Day 5 - Aug. 10 - Sunday

I have digressed, quite heavily. In the morning, we continued through california, stopped for food and then headed to the beach in Santa Monica. This was my favorite part of the day. I love love the ocean, maybe more than any other aspect of the outdoors. There's something about its vastness and its strength that gets me.







I walked out to the water just to get my feet wet at first and then was easily persuaded to just jump in. So I did, fully clothed. I let the waves carry me and the salt scratch my throat. The water wasn't as cold as I'd remembered from the year before. I stood soaked in the sand grinning waiting to dry.
I wish the ocean wasn't so far from my home.


We drove down a crowded highway and arrived at a venue with locked doors. No one answered the phone, and even after we'd eaten dinner and come back it was still empty at 8pm. So what's a band to do? Go buy beer.

We walked to a store, came back, and finally things were going. We met the other band we were playing with, who were really nice. Ann, Rob's sister came with some friends, as did Ben who Trapdorea stayed with when we played at the Calvary Church in New York City during our last tour. Mike, Travis, Taylor and Rob had friends come to see us so we hung around in the darkened parking lot laughing and talking until brian went on.

Around midnight, twas finally time for Balmorhea to play. We spent forever setting everything up, only to find out the piano, both acoustic guitars and my violin weren't coming through the PA. awesome. Frustrated, we surrendered and played an acoustic set. The crowd gathered round and we did well for the circumstances. They seemed to like it a lot and could actually hear everything, which was cool. set: New Acoustic song, En route, New Banjo song, and Cabbage Town. We ended with the second half of "Settler" (or what you may know as the clapping song). Gets 'em every time. It's always a winner.



Post show things got really silly. Megan and Nicole spontaneously jumped into funny dances to music we made by singing. By the way, Meg's role is the self-declared motivator. She comes around to each of us after the show and tells us how great we did.

"How do we respond? Do we all say the same thing?" I asked her.

Meg: "Well, Nicole always giggles. Aisha always proudly accepts. Mike always accuses me of being drunk. and Rob just says no." haha. In the car, Rob finished out his day of driving as we listened to a lot of Modest Mouse and sang along in between sleeping. I remember laughing a lot and talking about Snick and old nickelodeon shows. My favorite moment was looking to my left and seeing Mike sneakily emerging from the back, wide-eyed, grinning and leaning well over the second row of seats, his back nearly touching the van's ceiling. After a slew of funny comments he said he was just trying to keep awake. Thats surely a different way of accomplishing that goal.

After the show we drove to Santa Barbara, the land of rich people, huge homes and Oprah's house hidden behind thick tall trees. We divided up the rooms and slept. Tomorrow, San Francisco.