Chicago or Bear!

Recently we made our first trip to IN and IL.  It was also our first time hitching our trailer to our 15 passenger, Glenn Vanzig.  Two days prior the hitch was installed, trailer fit perfectly and all of the electric worked.  Did I say two days ahead of time?! This is unheard of in Midnight Mob time. Normally it's all last minute and something goes wrong delaying everything for hours.  This time we're actually ahead of schedule. Wednesday rolls around and the band gets together to do a final rehearsal before we leave.  The rehearsal was necessary because we just threw in two additional transitions to screw around with and we needed to test it out.  SO at 11:30PM we're packed up and we head west.  It's always exciting going to a new venue a new part of the country a new adventure.  There's always a new something or other.  This time for us it was ultra serious.

The drive was extremely scenic heading to Muncie, IN to play the venue Be Here Now.  There's all sorts of roads going through mountains, rolling green hills and lightening so close I had static in my pants. Close to 9 hours in our buddy Anthony has to take a dump.  We take the closest exit with a gas station sign and park.  As we're parked to locals separate of each other pointed out that we are missing the bearing of one of the trailer tires.  The funny thing is that every time we stopped I walked to the trailer and checked everything out to make sure there weren't any issues. I have never done that before and for whatever reason I felt compelled to look every time, which in the end didn't do anything because I never observed the missing bearing.  The bearing doesn't look like a big deal, but it is.  Basically what could have happened was the bottom of the trailer, wheels/axel, could have fallen off and we would have been in deep shit.  Either stranded in the middle of nowhere and/or worse in another accident.  Neither happened luckily and we can thank St. Anthony for his blessed poop.  The other crazy thing was that I parked the trailer the opposite way at the gas station, the trailer technically should have been parked the other way with the missing bearing facing no mans land instead of the gas pumps where everyone was at. Everything happens for a reason I guess and hopefully there's a damn good reason.  Lesson learned: maintain the trailer as well as your vehicle, don't take it for granted.

O no the story doesn't stop there that would be too easy, we just scratched the surface.  The two locals said we were damn lucky we pulled over where we did because there happens to be a Napa Auto Parts store, a trailer lot and a mechanic seconds down the road.

Stop 1 "Napa".  Napa was located between a drive in liquor and a taxidermy shop.  We walk into Napa, point to our van and ask for a bearing.  The salesman tells us that 99% chance he has the part, but he wouldn't know what to give us.  He pointed us to the mechanic across the street.

Stop 2 "The Mechanics".  We find the mechanics and tell them our story.  Between spitting tobacco they agree to look at our trailer.  After a while we get the diagnosis, which is our trailer is shot and a danger to all.  A menace of the road! One of the mechanics said he would buy it off us for $100 to rebuild it so he can flip it.  We said we would think about it and asked for other options. The mechanics said there's a uhaul if we wanted to rent a trailer. They said it was next to Napa.  None of us remember seeing a uhaul, but we gave them a call anyway and to our luck they had the perfect sized trailer for us.  We drive over and we couldn't locate the uhaul until we noticed some trailers behind the taxidermy shop.

Stop 3 "The Uhaul Taxidermist". Catastrophe and I walk into the taxidermy shop and we are greeted by a zebra, bear, birds and other assorted animals, full bodies, heads etc... We follow a voice of someone that works there and find ourselves in the uhaul office which is the taxidermist's workstation.  While he smoked his cigarette and began the paperwork I petted a giant bear, what else could I really do. It was so damn soft. I mean I understand now the whole hibernation thing.  A fur to a bear is your most comfortable blanket at home on the couch accomplishing nothing but reveling in your own slackery laziness of nap food and lay.  At this time we're relieved because there's actually a trailer available in the middle of scratch my ass OH.  Relief was short lived because we were mislead and the trailer was already to be picked up the following morning by someone.  Back to square one, but there's always a way out! We can just buy a new trailer at the lot next the mechanic!

Stop 4 "The Trailer Lot:". The lot was open, but no salesman could be found. It didn't matter because the only one trailer our size available was in bad condition.

Stop 5 "The Mechanics".  Finally the inevitable solution, sell the trailer, dump a bench, dump the dolly and pack the rest of the equipment in the back of the van along with all of our personal luggage.  No more leg room or any personal space.  We were now confined to knees to the back of the bench and sleeping straight up with our heads cocked to one side.  We've done this plenty of times and it is what it is.

Shit goes wrong on the road. It's as much a part of the adventure as meeting lots of strangers, sleeping in weird places and making good friends. If a new band is reading this the one thing you should take from it is: This can happen to you very easily and you have to keep an even head and optimistic attitude.  You'll get through it somehow someway. Look on the bright side it makes for a good story.

(PS: We made it to Muncie in time, played a great show and Catastrophe realized his catastrophe. He didn't pack any underwear. That saga continued the following day which included a walk through Ball State campus)

Peace!

-Squeeze