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Date: 2003-07-04
Location: Detroit, MI - United States [28 shows here]
Venue: Pontiac Silverdome [6 shows here]
Fan reviews: 1 - Add yours!
Author: Phil
Setlist: Yes

Phil's SS03 Tour Review

Opening Words
Day 1 -- 06/30/03 -- Travel
Day 2 -- 07/01/03 -- Travel
Day 3 -- 07/02/03 -- Travel
Day 4 -- 07/03/03 -- Travel
Day 5 -- 07/04/03 -- Detroit, MI Show
Day 6 -- 07/05/03 -- Toronto, ON Show
Day 7 -- 07/06/03 -- Foxboro, MA Show
Day 8 -- 07/07/03 -- Travel
Day 9 -- 07/08/03 -- East Rutherford, NJ Show
Day 10 -- 07/09/03 -- Travel
Day 11 -- 07/10/03 -- Travel
Day 12 -- 07/11/03 -- Atlanta, GA Show
Day 13 -- 07/12/03 -- Travel
Day 14 -- 07/13/03 -- Orlando, FL Show
Day 15 -- 07/14/03 -- Chill
Day 16 -- 07/15/03 -- Travel
Day 17 -- 07/16/03 -- Travel
Day 18 -- 07/17/03 -- Chill
Day 19 -- 07/18/03 -- Washington, D.C. Show
Day 20 -- 07/19/03 -- Columbus, OH Show
Day 21 -- 07/20/03 -- Travel
Day 22 -- 07/21/03 -- Chill
Day 23 -- 07/22/03 -- Chill
Day 24 -- 07/23/03 -- Chill
Day 25 -- 07/24/03 -- Travel
Day 26 -- 07/25/03 -- St. Louis, MO Show
Day 27 -- 07/26/03 -- Chicago, IL
Day 28 -- 07/27/03 -- Minneapolis, MN
Day 29 -- 07/28/03 -- Travel
Day 30 -- 07/29/03 -- Chill
Day 31 -- 07/30/03 -- Travel
Day 32 -- 07/31/03 -- Travel
Day 33 -- 08/01/03 -- Denver, CO Show
Day 34 -- 08/02/03 -- Travel
Day 35 -- 08/03/03 -- Irving, TX Show
Day 36 -- 08/04/03 -- Travel
Day 37 -- 08/05/03 -- Travel
Day 38 -- 08/06/03 -- Work
Day 39 -- 08/07/03 -- Work
Day 40 -- 08/08/03 -- Work
Day 41 -- 08/09/03 -- Los Angeles, CA Show
Day 42 -- 08/10/03 -- San Francisco, CA
Day 43 -- 08/11/03 -- Travel
Quotes from the Road
Closing Thoughts



Opening Words

18 Metallica tickets... $1614
382 gallons of gas... $646
50 stops at fastfood... $252
10 venue meals... $79
18 nights of motels... $1068
12 venues parking expenses... $196
5 weeks worth of tolls... $25
Car cleaning, oil changes, car rental, plane tix... $380
Miscellaneous expenses... $108
5 weeks on the road with the best heavy metal band in the world... Priceless

Note that the above figures are as close as possible. I saved most of my receipts and tried to keep accurate books. Any errors are due to lost receipts (i.e. expenses are missing), but it should be fairly accurate. The only one with major guesses in it is venue parking, but that should still be close. Also, most of my tickets are still unripped. =) One more stat for you: Despite taking Dave's car for an entire weekend, when I got back, the trip meter read 11,139.2 miles and when I started the trip I drove about 20 miles before I reset it, making the mileage driven in my new car (that I bought with 21 miles on it 2 weeks before the trip), on the SS03 tour, 11,159.2.

So, what can you say about 5 weeks on the road following the greatest band of all time? There are no words to describe a trip that you can never be ready for but are always preparing for. It was truly the best 5 weeks in my life. I can't describe in words how amazing everything about this trip was. But I would like to start off with some thanks.

Special thanks to all those people who lent me beds, couches, floors, food, etc., including: Doug Erbeck, Dave Zangara, Jeff and Julie McNeil, Adam Fisher, Matt and Effie McKenzie, Jason Doorish, and Jeff and Brandy Yeager.

Special thanks to Toby Stapleton for being one of the coolest people possible.

I'd like to note that Dave also made portions of this trip possible that otherwise might not have been possible. Thanks man!

Thanks to ISD for giving me 5 weeks off!

And there are many others I'm sure I should thank as well, but it's nearly a month later and I have a bad memory. Thanks to everyone!

I link to specific parts of the picture page in the beginning of the appropriate days, but you can view all of them here.

You may be interested to see the originally planned itinerary which I mostly followed.

DISCLAIMER: There is EXCESSIVE detail here!! Most of you will probably want to follow the individual concert review links from the Tour section of IPOM. Some of my friends may be interested in the between parts. A handful of people want every last word and then some. This is largely as a record for me, so feel free to skip as much as you want. Also note this is mostly a revised version of my journal meant to be a bit more readable, so it's not the greatest writing: paragraphs are too big, grammer is not perfect, etc. Its 19,000 words, and I don't care to take that much time with making the composition perfect.


Day 1 -- 06/30/03 -- Travel

Miles driven: 300
Hours: 3pm - 10pm
City Stopped in: Las Vegas

Pictures: On the road to Detroit, MI
Monday I had to go to work for a bit, but I left about 1:45pm, and headed home to fill the cooler, pack the car and grab everything I needed. I had planned on leaving Tuesday morning, but realized I was cutting it close -- especially since Toby wanted me at the venue at noon to help out. Anyway, I left my house around 3pm, and was out of the city before the worst of the traffic hit. On my way to the infamous city of Las Vegas! I hit traffic on and off, but had a pretty easy drive for the most part. I got to Vegas, checked into a Motel 6 about 10pm on the outskirts of town, and some woman who was clearly friends with Motel 6 staff starts asking questions about my car. At first it's the normal stuff, but then it gets to "so does it have an alarm?" "In case someone tries to break into it, what does the alarm sound like -- if I hear it I can come out and chase them off" (her room was on the 1st floor next to my car). This made me pretty paranoid that she was going to steal my car!! Anyway, I got upstairs and realized I was clearly not used to long amounts of driving - my back was sore. I went to sleep but woke up every few hours and looked out the window to make sure my car was still there. BTW, did you know there are InNOut's in Vegas?


Day 2 -- 07/01/03 -- Travel

Miles driven: 750
Hours: 10am - 12:30am (lost 1 hour in timezone)
City stopped in: West Denver, CO

Today was a fun drive! Tons of long snaky roads! Suggested speed limit was 45, but I did the whole thing at 80 and my car didn't even think twice. This was my first real test of my car. Strange thing I noticed today: there were lots of wooden triangular signs (pointing up) that were blank. Not painted, just plain wood. Odd. There were also a LOT of tires and chunks of tires throughout the entire of the Nevada desert. Scary. Before I left, my boss, Asbed, had warned me about the bugs. He recommended I get a bra for my car, and I tried -- but they don't make them for S2000s. =( But the first two days I had been thinking "What was Asbed talking about? These bugs aren't so bad." Then this evening I drove through walls and walls of bugs. It was insane. They are permanently embedded in my paint. I wasn't planning on driving so late, but there weren't any places to stop at the time I planned, and I wasn't tired, so I finished up the last hour or so to Denver.


Day 3 -- 07/02/03 -- Travel

Miles driven: 530
Hours: 1:30 - 10:30 (lost 1 hour)
City stopped in: Lincoln, NE

I did a shorter day today since I had such a long day yesterday. Needed some sleep. This morning I spent 20 minutes trying to clean my the front of my car, but there was an entire layer of bugs that refused to budge. Also managed to get crumbs and chocolate on my seats last night, Fuck! Made it to Lincoln, NE. Then made a reservation at a Motel6 in Detroit for Dave and I in hopes Doug could overnight my ticket for Foxboro there.


Day 4 -- 07/03/03 -- Travel

Miles driven: 800
Hours: 10:30 - 4am (lost 1 hour)
City stopped in: Detroit, MI

Iowa has a speed limit of 65mph everywhere -- which sucks when you've had 70mph and 75mph everywhere so far. Iowa also has a mile of construction every other mile. I've seen a lot of construction so far on this trip, but none so obnoxious as this. Construction, no construction, construction, no construction - Gah! I called Toby at Dinner time (I forget what state I was in), to see where/when he wanted me at the venue. He told me to show up around 12:30, but he sounded busy and said he had to go. He then called me back a few hours later to change the time to 12 and to let me know he'd have a working pass for me. I hadn't planned on driving so much, but I wasn't at all tired at 11, so I drove until 1, and at that point I was just outside of Detroit, so I decided to finish the trip... but Detroit is big, the motel was on the other side, (the North side), and I was given horrible directions, so it took a while. Construction blows. And I am at a pretty damn ghetto Motel6. Not that I've never stayed in worse places... but this one is pretty sad.


Day 5 -- 07/04/03 -- Detroit, MI Show

No travelling today! Woke up way before my alarm clock - first concert is today! I got ready and called Toby to see if he wanted me there early for anything; he said no. So I watched cartoons for about 45 minutes and then headed down to the venue (Pontiac Silverdome). Got there at noon, called Toby, he came out, stuck a working pass on me and brought me to the club booth and started explaining everything. He explained we were going to have a "Club Sanitarium Room" on this tour -- whenever the venues would cooperate, that is. The room would be a place for club members to hang out and meet each other. When possible it would be air conditioned, where possible it would have food and drinks being sold, and where possible it would have whatever other cool things we could find. Today it was a large inflatable, air conditioned dome - to be specific, it was the practice field. The place was HUGE. The club booth was in the exact same place it was at the Millennium show 3 years earlier. Toby also explained how the cell-phone card on the laptop worked, and what my job would be. Basically his idea was that I would be in charge of keeping the laptop (and the attached webcam) up and operational. I would invite club members to chat in the club chat room, and keep an eye on them. Well, that was the idea anyway. Toby was way too busy (especially with this being the first show) to be at the booth much. Toby left the booth the first few times to go do something going "are you sure your gonna be OK by yourself? Can you handle it all?" But I'd manned the booth many times, no biggie. He explained how the backstage stuff was working for this tour so that I could handle that. After a while he was just so busy, he got stuck being away, and my job became being in charge of the booth. We did have the webcam up and on the crowd, but didn't do any of the chat stuff. That requires two people at the booth (one to watch the laptop and one to handle the people). Early in the day we had to make signs to describe where the Metclub booth was, and we were across from a food stand called "Big Boy" -- and so I added on the sign "across from Big Boy" to which Toby said -- "if people start to call me Big Boy, I'm going to kill you!" Vickie, the president of the Metallica Club, was out for this show, and she thanked me for my help. Most of her time was spent helping Toby. Dave showed up at the show late -- around 6. Came to the booth, said hi, said he found the Motel fine. He came and went, until it was close to time to shutdown the booth. Toby instructed me that he was going to take the meet and greet winners backstage and that as soon as Limp Bizkit's set ended I should tear down everything and pack up if he's not already back. So I did just that, and when he got back, he and I rolled the road case backstage, and then I came back to meet Dave and we went down to the floor to enjoy the show. I will admit that most of the shows blur together after you see 15 shows in a row, but I do remember being blown away this night. I remember standing there thinking what a killer setlist!! I was stage left, about 3 or 4 people from the rail, plenty of standing room. Dave was to my left. I remember thinking how seeing The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly on the jumbo trons was hella fucking cool! Battery and Puppets made killer intro songs, and then Harvester just blew me away... I was jumping and head banging! I was stoked. The entire setlist was amazing. That show completely kicked my ass. St. Anger is an incredibly powerful song live, wow! After the show I tried to drive Dave to his car, but they were only letting traffic go one way, so we each went back to the motel separately.


Day 6 -- 07/05/03 -- Toronto, ON Show

Miles driven: 240 (before), 105 (after)
Hours: 9:30am - 2:00pm (before), 1am - 3am (after)
City stopped in: Buffalo, NY

Woke up and Dave and I packed and left for Toronto. Dave followed me, although we decided to take an alternate route of his choosing. When we hit the Canadian border, we both got pulled over to be searched. Four female guards (all of which were at least reasonably attractive) came to look at my car and talk to me while two male guards searched Dave's car and gave him a hard time. Unfortunately the fact that the ladies liked my car did not prevent them from an excessively detailed search. They went through everything, including my bag of dirty laundry - taking every item out. Ugh. How humiliating. Anyway, we finally got through there, and made our way to the venue about 2 -- a bit late -- but that's OK. Had to use our tickets to get in because Toby couldn't come get us and we had tickets. Had to go through the line and security and all that. Toby had a clubber (chapter head?) working the booth - I think her name was Kim? The cell phone didn't work in Canada, so no laptop. The nice thing was that everything was centrally located around the booth: meet and greet area, production, Club Sanitarium, etc. The Club Sanitarium was very cool today. It was a special VIP room with A/C, tables and chairs, and snacks. It was very exclusive, you had to go through two guards to get there (one to get out of the venue, and another to get in the door immediately to your left as soon as you exited). Don't know what it is about Toronto but everyone got much more drunk much more quickly than anywhere else. It was nuts. We had lots of beer-related problems. One guy started selling beer on the corner of the booth and Toby told him to get lost. The guy basically told him to chill out and then ignored him, and we had to get security -- several times -- because he and others kept coming back. It was a very large PITA. The M&G took a very long time. Apparently Lars took an hour to get out. I tore down the booth and waited for Toby. Toby called to say he'd be there. And I waited. Eventually he called to say Eric was on his way. A little while later Eric finally got there, and I brought the road case backstage with him. A guy tried to follow us backstage, but we eventually got rid of him. I went back up and made my way to the floor. Dave had actual seat tickets, so I was by myself. I made my way to stage left again. Show was awesome again. Same setlist except that Fuel moved down two songs. I had even more energy tonight, head banging the whole time. Blackened, Bellz, and Death were highlights for me. After the show Dave and I were to meet at the cars. Took me a while to find the semi-hidden entrance to underground parking, but I got down to the cars and there cars waiting behind our parking spot that couldn't move. After about 15 minutes of no movement, we decided to go backup stairs because the car exhaust was getting to us. We waited about an hour, and then went back down -- but the cars were still in exactly the same place. We waited another hour and went down and mostly everyone was gone. Dave drove back towards his home in WI, and I drove down towards Buffalo, NY on my way to MA. I decided to go ahead and cross the border that night. Everyone had told me that getting into Canada would be easy, while getting back into the US would be difficult. Upon hitting the border, I pulled up, showed the guy my passport, he took a 2 second look in my trunk (didn't move anything), and said "Have a good night!" Much easier than getting into Canada. But maybe that's because I had a US passport? Who knows. I stopped at a Super8 that had a billboard advertising a $40 room - but they were sold out. Went to a Motel6 that had a $64 smoking room available (yuck).


Day 7 -- 07/06/03 -- Foxboro, MA Show

Miles driven: 460
Hours: 11am - 7pm
City stopped in: Foxboro, MA

I woke up, got ready, and left after paying way too much for way too little. I drove to Foxboro and called Doug at a few points. I went through one gas station where the guy noted seeing the crew coming through the night before and asked if I was late. Heh. Is EVERY FUCKING ROAD IN THIS COUNTRY UNDER CONSTRUCTION????? I hit SO much construction! I would have made it there so much faster if not for all the construction. Doug wasn't sure what time he was going to go in, but when I got there at 7pm, he was still outside tailgating! So he gave me my ticket and I went inside to find the booth. I walked the entire concourse and didn't see it, so Doug, his girlfriend, and I went down to the floor to look around. Caught the last 2 songs of Bizkit, and then left the floor and found the booth at the exit of the field. Club was outdoors today, and the tent was up. Apparently, there wasn't a Club Sanitarium today either. Lots of people were there to help out, but knowing the ropes I helped with the tear down of the tent and everything. Toby told everyone that if they wanted to they could help hand out stickers after the show outside the gate. This was the first I'd heard about handing out stickers. Oops. Anyway, Toby and I pushed the road case backstage. On the way, two guys came up and offered to give us head if we'd bring them backstage... to which we just said "no" and pushed the case much faster. We got backstage and I turned to leave and Toby said, "no, let me give you the tour." He'd been saying he'd appreciated my help every night, and would do something cool, so who was I to object? He gave me a tour of all the various backstage stuff, and then brought me over behind the stage, and told me I was going to watch the show from the stage!! I was like 'huh? Really? Wow?' I didn't know what to say. He told one of the guards that I was in the group of people to go on stage tonight, reminded me not to get in anyone's way, and said "have fun" and then left. I was so shocked! I stood there in disbelief! Three girls were also there -- they were friends with Rob from when he was in Ozzy. He had given them laminates. This was their first time doing anything like this as well, so we were all very excited. The guards brought us on stage and it was mind-blowing. Seeing the entire crowd out there was just amazing. For those that haven't seen it, there were two small pits on the back of either side of the stage. This is the "VIP area" where I got to watch the show from. I wouldn't have given up being there for anything, but it did have its good and bad sides. The design of the stage was such that there was a ramp between you and the center of the stage, so you could really only see the side of the stage you were on. I managed to kind of lay on the stage during Nothing Else Matters and be able to see James at the center of the stage. But MAN, when they come over to your side of the stage, it brings a whole new meaning to being up close. They come over to the pit and you reach out and your arms are inches from them... unless they give you 5. It was one of the most awesome experiences I've ever had. You get to see in detail: them play, their expressions, every movement. It's really an amazing experience. And watching Nothing Else Matters in that setting was ... unbelievably peaceful. Fuel moved back up a song. The pyro is fucking amazing when you're up there!! A foot from this 12-foot flames. One of the flames engulfed the mic stand we were close to, and melted off all of the pics. We were worried James was going to use it and burn himself... but he never did, fortunately. During "One," Toby asked if I'd mind giving him a minute... and I said sure, so I followed him back to the dressing rooms and met Philip, a French guy who was considering driving up to Montreal and wanted someone to do the drive with! I thought this might work out well since I was quite worried about that long drive by myself. After a brief talk with him, Toby brought me back to the stage and said he was going to go do the sticker thing because Sandman (last song) was about to come on, and if I wanted I could help out. I told him I would after the show, and he said no rush, have fun. After the show I got the girls to take a picture of me on the stage since I didn't have a camera with me, and then went out to help Toby with stickers. Doug met me out there and helped out, and then we went and found the rest of his friends. He went home in my car so he could tell me where to go. It took forever to get out of the parking lot - we got in one line that closed when we were about 4 cars from the front... Gah! We got in another line and after much waiting finally got out. When we got back, Doug insisted I take his bed. Doug, you rock!


Day 8 -- 07/07/03 -- Travel

Miles driven: 216
Hours: 5:30pm - 2:30am
City stopped in: East Rutherford, NJ

As soon as I woke up, Doug took me out to lunch at a nice Italian restaurant that his girlfriend worked at. Talk about star treatment! Doug is the man! Thanks Doug! I left his house finally about 5:30, got a bit lost in MA, finally left Foxboro closer to 7 (had to go back through it on my way to where I really wanted to go). I had a long uneventful drive to Jersey... except for the HOURS in standstills because of ALL THE FUCKING CONSTRUCTION!! Gah! There were no Motel6's or super8's anywhere near the venue, and I spent countless dollars driving back and forth on the highways trying to find a place -- every highway is a toll road. Finally checked into a Red Roof Inn at 2:30am for a whopping $80. The guy at the front desk seemed to think I was a drug dealer or a hit man or something.. It came up I was following Metallica... he asked how much that was costing me and then how I could afford it. When I said I had a good job he said "what do you do? No wait, I don't wanna know, here's your key." I was very humored by that.


Day 9 -- 07/08/03 -- East Rutherford, NJ Show

Miles: 95
Hours: 12-2
City stopped in: Bellmawr, NJ

At 9:15am my cell phone rings, I jump out of bed. It's Toby, "dude, we have a crashed FileMakerPro file with the VIP list in it... how quickly can you be here?" I throw on clothes, pack the car, check out of my crappy $80 Red roof Inn and haul ass down to the venue. I was there so early that I didn't pay for parking and so many people were walking in and out of the venue that I just walked in. I then called Toby and he came and picked me up in a golf cart. Sadly they had started remaking the old file with the same name in the same directory... which pretty much made it hopeless =(. I explained why the data was lost, but they already had 3/4 of the list re-written again. Toby then brought me to his tour bus, and I worked in his laptop for a bit while he want off to do some other things. After a while, he came back and we got a meal ticket for me and then went to catering to eat - they had hot dogs. We sat with Flemming. Then Toby and I went to find a M&G area and then to move the road case to the booth area. We had to push it down about 4 gates and then up a very steep circular incline. We got to the 2nd floor and nearly collapsed. After a break, Toby went off to do all the other stuff that needed to be done and I set up the booth and waited for doors. The booth was outdoors, but at least it was in a covered concourse. I had two helpers today: George and Ron. Ron was doing the whole tour while George was doing a small handful. We had some clubbers show up with a banner they had made, but other than that, it was a pretty uneventful day. We got the chat going and had several clubbers come back behind the booth and chat. Had the Sanitarium booth going. It was hard to get to, you had to go down the big spiral ramp and in between two of the gates was a door labeled "Stadium Club" - it was in there. In fact, the Linkin Park M&G was in there as well. It was indoors, with a full bar, and air conditioning. Lots of cool stuff. Hot as hell outside today though. One of the concession managers brought us water which was cool. The M&G went way over again, so I told the other people they could go find a seat/place and that I would watch the booth. When Toby finally got back, we took the road case back, and I went down to watch the show. I chose stage right this time since I seem to always choose stage left. It was a good change of pace. I was pretty tired so I wasn't as active, but it was a good show. Standing next to the bass speakers kinda sucks... You just hear buzzing. I left about half way through Sandman to go help Toby with stickers. Fuel was 2 songs after Blackened, I think... They can't decide what to do with it. After the show I drove about 2 hours trying to get the hell out of Jersey and finally stopped at a Super8 a few miles before the PA border, but still in Jersey. $59 and only a smoking room left. Ugh. Cheap bastards too: they wouldn't turn the phone on without a deposit despite the fact that I used a credit card.


Day 10 -- 07/09/03 -- Travel

Miles: 250
Hours: 2-6:20,9:40-12:30
City stopped in: Richmond, VA

I got up around 10:30 (my mother called and woke me up, ::sigh::). I got ready, checked out and did all my laundry at a Laundromat near the motel. That took from 12 - 2. Left at 2 and drove until I was hungry around 6, and started looking for a place to eat... I see an exit for Andrews AFB! That's where my friend Jenn happens to be stationed. I was planning on seeing her during my stop in D.C., but she had called to say she might be shipped off to Germany before I got there. So I stop and call her. Can't get a hold of her. I hang out and have dinner, and just before I'm about to leave, I get a call on my cell phone from my friend Josh. I talk to him for a few minutes and then I get another call... it's Jenn! So we hung out for about two hours, and caught up but then I needed to be on my way to Atlanta. Since I was not sure if she'd be in Germany next time I'm in town (in a week and a half), I was very excited to see her. I left her place around 9:40, got on the road, and hit heavy traffic. I drove for a little over an hour until I found a Super8 to crash at in Richmond, VA.


Day 11 - 07/10/03 -- Travel

Miles: 550
Hours: 10:30am - 9:00pm
City Stopped in: Atlanta, GA

Woke up, checked out, and started back on my way to Atlanta. Same old boring drive. About 6:00, I was in South Carolina and I stopped for dinner at Taco Bell. I called Jeff who said I was about 3 hours away. I got to his house around 9:00. Jeff, his wife Julie, and I talked for a while. They got their daughter Savannah up because they knew the dogs barking at me would wake her up; so the whole family was out. After a while Jeff took me down to Interland to show me the Datacenter (yeah, we're both computer people). Very cool! We came back and went to bed.


Day 12 -- 07/11/03 -- Atlanta, GA Show

Pictures: Fast forward to Atlanta, GA
Woke up, took a shower and got ready for the show. Jeff had been trying to decide whether to go early with me, or later with his friend. He decided to join me in working for the club. So Jeff and I headed down to the venue. Got there about 12:15, after hitting much traffic. It was pouring rain. Toby came out and gave us passes, which immediately got wet and wouldn't stick on. We then pushed the road case out to the booth. Once the rain cleared, we dried the tables, set up, and waited for doors. The booth was at the top of some stairs between the stairs and an area that we used as the Club Sanitarium. It was outdoors and hot, but the Club Sanitarium room had a bar and overlooked the side of the stage (sadly you couldn't actually see the stage from there). The bar tenders were nice enough to give us water though. Doors were late opening by quite a while. There was no real rush at doors -- I guess people didn't show because of the rain. After a while I went to go get our tickets so we could give one to Jeff's friend, Colin. But of course MusicToday fucked them up, and it took forever to get some "replacement tickets" which were not the nice MetClub ones and took a great deal of fighting to get even though MusicToday had promised they'd be at Will Call. But I did get the tickets eventually, so no biggie. We got the chat up and running and such, but the crowd was very small most likely because of the rain. It threatened to rain a few more times, but never did. Two people who worked for the club when it was in Tennessee came up to say hi to Toby. They were cool, I talked to them for a while. We had a lot of no-shows for the M&G, but covered everyone with alternates -- just barely. I guess people really don't like rain? The M&G went at a more normal pace this time, and Jeff, Toby, and I all took the road case back, before Jeff and I went out towards the field from the backstage area. We found Colin, and Jeff and I stayed behind the rail over on the side of the field and he was just in front of us on the other side of the rail. The show was much more empty than other shows. The second tier was only half full. Harvester was slower and heavier than it has ever been yet!!! It was awesome. Same setlist again. After the show we did the sticker thing again and Toby gave us some new St. Anger pics. Afterwards, Jeff and I met up with Colin at Interland (they both work there) and then went to "Steak and Shake" for some dinner. I had a patty melt for the first time in my life. A burger on bread. Not bad. Then we went home, and went to sleep. Jeff and Julie were totally AWESOME. And Savannah is just adorable.


Day 13 -- 07/12/03 -- Travel

Miles: 440
Hours: 4:30 - 1:00am
City stopped in: Orlando, FL

I woke up, talked to Jeff and Julie for a while, took a shower, ate, checked my email, slowly packed and finally got out of their hair about 4:30. This was the first day of the tour when I was missing a show. It was a bit sad. Ah well. Got to FL about 1am. Took a bit longer than I'd hoped. Surprisingly, GA was most of the drive. Adam paid for two nights at the EconoLodge... Or should I say GhettoLodge. We had phone cord with no phone, ironing board with no iron, an alarm clock that didn't work, and a shower that drained so slowly, you had a full bathtub by the time you were done with your shower. But it's free, so who am I to complain? Thanks Adam. Josh's friend Felix was really drunk and annoying when I got there. But they went out for a swim and I went to sleep.


Day 14 -- 07/13/03 -- Orlando, FL Show

Pictures: Orlando, FL
I woke up the next morning, had a McGriddle from McD's, and then went to the show. Had a HORRIBLE time finding the Citrus Bowl... but eventually found it. Toby came and got me. It was hot and humid and I could tell the day hadn't been a good one. He told me about a handful of the problems he'd had so far. We pushed the road case through the dirt and over to the booth - but it started raining before we set up. The rain didn't last too long and when it stopped we dried off everything and set it all up. At this point it was REALLY muggy. After an hour so, it started to rain again and we put away the computer, the book, and the So What, leaving only the t-shirt and the banner. The booth was outside in the sun/rain, and next to a door that led to the locker-room. That locker-room was the Club Sanitarium for the day -- it had A/C and they were selling drinks and snacks. I had told my friend Kerry I'd give her my ticket at a cheap price because she wanted to go but couldn't afford to, and I figured I'd rather get something for my ticket and help a friend then get nothing for it and have it be useless. She called me and I had her come down, and then went to go get the 2 tickets I ordered, but just like in Atlanta, the tickets weren't at will call and this time I was given a piece of paper that said "this is 2 tickets to replace the lost tickets"... Well it was to be used for Adam and Kerry -- but Adam, not surprisingly, wasn't there. I made Kerry wait for about 40 minutes and then after Josh and I made a reasonable effort to get a hold of Adam who has no cell phone (and we had no phone in the hotel room), I just told Kerry to come on in. Adam never showed up anyway. Josh was the first alternate on the list for the M&G and was unbelievably excited. He got to go to the M&G and came back completely stoked. Afterward I helped Toby bring the road case backstage... through the mud this time. At which point Kirk walks by. Yeah, Kirk just walked by. Toby whispers something in his ear and he comes over to me and kinda stands there. Took me a second to realize he wanted *me* to say something. So I shake his hand and say "It's really nice to meet you" and he says "you too," and goes off to wherever he was headed to originally. Doh!!! I'm sure I could have come up with something better to say, but at least I said something. I go find Josh and Kerry and head down to the floor. We had a HELL of a time. The show was absolutely AWESOME. The band is spot on and full of energy. Getting to be next to my best friend who I usually get to share shows with makes it all perfect. Harvester again just stands out - but everything was so damn good, it's hard to pull out any one song. I definitely sang louder and head banged more here than any other show. After the show, we went to go help Toby hand out stickers. He hands me a stack, tells me he's tired and asks if I mind finishing the stickers (I'd gotten there late anyway). Then he mentioned that me not being in Philly made things harder and that I've helped out a lot and thanks. Wow!! I was hoping I was actually being helpful! He also gave me a few pics to give to my friends. I give one to Kerry who was completely stoked, had already given one to Josh and saved the rest for other people I wanted to give pics to. We all struggle to get out of the parking lot and then head over to IHOP. We wait about 15 minutes to be seated but wait almost an hour for our food. It was good to hang around with old friends again. We then go home and Adam is in the room waiting for us. Josh and Adam went for a swim and I talked to Felix for a while about my trip. Then I took a shower. Then I talked to Adam about his world travels in the Navy while Josh took a shower. Then we all went to bed and Adam took shower. This was about 5am and check out was 11. Very long day.


Day 15 -- 07/14/03 -- Chill

We all woke up and headed to Quizno's for breakfast. On our way out of EconoLodge we saw some kids replacing the license plate on a Viper... I think they stole it. Oops. Kerry wasn't answering her phone (I was supposed to stay at her place that night) and Jenn hadn't called (when I left for DC depended on her), so Josh, Adam, and Felix stayed to keep me company. We went to Kmart to buy me a beard trimmer (forgot to pack mine), and then to Circuit City to buy me a car charger for my cell phone. Then they had to leave and get back down to Boca Raton. I got a hold of Kerry shortly after that and she was on her way to take a drug test for a potential job. I went to Borders, had some coffee, called MusicToday Tickets, and a few other phone calls I had to make. Kerry called when she got home and gave me directions to her place. On my way to Kerry's, Jenn calls to tell me she's definitely leaving for Germany tomorrow (Tuesday). Guess I'm not headed to DC early. So at Kerry's I check my email, do some laundry and bitch about being tired. Matt calls me and I arrange to see him tomorrow (he lives in Pavo, GA). For dinner we order pizza, which was a nice change of pace for me. We talked and caught up, and then went to sleep.


Day 16 -- 07/15/03 -- Travel

Miles: 400
Hours: 2:30 - 6:30, 9:30 - 12:30
City Stopped In: Macon, GA

At about 11:30 Kerry's phone rang -- "they" were calling to tell her she had a job! She had to go down and sign papers and stuff, so I quickly took a shower, folded the last of my laundry, etc. and was out the door around 2. I went to Subway for lunch and called Matt. We made some loose plans and then I got back on the road. Matt and his wife Effie live in Pavo, GA - i.e. the middle of no where. No cell phone reception, no broadband Internet and I doubt they even can watch TV out there. I don't think they realized all that when they moved there. Got to their house and they had dinner waiting. Cajun... It was rice and sausage I think. Really good. We talked for quite a while and then I left. I stopped in Macon, GA at a Days Inn that was impossible to find. I spent about 20 minutes driving around before I stopped and got directions about how to go through this patch of woods on this trail to get there. Fun.


Day 17 -- 07/16/03 -- Travel

Miles: 775
Hours: 12 - 6, 6:45 - 1
City stopped in: Washington, D.C.

Chet had informed me a few days prior that my driver's license had arrived (had my wallet stolen before I left and was driving around with a temporary paper license). So on my way out of Macon, I called Dave, who said he could accept an overnight delivery from Chet and bring it on Saturday. Got Chet to mail my license and insurance. I had an uneventful drive until just after dinner when I hit a huge thunderstorm; Torrential downpours so bad that you couldn't see a few feet in front of you. It sucked. I think I drove through a hurricane. It was nuts. Lightning and thunder like you wouldn't believe. I got to a Motel6 2 mi. from FedEx field, at exit 15B, very close to Andrews AFB as well (exit 9).


Day 18 -- 07/17/03 -- Chill

It was time to get service on my car: I was at about 6600 miles and the recommend first service is at 7000. The Honda place was close (exit 4b). I took my car there for service in the morning and paid a whopping $100 for 7K service. At least it was done. On the bright side they had internet access while you wait! I had lots of time to check my email and whatnot. They also had TV, coffee, and magazines. Had some dinner and watched TV for the rest of the day. Tried to find a movie theater, but apparently they don't exist in D.C. Wow, D.C. is not a nice town.


Day 19 -- 07/18/03 -- Washington, D.C. Show

Pictures: Washington, D.C.
Woke up in the morning and headed to FedEx field for the show. There was (surprise!) construction around the venue, and it took me a while to figure out how to get to the parking lot (when your early there's not a string of people pointing you in the right direction). Danna from the club was out for this show. She and Toby came out to give me my pass and bring me inside (they actually snuck up behind me unexpectedly, lol). The "Club Sanitarium" was a little courtyard area where the booth was -- which meant the booth was outdoors. But they were serving drinks and there were tables and chairs. Fortunately it wasn't too hot. We didn't have security or anything, but it seemed to work out OK. It rained a bit early on in the day, but dried up quickly. A really gorgeous girl showed up to the booth today. Her name was Rachel... every guy was staring at or flirting with her. She sat down to do some chatting on the laptop. She had a cool Metallica shirt she'd made herself that everyone was rather impressed with. She got several requests for shirts throughout the day. Susan from the bash was there. George was there (same one that helped in NJ), and a lot of VA Fuel people were there. It was good to be out of the Florida humidity! A very cool guy named Steph from the MetalliBash committee bought me a hotdog for lunch: you rock man!! Thanks! The M&G was normal length. Toby and I brought the road case back, and he left me alone after pointing the easiest way back to the field. His cell phone had been ringing off the hook. I walked around the field for a bit looking for Rachel and her friends, but eventually settled in to watched the show from behind the side rail as I was starting to become accustomed to. No drunk morons to contend with and I can get as close or as far as I want. It also makes it easy to get out quickly and help Toby with stickers after the show. As always, the show was great. There was something wrong with James' guitar during Harvester... he had to switch guitars and missed the first verse. Also during the pre-NEM doodle where Kirk had been playing guitar with a drum stick and Lars tried to play the guitar -- they took it farther tonight. Kirk got on drums and played the NEM intro while Lars played the intro on guitar. Other than that, same setlist. Fuel seems happy now at the beginning of the first encore directly after Blackened. After the show Rachel and some of her friends showed up to help us hand out stickers. One of the few shows I had my camera at, why the hell didn't I take a picture of her?? Oh well. As usual, I was hungry, so I asked if her and her friends wanted to grab food somewhere, but she was with a bunch of people that just wanted to go home. On my way back to the motel I stopped at, uhh, I think McDonalds (either McDonalds or Wendy's) to get drive through. Of course there was a long line of cars. After 20 minutes one car had moved and I was really frustrated. Each car was taking FOREVER. When I finally got up to the mic, all of a sudden it made sense: there was no one there, it was closed! The lights at the mic were on, but once you pulled up you could see the lights at the pick-up window were off and no one answered when you said hello. This took me all of 15 seconds to figure out. Why the hell had it taken everyone else 10 minutes?? I drove around back to the line and told everyone else that was waiting that it was closed, and we all left. I went over to Taco Bell, which was across the street, and got food there. They managed to screw up my order a whopping 3 times in a row, but each time a guy with a better title came to the window and apologized (I hadn't asked for a manager, I just simply pointed out they had given me the wrong thing). Finally with the correct food in hand, I went back to my hotel, ate, and got a few hours of sleep to prepare for the long day ahead.


Day 20 -- 07/19/03 -- Columbus, OH Show

Miles: before 400, after 70
Hours: 6:15am - 1:30pm, 3am - 5am
City Stopped in: small break on highway, who knows what city

Pictures: Columbus, OH
I got up at the ungodly hour of 5:30. I decided it would be better to work a whole show then it would be to not work and see two shows (and even then I might still miss Montreal). So I got up early and will be skipping Montreal. I drove all day.

All day I was running into really slow old idiots. It quite sucked. It was a horrible drive. It also took longer than expected... It should have taken 6 hours but took nearly 7. Got into town around 1:30ish, looked in my suitcase and found a piece of paper that said "Ohio" at the top... It said "Edward Jones Stadium"... exit Broadway.... I'm looking for it and finally I pull over and ask someone how to get to Edward Jones... And his response is "What stadium? I've never heard of it"...then a cop pulls up and I ask him, but he's also never heard of it... He asks what show, I tell him the Metallica show and he says it's at Ohio Stadium, and gives me directions. I check the sheet of paper that said Edward Jones stadium and notice the thing that says "Ohio" is just a banner ad and that it's for St. Louis.... Oops. Takes nearly 30 minutes to find parking, then a 4 block walk from my car to the stadium. I knew I had a M&G that day, but I had to use my ticket to get in (this was over an hour past doors), then get my working pass, then go back to the car, get my camera, and come back. Gah! But MusicToday had once again fucked up... and had a "duplicate ticket" waiting for me. Turns out I'm not the only one that had a shitty morning. The crew flights were late, and there were lots of problems with lots of people's transportation. Anyway, when I got there, there was a problem with the laptop that I fixed - but we had no place to plug it in, so it only lasted about an hour and then died. The booth was indoors, in one of the recessions like a food or t-shirt booth. The "club sanitarium" wasn't very good today. I didn't actually see it, but apparently it was an area on the 3rd floor everyone had access to and there was no security. So we of course had complaints about that... but at least the venue was indoors and it was cool. Toby had put one of the expensive glossy posters on a pole outside the club booth -- we usually make sure those are behind us because they're very expensive. I commented it was going to get stolen, but he felt since he could see the tape on the side of the pole, we were fine. Just before the M&G someone pointed out it was gone. Oops!! Read day 26 for the recovery of the poster! When meet and greet time came around I was given a pass and told to make sure everyone stayed together on the way to the M&G. I had put my camera and a So What! I wanted signed on the road case and mentioned to Ron to not let me forget it. Half way to the M&G Ron runs up and hands me my camera and the So What! -- Thanks Ron!! So we got to the M&G room which was a VIP-type room and they lined us up. There were 15 clubbers that night, plus 15 record company people (these range from radio contest winners, to record company friends of friends...).

Rob came out first. I was amazed how short he is! He's like my height! I welcomed him to the family (like I'm sure everyone else did, but since he's new I couldn't think of much else to say to him). He was very cool and down to earth. Clearly very happy to be there. He came out with his hair back, a backwards baseball cap, sandals, shorts, and a t-shirt. I took a picture with him and got his autograph. James came out next. I spent a few minutes talking to him about how influential he's been to several of my friends who've gone through some sort of recovery or another and how his story has helped not only them, but helped me to be understanding and tolerant. I have to say he not only seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say, but appreciative and touched. When you talk to him he looks you straight in the eye. It was really an awesome experience. I also mentioned to him it was awesome to see him (and the rest of the band) smiling and happy these days and that I hope that continues. And then I wished him luck with everything. He signed my So What! and took a picture with me, and then moved on. Kirk them came out next. I told him that I didn't want to keep him when I saw him backstage in Florida because I knew he'd just gotten out of a M&G, but that this time I wanted an autograph. He looked at me for a second and all of a sudden went "oh yeah! I remember that, that's cool, thanks" -- not only was it true, it made up for me not thinking of anything better to say in FL. =) He signed my So What! and took two pictures with me. At this point Lars walked in, but I didn't see him because he was on the other wall and wearing a blue t-shirt... didn't realize he was there until he got over to my line. I knew exactly what I wanted to say to him. I had heard from several people at the club that Lars and James personally went through the St. Anger booklet and checked all the lyrics. Well, in the process of transcribing the lyrics for IPOM, I found a few mistakes, most of which were trivial -- one was a little bigger than the rest... instead of "All within my hands" the 3rd line in the book says "All with my hands" - I had been assured by a few people that Lars would likely be humored (despite somewhat unhappy) by this news, but that most importantly he wouldn't take it personally. So he gets to me, and I say, "So, Lars... I heard you and James went through the lyrics in the St. Anger booklet personally." To which he doesn't respond to for a second. And then gives an "and?" "Well ya missed a typo: On 'All Within My Hands' the third line in the booklet says 'All with my hands.'" Lars says nothing for several seconds which was PLENTY of time for me to get pretty worried he was pissed. Finally after what seemed like a minute, he retorts, "Nah, that's just your copy." I was pretty relieved, and it was good to laugh with him about it. So I tell him that I just thought he'd get a kick out of that -- and at this point the video camera is on me as well as pictures, Toby, Steve, and a few other people have gathered to listen -- and he says, "Well, I guess for the next album we'll have to fly you out to HQ to check the lyric book." To which everyone said "You have that on tape! He can't back out now!" Everyone was laughing at this point. I told Lars he had a deal and got an autograph and a picture, and Lars moved on. At this point I was back on duty, Toby asked me to head downstairs and help Danna tear down the booth. The path to the M&G room was way odd and it took me a while to find my way back. Oh well. Eric and I got down and helped tear down. At this point I had a So What! with 4 autographs and a floor ticket. Hmmm. I was hoping they'd have an area on the side for the crew to chill in. I made my way down to the floor and score! There was. I went over to stage left onto the section in between the stairs to the stands and the floor where security and crew can chill and sat down holding my So What! tight. I met a group of 4 people - a girl and 3 guys - of which the 1 guy was a UNIX programmer, another guy was a Windows programmer, the girl's dad worked at Honda, and the third guy didn't say anything. I talked about computers to the 2 guys for a while, and then my car came up because of the girl's dad working at Honda. I gave them my contact info, and they went to go find a spot in the crowd when I warned them the show was about to start (they played "Long way to the top" which was always played just before the show started). I then put the So What in the back of my shorts with my shirt over the top so I didn't have to hold it, but I felt it was reasonably safe, and got close to the stage (while still being in the side area). I really got into this show. I think it was because I was so stoked from getting to meet the band. When I got to the show I was exhausted and in a bad mood, but I was happy and energetic for the show. I was jumping and head banging all night. I got lots of good pictures from being on the side. It was nice. The band made a mistake during Harvester but recovered well. During the pre-NEM doodle, Kirk didn't play drums this time; they went back to what they had previously been doing. Then right before they really started NEM, Lars walked up to the mic and said "I have a good friend at the show sitting over here (points in the upper stage right stands), who might be proposing to his girl tonight, so if you do, good luck!" What the hell?? MIGHT?? MIGHT??? Well he damn well better be proposing now! And if he hadn't, Lars just spoiled it. That was just bizarre. I kept wondering... what if he changed his mind? What if he hadn't done it yet? Anyway. During the intro for Seek and Destroy, Fred Durst came out and hit the cymbals on Lars' kit. For One I went nearly to the back of the floor to see what the pyro looked like from further back where you could see it all. I left during Sandman to help Toby with stickers. Dave had been told (I relayed this message through other people working at the booth, I didn't get to tell Dave personally), that we would be handing out stickers at gate 20 -- but it was actually 26. I found Toby who handed me most of the stickers and then said he was going to hand out stickers "over there" -- I thought he meant the next gate, but I think he meant "on my way to the bus" because I didn't see him again. I handed out stickers walking back and forth between 18 and 28 looking for Dave. Some girl asked me if I worked for the club to which I said "yes" (I'm not employed by the club, but I was also handing out stickers and that was the easy answer) and she shoved something in my hand and walked off... I didn't look at it until later, but it was a letter to the band that I passed off to Toby several cities later when I remembered it was in my car. I handed out stickers until pretty much everyone was gone. I still hadn't found Dave yet, and was a bit worried. Just as I was about to leave he called my name and I saw him walking towards me. Traffic was still blocked off at this point, so rather than getting both cars and trying to find each other, we took his car and got dinner and came back later for my car. At this point we decided to get a motel for a few hours and then head to Dave's place. We drive for about 30 minutes and pull over at a Motel 6. They are sold out. We head to the Red Roof Inn across the street. Sold out. We drive another 20 minutes to a Days Inn. Sold out. Then a Super 8 Motel across the street. Sold out. What the hell??? Finally I ask the Super 8 guy and he says every hotel for over 100 miles is sold out because of the Dayton Air Show -- it's the 100th anniversary of flight. FUCK! We drive another hour or so checking one or two more tiny piss-ant places we hope no one found, but they were all sold out. Finally we stopped at a rest stop somewhere in Indiana at around 4:45 and slept in our cars for a few hours.


Day 21 -- 07/20/03 -- Travel

Miles: 400
Hours: 7am - 1pm
City stopped in: Thiensville, WI

We then got up at about 7am and drove all the way to Thiensville, WI, where Dave lives. By the time we got there I was exhausted. We stopped at Subway for lunch and then Dave made burgers for dinner. I then proceeded to sleep 15 hours solid. I was REALLY tired.


Day 22 -- 07/21/03 -- Chill

Woke up around noon. I set up Dave's router for him along with shared Internet access. We went to Cousin's for lunch -- I'd never been there, but it's quite good - Subway on crack. Great cheesesteaks. After dinner we went to a self car wash place so I could wash my car, and then went to a bar and played pool. I told Dave I sucked, and we played, and obviously he won, but I didn't realize how much he was holding back. He played a round with another friend of his and I watched them play pool and was like "Oh shit! Dave didn't have to let me take a shot!"


Day 23 -- 07/22/03 -- Chill

I woke up and went running on their treadmill. I then cleaned the inside of the car today. Vacuumed and organized and threw away the trash and such. Went to bed early and Dave stayed up writing a paper for his Wednesday morning class.


Day 24 -- 07/23/03 -- Chill

Dave got home from class around noon and started watching Signs, which woke up me, so I got up and watched that. Then we went to go see T3. We went to a pizza place for dinner, and went back to Dave's house. He talked with his parents for a while, and I watched TV and played Spider-man on N64. Went to bed early because we had to leave the next morning.


Day 25 -- 07/24/03 -- Travel

Miles: 400
Hours: 12pm - 6pm
City stopped in: St. Louis, MO

Got up, called MusicToday to bitch about all the ticket screw-ups some more. Got ready and left. Dave and I decided to take his car for the weekend (St. Louis, Chicago, and Minneapolis), instead of both cars (we couldn't both fit in mine with our stuff) because it would allow us to take turns driving. We also decided to stop by his house between Chicago and Minneapolis. So we stopped by his mom's work to say goodbye, grabbed Subway and were off around noon. Got to St. Louis, and had a major screw up with Motel 6. There were three potential Motel 6's. One was just north east of the venue - this was our preference because we were going to be headed north-east when we left. One was south west of the venue. This was our last choice. The third was also north-east, but a little further away. Well Option #1 was sold-out. They booked us at option #2 on the phone, and when I called back to request option #3, they said "no, that's where your booked already" -- I said "are you sure?" and read them the address again. They said "yes sir." When we arrived at option #3, they had no reservation for us, and it was 6:05, 5 minutes later than the phone people could cancel a reservation. It took a lot of phone calls and bitching, but Option #3 had ONE room left for us, and we managed to cancel our Option #2 reservation without getting charged. We needed two nights, as the reservation stated. We got our room, unpacked, went out to get dinner, saw Pirates of the Caribbean, came back, watched Fools Rush In on cable, and went to sleep.


Day 26 -- 07/25/03 -- St. Louis, MO Show

We got up, and as we were about to leave, I noticed the amount we paid couldn't have been for two nights. We went to the front desk and sure enough, they had given us one night and had already booked our room for that night. Fuckers! They gave us another room with one bed and we moved our stuff. Fuckers. The room had no sheets, wasn't made, etc., but they said it would be done when we got back. We then went to the venue. The exit we were supposed to take was closed due to... you guessed it! CONSTRUCTION! But nonetheless we found our way. We stopped a local sub and pizza shop on the way and got lunch. Toby brought Dave and I in and gave us our working passes. We moved the road case and set everything up. Great venue: we were indoors, we were next to power, we were overlooking the doors, we were very close to the Club Sanitarium, which was also a pretty cool VIP room with food and drinks being sold. The "guarded" entrance to the field was where clubbers had to go through to get to the Club Sanitarium. This had two unfortunate side effects: 1. security wasn't happy about letting clubbers in the door with a stamp. I had to constantly go and explain to the guards what was going on. 2. Clubbers reportedly abused this privilege a lot and many of them got on the floor. Oh well. I found out that Ron had gone out at the end of the show in Ohio and stood on a wall looking for anyone holding a big poster -- and saw someone with the glossy poster that had been stolen. He got it back from the guy and returned it to us in St. Louis!! Go Ron again! Dave and I stood in the center of the floor for this show, trying to get a different view point. James hair wasn't slicked back and he didn't seem quite as into it for the first portion of the show. He was definitely into it, playing well, and having fun, but it seemed like it wasn't quite as much as he usually is. At one point (I think it was during No Remorse, but I'm not sure), the mic James walked up to wasn't on, so we missed the first few lines. Dave and I did stickers with Toby afterward and he thanked us and said he'd see us in Chicago tomorrow. We went back to the hotel to find that the room STILL had no sheets, no comforter, nor the extra pillow we requested. The front desk lady came up and made our bed and such. Dave thought she was hot, so that made his night. I swear, two days of constant Motel6 fuck-ups.


Day 27 -- 07/26/03 -- Chicago, IL

Miles: 295, 115
Hours: 5:30am - 10:45am, 12am - 1am, 1:30am - 3am
City stopped in: Thiensville, WI

Dave and I woke up dreadfully early and headed out to Chicago. We arrived earlier than we anticipated. We drove around and found a McDonalds that was still serving breakfast. We waited for the lunch switchover, bought lunch to go, and went to the venue. We walked to the venue, and called Toby who said it would be a bit before he could get all the way across the venue to us. I wasn't hungry so Dave ate but I stood there with my lunch and waited for Toby. While we were waiting we heard some guards talking about the long night ahead of them. One of them was wondering what time they'd get out, and the other said "Well Metallica doesn't go on until after midnight, so we'll be here most of the morning." ROFL!!! I corrected him and gave him the schedule, to which he was appreciative. Toby came eventually and gave us passes. The venue was a big race track, and as we began walking across the dirt I realized some of the ramifications of that. There were no seats, it was an all GA show. Additionally, there was no good place for the booth or Club Sanitarium. There was no shade. The tented area that the venue had given to us for Club Sanitarium was a big tented area that everyone pretty much had to walk through to get from the gates to the stage. But there wasn't much we could do about it. Toby had to get a fork lift to get the road case to where we wanted the booth because of the dirt and the ditches and hills. We set up up the booth (which was right next to the Club Sanitarium tent), and the wind was NUTS. We tied things down as much as possible, but the dirt was flying everywhere, getting in our eyes and in the laptop. It was also dreadfully hot. We got lots of complaints about Club Sanitarium, unfortunately. Very few people wanted to chat on the laptop. So it was a pretty slow day. We had some special guests from the Metallica Club. Jeff was there, Jim Murphy was there, and others. Getting the M&G folks together was challenging because the crowd was getting back to the booth area so there was tons of people around. Toby and I put the M&G passes on everyone and told them to hang out for 5 minutes until it was time to go back. Then one of the M&G winners comes up to me and asks, "How long will the M&G last" and I explained it depended on the band, but that he could be gone anywhere from 1 to 2 hours. He then said (I'm not making this up), "Is it during the show?" I kid you not, he asked me if the M&G was DURING the show. Yes, the band is on stage performing AND backstage meeting you AT THE SAME TIME!! No no, they run off stage in between songs to sign autographs. ::sigh:: (Note for the gullible: that's all sarcasm). I explained to him that no, the M&G is before the show because Metallica must perform, and that he will back in plenty of time to see the show. So Toby took the M&G'ers backstage -- this required walking right through the middle of the crowd because of the crappy venue, but I hear no one got lost. Dave's sister was supposed to be driving down with a friend named Hristo to see the show with us. During the M&G Dave started wondering where they hell they were, and we couldn't get a hold of them on the cell phone. Then, at one point, a club member came up to the booth and was pissed off because we "ripped him off." He was pissed that he didn't have a wrist-band. Well the venue had decided that the first 2000 people through the doors got wrist bands which got them into the front-most section of the floor, a little pit area separated off by gates. This split up the floor a bit to make sure the people in the front didn't get killed (San Francisco, take note of this insight!). He was pretty drunk, and yelling loud. He was pissed because he felt the club was supposed to get him the "best" tickets and so he should have a wristband, and the club had lied and fucked him over, etc., etc. I explained that we had nothing to do with the wristbands and that it wasn't our choice. He said I was lying. At this point Dave and Ron and I were all standing there explaining this to the guy. At this point he "wanted to see my boss" - who I told him would be back by 8. He continued to yell that that wasn't good enough, and at one point we all thought he was going to start a fight with us, but he didn't. He stayed there for a whopping 45 minutes yelling. About 15 minutes before Toby came back, he disappeared. Idiot. Also, during this show, there was apparently a lot of anti-Bizkit sentiment. Lots of "Fuck Fred Durst" banners and such. He got a lot of booing when they hit the stage, and then, like an idiot, made it worse by insulting Chicago and a local DJ. At this point there was a ton of crap being thrown on stage, and he left after 26 minutes. That meant a LONG break before Metallica was to hit the stage. Shortly before Toby got back, Dave's sister, Grace, and their friend Hristo showed up. We tore down the booth, and waited for Toby. When Toby got back, we started the long and painful process of pushing the road case back. Couldn't really get a forklift through the crowd, so we pushed this through the dirt, with hills and ditches. We pushed it through a LOT of dirt, over hoses, and other pieces of debris. When we finally got to concrete, we had to go out to the parking lot over a huge ramp, around and then finally over to production. It was the longest, most pain in the ass push I've ever done. My calves were killing me. When we got there I laid down on the case for a minute, went to catering, grabbed some water, and went back to where the booth had been so I could meet up with Dave and co. Toby had snagged a few wristbands for us as well as the first few clubbers that had asked during the day (they were long gone when the aforementioned drunk guy came up, and I wasn't going to tell him about them). So we made our way through the crowd and up to the pit. Grace was completely stoked to be so close to the stage. The stage area was slightly narrower than usual I guess, because the farthest right and farthest left mic stands weren't there, and the speakers were half on stage. We were stage-right near the bass speakers. I think the most fun part of this concert was watching Grace go nuts. It was her fourth show, but I think it was her first being this close. She was jumping up and down and just having a blast. It was cool to see someone enjoying the show that much. That's what it's all about. When James thanked each of the opening bands, Limp Bizkit got a HUGE "boooo!" to which James said "heh, well that's your choice." I was laughing my ass off. Jim Murphy got to come out and hit the cymbals during the intro to Seek. Fucker. At the end Dave wanted to get a pic for Grace, so he went to the front and I stayed with her. Kirk threw a pic that bounced off of Grace and fell on the ground which I grabbed and gave to her. Dave came back sans a pic. =) Dave and I then ran ahead to go help Toby with stickers. We shoved our way through the crowd and got to him. He asked if we'd mind taking over for him because he had to get back to the bus and gave Dave some pics for helping out. We handed out stickers -- since everyone was being funneled out through one entrance, the stickers went REALLY quickly. We waited for Grace and Hristo, eventually found them, and headed to the car. The idea was to drive Grace and Hristo back to Hristo's car, but the police decided traffic wasn't going to flow that way today. So Hristo decided that since he wasn't going all the way to Dave's place anyway, he'd jump out and walk to his car. So he did that. We met up at a Wendy's a little while later, then headed back to Dave's house. I took a shower, and went to sleep.


Day 28 -- 7/27/03 -- Minneapolis, MN

Miles: 400
Hours: 4:30am - 10:45am
City stopped in: Minneapolis, MN

Got a whole 45 minutes of sleep before I needed to be up. I had offered my ticket for Minneapolis to Grace the night before, and she had accepted. When we woke her up she was like "No, I'm not going" but Dave and I weren't going to let her miss a free Metallica show! =) We got up and out quickly. I drove for about two hours, then we stopped, I got food and Dave drove for a little over an hour, then I drove the last 50 minutes or so. Every switch it was like "Crap! I'm falling asleep, you wake up and drive!" We got there and Dave stayed with Grace, and I found Toby. The venue was organized a bit badly, but I found my way in eventually and got my pass. The day hadn't started off well. Apparently we'd been promised this cool "Rally Room" (as the Club Sanitarium for the day) but the door was locked and no one knew who had the key. Getting three tables for the booth hadn't proven easy either. But we got the tables and I setup everything while Toby went off to work on getting the Rally Room open. I got everything set up, then promptly took a nap on one of the tables. The booth was well located today. It was close to the freight elevator, had power, and was reasonably close to the Rally Room. It was also right next to the Ladies room which meant we had tons of women walking by - always a plus. =) The venue was all indoors, the tables we'd been given for the booth were nice, and the booth, in general was awesome today. I always loved the indoor ones! We eventually got the Rally Room open and it was actually very cool. It was a full bar, with an actual physical bar with bar stools, a bar tender, TVs, and tables. However, the bartender wouldn't check IDs, and he said they had to have some sort of distinguishing mark for over/under 21. So we had to check IDs at the booth and either stamp on the top of the hand for 21, or under the wrist for under 21. This proved to be quite a lot of work, but it worked out decently. Dave had been picked as the first alternate for this show, so he was happy (the first alternate pretty much always goes). Grace spent most of the day going back and forth between the booth and the Rally Room. There were two "Guest MetOnTour" guys there today who were taking pictures and using the laptop to update MOT. Since we were right next to the women's bathroom, we had plenty of targets for the webcam as girls walked by. Laura from St. Louis showed up again. This time wearing the tube top she'd mentioned that Dave told her to wear in Minneapolis. Everyone loved the Rally Room, we got tons of people coming back to tell us how cool it was. I saw a handful of people trying to fake being 21 as well. And there were the people who showed ID for being under 21 as they said "yeah I'm under 21"... ya don't need to prove your under 21... ya just need to prove your *over* 21... lol. That wasn't a big deal though. The venue had Papa Johns! So we had good lunch. Dave obviously got to do the M&G, which he was very stoked about. I kept an eye on Grace at the booth. The day was fun, but we were all so incredibly tired it was hard to keep going. I took the booth down a little earlier today because people were *very* drunk. Toby and Dave eventually got back and I brought the road case down with Toby, and then stopped by catering to get water for Grace, Dave, and myself. Toby and I walked right past James talking to some friends. But I just kept walking. That's always a bit surreal though. Got back up to Dave and Grace, and we just sat where the booth was for a while. We knew we had a lot of time before Metallica hit the stage and we were way too tired to move. We eventually made our way down to the floor near the back and then sat down again. We watched all the girls flash the crowd. Eventually we heard "long way to the top" and stood up. We managed to stand up the whole time, sing a few parts, and even head bang once or twice, but we were exhausted. The show was very good. Some girl hit the symbols during Seek, not sure who. James' guitar went out during the beginning of No Remorse. So when they started over, (since they intro the song by going "No!!... No!!"), he walked up to the mic and said, very fast, "nononononononoremorse" and started playing... it was really funny. There was an uncanny amount of REALLY tall people here. I'm pretty short, so I'm used to people being taller than me, but I'm talking like 6'5"+ people here. And lots of them. One guy was at least 7'. We were near the back and stage left. We started walking to the other side of the floor around the beginning of Sandman, and then left about 3/4 way through it to go help Toby with stickers. We ended up coming out the venue not at all where we wanted to be and ran all the way around, and then I got a call from Toby "Change of plans, Gate F"... fuck! so we turn around and run all the way back around the venue to Gate F. For some strange reason, there were a million people handing out a million things, which meant it was hard to get people to realize "we are giving you free stickers! You want one!" We helped Toby with the stickers, and then said goodbye to Toby and headed back to the car. We had decided it would be good to get a motel (I'd been saying this all along, but Dave wanted to drive back that night). I called Motel6 and there was a very close one with plenty of rooms. Of course we had a bitch of a time finding it -- there were 2 different Frontier roads very close to each other! Gah!! We checked in, grabbed some Taco Bell, and passed out a little after 2am from an unreal level of exhaustion.


Day 29 -- 07/28/03 -- Travel

Miles: 400
Hours: 12:15am - 6:00pm
City stopped in: Thiensville, WI

Wow! Ya feel a LOT better after some sleep! We all woke up a little before noon, grabbed some Wendy's and then drove home (to Dave's). Grace got bored on the way, so I gave her a Playboy to read. She wasn't sure she wanted it at first, but eventually got bored enough to read it and realize "Hey the articles ARE actually good!" Got back and Dave's mom had made pork chops. We watched Maverick, and then went to bed.


Day 30 -- 07/29/03 -- Chill

Wow, has it really been 30 days already? Thats nuts. I did some laundry today, watched Lethal Weapon 2, checked email, and that is about it. Long, slow, relaxing day.


Day 31 -- 07/30/03 -- Travel

Miles: 800
Hours 9:30am - 10:30pm
City stopped in: Lexington, NE

Pictures: The drive to Denver
I got up around 8:45, left Dave's around 9:30, and drove all day. I'm stopped in Lexington, NE. Saw a kite that looked like a man parachuting. I love Nebraska's 75mph speed limit. This Super 8 is excellent and shitty all at the same time. It's a great place with an indoor jacuzzi, cable, nice people, etc., but I got the last nonsmoking room and someone smoked in it. Oh well. Well, that's it. Night.


Day 32 -- 07/31/03 -- Travel

Miles: 300
Hours: 10:15am - 3:00pm
City stopped in: Denver, CO

I woke up and headed the rest of the way to Denver. I got in earlier than I expected, and watched some TV. Later I went to have some drinks with Toby and co. at their hotel, then came home, and went to bed. Nice relaxing day.


Day 33 -- 08/01/03 -- Denver, CO Show

I woke up and went to the venue. Paid $20 in parking. I ate my breakfast (pop tarts) while I waited for Toby who picked me up in a golf cart. We went to post signs at Will Call noting where the club booth was. Then we went back to get the road case and bring it to the booth location. I then set up the booth, and waited for show time. The venue was brand new and we weren't allowed to tape our big posters on the wall, sadly. The booth was indoors (as was the whole venue), and that's always a good thing. The booth had an Ethernet cable laying next to it, and I had wondered if it was for us. Shortly before doors opened some guys came and started testing it, and told me "OK, it's all set for you guys"... I was like "woah, we get Ethernet?" Then I looked and noticed the crappy laptop didn't have an Ethernet card... so I took a shot in the dark and asked if they had one we could borrow - and sure enough they brought us a USB Ethernet adapter. Sweet! So a bit of hacking to make the odd drivers work, and voila! We had high-speed Internet access. A guy named Paul helped out at the booth. The Club Sanitarium room for the day was the best of the whole tour! It was the "Budweiser Skybox" and it rocked. It was quite a hike from the booth, but it was a full A/C'd skybox directly overlooking the stage and they sold drinks and snacks. There were guards guarding the hallway to the elevator that you had to use to get to the room, and more guards at the room. It absolutely rocked. We had countless people come back to the booth and tell us how cool it was. After we tore down the booth, I helped Toby take the road case back and then went down to watch the show. A make-a-wish foundation kid got to go out and hit the symbols during the intro to Seek, which was really cool. Then the humorous part of the night: For the intro to No Remorse, James did his usual "Are you having fun?" and the audience went, "Yes!" and he said, "No?" and instead of the usual "YES" from the audience, he got a "uh... booo!" People were very confused, they had no idea what to do. So James yells "YES!" and they cry "YES!" and James yells "NO!" and they yell "... uh... boo?" He tried one more time: "No, it's YES!" "Yeah!" "No!" "No, boo!" Finally he gave in, and explained, "When I say 'No', you say 'Yes'" I was cracking up. I thought this was the funniest thing. Denver didn't get it. So then it worked: "No!" "Yes!" "No!" "Yes!" "NNNNOOOO!" "YYYYEEESSSSSS!" "NNNOOOO REMORSE!!!" "YEAH!" and all of a sudden everyone understood. I sat in seats for this show. I sat next to two girls from Nebraska who had never heard of The Metallica Club. I told them all about it and they couldn't wait to join. I remembered I had two wristbands left in my pocket, near the end of the show, so I gave the bands to them so they could go down an see the last part of the show from the floor - and I told them they better join the club! We had been lucky to get any wrist bands, and I had given them all away to clubbers who had asked, but I had forgotten about those last two and didn't want them to go to waste. My seats were stage left, lower section, row 10. It was cool to see the show from up there and see the "whole thing" - all the pyro, and the fireworks on top of the stage, etc. I left during Sandman to help Toby with the stickers, and then found my car, went back to the motel and slept.


Day 34 -- 08/02/03 -- Travel

Miles: 885
Hours: 12pm - 2am
City stopped in: Fort Worth, TX

I woke up and headed down to Forth Worth, which is right next to Irving, but my friend Jason lives there and I was staying with him. There is no cell phone reception anywhere in Kansas. Gah! Most of Oklahoma doesn't have it either. I stopped at a McDonalds with a sign on the door that said "picture menus available." This cracked me up. I wanted to take a picture, but my camera died. Who needs a picture menu at McDonalds??? Does anyone READ the menu at McD's? And if you can't read, how would you read the sign that says the picture menus are available? LOL. I called Jason to let him know what my schedule was because I was staying at his house. I hadn't originally planned to make it all the way to Fort Worth that night, but it seemed like I was going to. He said it was no problem if I got there early. I ended up getting there about 2am, and we stayed up for a while talking, and then I went to sleep.


Day 35 -- 08/03/03 -- Irving, TX Show

Pictures: Irving, TX
Oh what a day! James' birthday, and I had asked Toby if I might be able to watch the show from the stage again, and he said probably. So I woke up and had breakfast with Jason and his girlfriend Kat. I then got on my way to the show at the infamous Texas Stadium. I had gotten directions from Jason and Kat based on maps. They didn't realize the 183 stops for a little while because apparently it gets tired. Moreover, not only does it stop (it's an east-west highway), when it starts up again, it does so significantly north of where it left off. This caused me to get quite lost. Eventually I got there, and walked to the loading doc and met Toby. This venue is notoriously bad, and they stayed within their reputation of being unhelpful and generally useless. Oh well. We got the road case to where it needed to be, and managed to get 3 falling apart tables with BBQ sauce on them for the booth. Yeah. So we set up. The booth was outside in the burning sun, but we put the tent up. We were also a bit hidden behind some stuff. As I looked around for a potential place to acquire some dinner later on, I noticed fried steak, fried chicken, chicken fried steak, steak fried chicken, deep fried this, and uber fried that. No signs for burgers, hot dogs, pizza, or other usual venue foods. Hmm. With some more inspection I did find burgers and hot dogs. We didn't have a laptop today, because of some confusion about where what trucks went due to the new Salt Lake City date being added in. Oops. Jeff Holland and a guy named James helped out today, both friends of Eric's. I'd met Jeff a few times before. It was a very slow day. I gave my ticket to a friend of Jason's who wanted to see the show but couldn't afford to. We had a pretty decent Club Sanitarium today, but it was more trouble than it was worth. It was an air conditioned big room where they sold drinks and snacks, and it overlooked the back of the stage. However, to get to it, you had to come to the booth to get a stamp, then go out the gate near us (and convince security you were supposed to), walk half way around the venue to gate 10, into a door, up an escalator, to the right and through a door. That last door had security, which was a plus. But here's the worse part. To get back, clubbers had to go out the door, down the escalator, stop at the desk, pick up a re-entry pass (and the stamp was required for this as well, so if it rubbed off, you were screwed), walk another quarter way around the venue to gate 2, show the guard your ticket, your pass, and your stamp -- all 3 were required for re-entry. There was a whole lot of bitching from clubbers all day long. Eric was busy when M&G time came, so he could not following the M&Gers (Toby takes the front, and someone has to follow and make sure there aren't stragglers), so I left Jeff and James at the booth and I followed the group to the M&G, and as soon as we got them through the crowd, I ran back to the booth. During the M&G I talked to Ollie and Susan who were out from Ireland to follow the tour. I offered them a place to say in LA. After the M&G, Toby came back and I helped him pack up the booth and take it backstage. He told me to wait for him on stage right around 8:30, and if there was room on stage, he'd put me up there. Around 8:45 he came and gave me a VIP pass and brought me on stage. I was stoked! I was gonna get to watch James' birthday show from the stage! AND I had my camera this time!. The show rocked! James was in high spirits. I took a million pictures. The band doesn't usually throw many pics back to the people on stage -- they tend to keep them for the main audience, but tonight they threw a ton back this way. I caught 3 pics: I gave the first one to a kid next to me who hadn't caught one, the second one was one I didn't have, and the third one I was going to give to someone, but the 3 people close to me all had some, so I kept that as well. Toby had told me he wanted to take part in throwing pies at James, so I told him he could give me the stickers before the end of the show, and I would take care of it. So he gave them to me sometime before the last encore. Then, Sandman came on, and during the long pause before the last set of riffs, while James was waiting to start the song again, the entire band, along with Toby and a few others, all ran out and covered James with whip cream pies and silly string! Sadly, the way the stage is situated, as I mentioned before, you can't see the middle of the stage from the sides, but I watched the jumbo-trons behind me, took some pictures of that, and then when James walked over to stage right, I snapped a ton of pictures. He seemed to have a genuinely good night. He walked behind the ramp and gave his wife a hug, and then went back out and talked briefly about the Happy Birthday signs in the audience, how happy he was to share his birthday with so many people, and how he wasn't sure he'd get this far, but he's glad he did. Shortly thereafter, James said "oh, we never finished the song, did we? And they plowed through the final riffs. They once again said goodnight. I then took a picture of two guys who wanted a picture of them on-stage, and gave them my email address (of which I've never heard from them... hmmm), and had them take a picture of me. I then grabbed my bag of stickers and ran as fast as I could through the back tunnels to get to an exit, and then bolted around to where the club booth had been (the gate closest to the booth was always the official place for any volunteers to meet us to help with stickers). Because I got out late, by the time I got half way through the bag of stickers, the crowd was very thin. Ron showed up about this time, and we spent quite some time finding people to give the last of the stickers to. I finally said goodnight with a stack of about 10 stickers left and made off to my car. I saw some guys sitting in the back of their truck drinking some beer and talking - I gave them stickers, and then asked if I they had a bottle of water I could have. They said sure, so I gave them the last 7 or 8 stickers as well, which they seemed to think was pretty damn cool. I then got in my car, and headed back to Jason's house, getting promptly lost on the way, but not getting too far off the route. I was hoping to pick up some Whattaburger on the way, but they were closed, so Jack In The Box it was. I stayed up talking to Jason until about 5am, and then went to sleep.


Day 36 -- 08/04/03 -- Travel

Miles: 390
Hours: 6:00pm - 11:30pm
City stopped in: Pecos, TX

I woke up around 2pm, and spent most of the day catching up with Jason. I eventually packed and left... but immediately came back remembering that I'd wanted to book plane tickets and a rental car for SF before I left. I then left for real, got on my way, and was really pissed because, like so many other stops on my trip, I had forgotten to take pictures. Gah! First thing I noticed when I went to bring my bags to the car was... TEXAS IS FUCKING HOT. I shouldn't say "noticed," I should say "remembered" since I used to live there. Damn. I stopped in Pecos, TX.


Day 37 -- 08/05/03 -- Travel

Miles: 786
Hours: 11:30 - 2:30 (-2 hours TZ)
City stopped in: Los Angeles, CA (home)

I woke up around 10:30, and got going by 11:30 after I checked out and bought gas. I got pulled over for speeding (85 in a 75) shortly after I left, but got off with a warning (I think he felt sorry for me having to be at work in the morning and having to drive all night). I stopped in El Paso at a Subway for lunch, and then again in Quartzsite, AZ for dinner and gas. The New Mexico drive is so SHORT because you miss most of it going through Texas, but it makes Arizona seem huge! I got home around 12:30 LA time. Long drive.


Day 38 - 08/06/03 -- Work

Pictures: Back in Los Angeles, CA
Work


Day 39 - 08/07/03 -- Work

Work


Day 40 - 08/08/03 -- Work

Work


Day 41 - 08/09/03 -- Los Angeles, CA Show

Wow, it's nice to be at home and not have to check out of your hotel in the morning, or worry about getting one after the show! Ollie and Susan stayed at my house Friday night. Saturday morning I woke up, got ready, and then we all left. Since my car only seats two people, I drove, and Ollie and Susan took a cab. I parked at USC (where I work), and walked next door to the Coliseum and Arena lot. In the three years I've lived here, I was not aware there was BOTH a coliseum AND an arena on the same lot, right next to each other. So I was standing in front of the arena, where there was a big crowd of people. I had called Toby on my walk over and he couldn't meet up with me until 12:15. At 12:15, he called and described where he wanted to meet me... but I couldn't find anything remotely similar. Finally as I saw people starting to walk from the arena to the coliseum, I bolted over there and found Toby and Vicky, got my working pass, and we moved the road case to the booth location. The coliseum really sucks. When we got to the booth area, we still didn't have tables. A few minutes before doors opened we managed to get a single table. Whats worse is we had to have two booths today. This is because people with floor tickets could only go in one gate, and people with seats tickets had to go in a different gate, and there was no way to get from one part to the next. So we setup the main booth at in an outdoor concourse type area in the "seat" part of the stadium, and Ron manned a mini-booth in the floor tunnel. I gave people stamps that let them out the gate and down to the floor tunnel, which is where the Sanitarium Club was... Ron was right next to the room, so he just checked their card, or looked for a stamp since we only had one stamp. The table was out in the sun today, which sucked. And since we got the table at the last second, when doors opened we were still setting up. The main booth was outside in a concourse-type area and it was REALLY hot. With one table it wasn't much of a booth. We put one side against the shirt-sale tent, and the table in the front, and the other side was wide open. We put the tent up as well, but it wasn't a whole lot of help. Ron was outside as well, but in a deep tunnel-enterance area with shade and tall walls on either side. He also had a table. The Club Sanitarium was the locker room and they were selling drinks and snacks. It was indoors and airconditioned, so that was good. Anyway, the whole place was a madhouse. A lot of people kept trying to leave the venue and security was telling them they needed a stamp. They would then come and request one from us, and we would have to say no, and they would argue... it was a pain. At one point during the day a VERY drunk guy came up and wanted a stamp. He was there for about 10 minutes and finally said "so are you going to give me a stamp or not" - I said "no" and turned to help other folks and he punched me straight across the face, and then ran away. Yup, he actually ran away. Fucker. Ron got to go to the M&G tonight, so he was happy. During the M&G my friend Chet and his friend Rich showed up. They hung around with me at the booth. My friend Garrick was also coming, but had not shown up yet. Ron got back from the M&G and was stoked the whole band knew who he was (they'd been recognizing him in the crowd and pointing at him for a while now). I helped Toby bring the road case back, and then he showed me some upcoming merchandise ideas and some of the lame bootleg shirts that had been confiscated which were quite funny. I then ran back to where the booth was, and Garrick had shown up. The four of us went down to the floor to grab a spot. We were between the lighting towers and the stage, a little more than halfway to the lighting towers, and on stage left. The floor sucked, it was these wooden planks that were bending in and breaking. You felt like you were going to fall through it. Rich is a huge Metallica fan, Chet isn't really, and Garrick used to be... but they were all blown away by the concert. I forced them to sing along to Seek and the "Die Die Die" part to Creep. Before No Remorse James explained clearly "no matter what I say, you say 'YES'" - to prevent further "huh?" when he yelled "no!" Also during the pre-NEM fucking around, when Kirk was on drums and Lars on guitar, they played Am I Evil for a few seconds. During James' usual "I don't know if this is your first Metallica show, or your hundredth Metallica show"... he said "... your first Metallica show, or like Ron here, your hundredth Metallica show" and pointed down to Ron! Little fucker!! LOL. Garrick was really impressed with the St. Anger stuff live and was impressed with the setlist, and it seemed like everyone was really impressed by the show. After the show Chet, Rich, Garrick, Mareea, Ollie, Susan any myself all went back to the office (Chet and Garrick work at USC with me), and from there went (minus Garrick) to Denny's for bad food and good conversation. Ollie and Susan stayed at my place, and Chet gave them a ride, and Mareea also stayed at my place, so I gave her a ride to pick up her stuff from her motel, and then over to my house. Got a bit sunburned, but that's OK. It was a great show. Got to sleep at about 4:15am.


Day 42 -- 08/10/03 -- San Francisco, CA

City stopped in: San Francisco Pictures: San Francisco
Another one of those "I got 45 minutes of sleep" nights. Oh well, 'last day of the tour, no complaining, lets enjoy it!!' was my attitude this morning. We all had various planes to catch. Mareea and my flights were nearly the same time, so I drove her to the airport with me. Ollie and Susan's flights were later, but they caught a taxi to the airport when we left (sometimes it sucks having a 2-seater car). My flight was at 9, and I got through security pretty quickly. The flight was, obviously, very short. Renting a car sucked. The $35 dollar reservation went to $68 after everything was added in! Fuck!! Did you realize there's a fee for renting a car from a rental place actually located at the airport? Fuck that! Anyway, the whole process took a lot less time then I thought and I got on my way to SF. As I crossed the bridge into SF, I realized I didn't know exactly where the venue was... but Jeff to the rescue! I called him up and he gave me nice directions that got me right there. But I got there much earlier than I had planned... about 10am. The parking lots weren't supposed to open until 11, but they were opening them as I got there because traffic was backing up on the highway -- oops!! I parked and went over to the gate and called up Toby to see if it would be trouble for him to come get me a bit early today. He said he would, but there was only one problem -- he wasn't there yet!! Oops. Apparently, he ended up having to help load the plane last night, left later than planned, and the bus was late. He got there a little after 11, and found me close to 11:30. A guy named Aaron who worked for the venue got everything in order for the Club Sanitarium and the booth. He got us tables, chairs, and in general was great about all the stuff we needed. I was already sunburned from waiting out in the parking lot, and it was another hour or so before we got the road case and I could get my sunblock out of it. We had a pretty full house today from the club. Everyone was there, and I saw Vickie, Danna, Jeff, and Sam. The guest list was huge with people from all over. I ate lunch in catering with Vickie (she got me a meal ticket, thanks Vick!), and she pointed out tons of bigwigs from various places. The booth was on the side of the escalators that went to the various levels. We were also directly across from the KSJO booth, so we were easy to find. It was outside, but SF is pretty cool, so that wasn't so bad once we got the tent up. The Club Sanitarium was hard to get to, you had to go up an escalator, then walk a long way, then down a spiral (because it was on an in-between level the escalator didn't go to), then over a bit more, then in a door. It was a nice VIP-type room with chairs and tables, drinks and snacks. Most people seemed to like it. Strangely, unlike most venues, most fans walked right by us without stopping - even clubbers. When gates opened they were all hell-bent on getting to the front since this was an all-GA show. Ron and I had agreed I would go up to the front with him in SF, so I'd asked Toby if he could bring someone back from the M&G to take the road case back with him, so we could get a head start on getting to the front. However, during the M&G, while we were all waiting at the booth, people kept telling us how bad the crowd was. They hadn't separated "seats" and "floor" - the dumb asses in SF decided everyone should be able to crowd onto the floor. When Toby got back, Ron, his friend (I THINK her name was Sandy), and myself all went racing toward the stage. As we shoved our way through the crowd I noticed that this was, indeed, the worst crowd I'd ever been in. There was tons of people punching and kicking and biting, and death threats... it was nuts. It was also packed. At about half-way to the stage, it felt as packed as it usually does when you're AT the stage. But we managed to get about 3 people from the front, and exactly center, before we ever stopped moving forward. Whole thing took about 5 minutes (Ron is very good at shoving people out of his way). As we got there, Bizkit's set was ending, and we spent the next 20 minutes maneuvering our way against the bar. Once against the bar, I felt a bit better. Until a very large guy behind me started being an asshole. He started threatening to kill people, punched Sandy, pulled my hair a few times, punched a few other people. After a while we had convinced security to pull him out. Security started to, but let him off with a warning. About 5 minutes later, they decided he needed to go anyway. Well, he was directly behind me. So, as if I wasn't squished enough, they basically bent me over the rail and used my back as a ramp for this 250+ lb asshole. He somehow managed to grab my foot on his way out - and it's rather painful to have your foot higher than your waist, but the security guards managed to hit him until he let go. At this point his waist was just below most people's shoulders and most of his weight was on me, and shoving me into the bar. He got really angry and started fighting, which become ever more painful for me. I had absolutely no way to get air into my lungs due to my chest being collapsed and 8 security guards standing around me. A few minutes later they got him out and I took a huge breath -- which was a bit painful. I stayed about 10 minutes or so, and then the crowd got several measures worse. Most of the people in the center area where I was were starting to all admit that this was ridiculous. At one point, you could hear the rails starting to bend. When I could no longer breath, I decided to get out. I had the guards get me out, and promptly failed an attempt to take a deep breath. I lifted my shirt and noticed shades of yellow and light blue... and breathing was pretty painful. I figured I cracked a rib, flashed my working pass, and sat down behind the barricades for about 10 minutes. I then went out to the concourse, had a hot dog and called my friend Josh and managed to "talk" (or rather painfully croak) to him for the first 50 minutes or so of the concert. For the first time in my life, I didn't have a desire to watch the show, I just wanted to lay down somewhere in quiet. Anyway, during NEM I sat in the back of the seated section and watched the show from a place I've never seen a Metallica show from before. At the end of Sandman I went towards the gate where we were to hand out stickers, but Toby called me to tell me there would be no stickers tonight, backstage was too busy. I said cool, got in my car and drove to Jeff's house (who was giving me a place to stay). I called him, and he said he wouldn't be there for at least an hour, so I promptly went to sleep in my rental car. When Jeff, Brandy, John, and Jay got there, Jeff woke me up, and we went up to their apartment, talked briefly, Jeff showed me his various cool collections, and then we went to sleep. Falling asleep with cracked ribs was VERY difficult, but fortunately I was very tired. Breathing, laughing, and moving was excruciatingly painful. Before we went to sleep, everyone repeatedly warned me about Jay's snoring, and as promised, I woke up about an hour later to *very* loud snoring! So I put in my earplugs as everyone said I should have done when I went to bed, and promptly fell back to sleep.


Day 43 -- 08/11/03 -- Travel

City stopped in: Los Angeles (home)
I'm lucky I woke up. I barely heard the alarm with my earplugs in. But I got up, showered, headed to the airport, was really early and thus managed to get on an earlier flight, got home, and worked from home (due to the cracked ribs).


Quotes from the Road

When sleep-deprivation steps in, some fucked up things get said. Here's a small piece of some of the funnier things that transpired.
  • Joe (Dave's sister's fiance) in reference to Dave: "Plus you're all full of testosterone: 'Must pick up heavy things and fart'" (07/29/03)
  • "I'm a shitting ass motherfucker" - Dave (07/26/03)
  • "No one talks like that, I'm a fucking faggot" - Dave, after saying something stupid (07/26/03)
  • "If I had 8 [road] signs up my ass, I'd become a fucking porn star." - Dave (07/25/03)
  • After seeing a large column of concrete next to the highway with nothing on top, I said: "What is that holding up?"
    Dave responded matter-of-factly, "It's holding up air" (07/26/03)
  • "I always think of farts as immune from the wind" - Me (07/26/03)
  • M&G winner: "How long is the meet & greet?"
    Me: "Depends..."
    Him: "Is it during the show?" (07/26/03)

Closing Thoughts

While it does suck that the last weekend wasn't such a great one, I will say I'm not particularly unhappy with any part of the trip. I'd much rather have cracked a rib on the last show than the first show. The entire trip was an amazing experience that would be hard to ever top. It was really the best 5 weeks of my life. After the tour I got some special treats in the mail from Toby (thanks man!), but I don't want to give EVERYTHING away. =) (Those who know me can ask me). Thanks to everyone for helping out, and hopefully I'll see some of you next tour!



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