. Just outside the city limits we get a call from our friend PJ who informs us the cops arrived and the show it shut down. Fuck. We asked PJ to look for the promoter and tell him we’re coming to get gas money whether he likes it or not. I did not just sit in the van for 5 hours to lose money. We show up and everyone has bailed. We saw the venue (which looked killer) and heard from people that there were 200 kids stage diving and going nuts for Kill The Kids and that it totally ruled while it was going on. We met the promoter (Marty) and once we confirmed he wasn’t going to jail he hooked us up with some gas money. It always sucks not to get to play, but this was so close we could taste it (and in the venue even smell it). Despite my whining we are very thankful that no one got into too much trouble. There were a few underage drinkers that got tickets but that’s about it. That could have been real ugly for Marty and the house mates. The drive home was uneventful at best. In an ironic twist we actually got passed by an 18 wheeler going up the mountain. Anyway, it’s officially now been well over a year since we’ve played Bend. Before anyone says “you don’t play here enough” remember this one. It’s definitely not from a lack of trying!
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