NC to TN to OH

To the three people who read this blog: I’m sorry to leave you hanging!

North Carolina was great.  I have another crazy story but I’m not sure if I’m allowed to share this publicly.  It involves a young man joining the armed forces straight out of high school after being assured that he was non-deployable, then realizing that there is no such thing as “non-deployable,” and the resulting ordeal involved in trying to get out of the army before being sent off to war.  Suffice it to say, it wasn’t easy but did make a very entertaining story.

After North Carolina we headed to Knoxville, TN…side note, did you know you could rent a two bedroom house in Knoxville for $500 a month? With a garden and a porch?  And Knoxville is a pretty awesome place – really small, but a TON of musicians there and music happening all over the place…and yes, vegan treats.

We played two great shows on WDVX, East-Tennessee’s public radio station based out of the visitor’s center in downtown Knoxville.  First, how cool is that?  Free, live music every day broadcast live from the visitor’s center!  I don’t know why more cities don’t adopt something like this; it’s great for tourism, great for local artists and great for attracting touring acts.  WDVX is so supportive of independent music AND they started out years ago in a travel trailer! You can check ’em out here.

After four days in Knoxville we headed up to Ohio to visit our best friend, Ryan…and play a few shows.  Friday we were in Cincinnati and next Friday we’ll be heading to Athens for a show at one of our all time favorite venues, Donkey Coffee.

In trailer news, we got some new tires and our trailer started smelling like urine…probably unrelated.  I could really get used to this – not the urine part – but the living in a trailer.  Being on the road has a timeless quality to it, and I’ve lost all concept of time, which I actually really enjoy.

The other night our carbon monoxide alarm went off – we didn’t buy it, the previous owner just left it in there (pretty handy it turns out).  I wasn’t sure if it worked at all..usually there’s just a little green light that flashes sometimes – but the other night an alarm went off and the friendly green light switched to a red light.  This morning I realized that below the red light it says “move to fresh air.”  We didn’t move to fresh air, but we did open the roof vent and turn on the extractor fan and the air conditioner – to be honest, I was too tired to really care much about dying.  My only concern was that I would wake up next to Elie’s lifeless corpse, which I’m not sure I could deal with – but the thought didn’t keep me awake for too long…maybe it was the carbon monoxide.  So just in case we both die of carbon monoxide poisoning (because Elie will NOT be dying without me) take comfort in the fact that we died free and happy, and we do really enjoy our rest!