the past few weeks (part 4)

So, Ohio was cool. I finally got in around 12:30am after my hectic day of dealing with Megabus, but I soon found myself resting up at my friend Joe Egar’s place a couple of hours later. Joe lives in Aurora and came to pick me up from Tower City in downtown Cleveland where the Megabus stop is. We played some late night pool accompanied by some wine and then went to bed. The next morning, Joe, Katie Lamoreau, and myself went to see the new Transformers movie: “Revenge of the Fallen”. Talk about shitty! Honestly, this was one of the worst films I’ve seen in a long time. The plot just kept getting thicker and thicker (but not in the good kind of way). Every twenty minutes it seemed like a new character was introduced. Sometimes thick is good, like when you’re talking about a milkshake, but the way this movie’s plot was thick reminded me of a tub of lard. Seriously, it just kept getting longer and longer, but for no good reason. Basically, it just got worse and worse and towards the end I even found myself laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of the whole thing.
Eventually the bad movie was over. We went back to Joe’s place and swam in his pool, which was really warm and refreshing. Later our friend Mike Auerbach (Joe’s roommate) got home from work, and he jumped in the pool too. Mike, Joe, Katie, and I swam for a few hours and then got out of the pool to continue with the rest of the night’s plans – go into Cleveland and check out Great Lakes Brewery.
I’ve never been to Great Lakes Brewery, but I’ve most certainly had their beers. They make some great products, like for example: Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, Dortmunder Gold Lager, and Commodore Parry’s Ale. We got to try most of these beers fresh off the tap and also we got to take a free tour of the brewery as well.
Unfortunately by the end of the night, I got a little bit too drunk (that’s what happens when they give you free beers) and apparently I ended up flicking off some bartender at a bar later on which supposedly got us (me) kicked out of the bar. I don’t remember any of this. I just recall waking up in Joe’s basement and trying to beat “Aladdin” on Sega Genesis. I got to the last level where unfortunately, Jaffar beat me and I lost the game after playing for over an hour. I swear, no matter how many apples I threw at that fucker, he just kept coming back at me with these huge fire balls! I swear video games can bring out the worst in me. (I’ve been known to throw controllers across rooms)
Later that afternoon, Joe, Katie, Mike, and me drove to Columbus, where Katie lives. Once in Columbus, we went to a live outdoor concert event taking place downtown called Comfest. Comfest was cool, but way too overcrowded. We walked onto the festival site for about 30 mins before deciding to leave. Beer lines were expensive and none of the bands seemed worth seeing, so we ended up visiting a local bar.

This was cool by me because at that point we met up with Shanna (who drove down with her ex-boyfriend from Chicago) and my friend from college, Dan Blommel. Blommel had a dog with him that was very cool. And in order to accommodate his dog, we had to find a bar with an outside patio, which we did. Blommel, Shanna, and the rest of us hung out at a bar for the majority of the night. The bar actually had a great selection of beers on tap. I enjoyed a Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA as Blommel and I conversed about our recent adventures. Over drinks, I learned that Blommel had enlisted for the Navy but then decided not to go through with it and thus was planning on hopping the border to Canada to avoid his duties. I swear, there are some things you just can’t make up even if you try.

After hanging out at the bar for a while, Joe, Mike, Katie, and I went back to Katie’s apartment. There, we met Katie’s friend Todd. Todd is also my friend from back in the day when we used to go to Wooster together. We got more drunk at Katie’s apartment and then went to the nearby traintracks to hang out and see a train go by. We waited by the traintracks for nearly an hour before a train finally came. We laid down right next to the tracks that the train was coming in on. Then, all of a sudden…WHOOOSH!!! The train came rumbling through and it was exhilarating to see all that steel moving by us at such a fast pace of motion, all while lying with our backs down on the gravel 2 feet away from the tracks! The train eventually passed us by, so we went back to Katie’s apartement to pass out.

The next day Mike and Joe left for Cleveland, leaving me alone with Katie in Columbus. Katie is a graduate student at Ohio State University, meaning she is always very busy. Therefore having me in her apartment all day while she was trying to study/work was not the most productive thing for her. So, I asked Katie to drop me off at our friends Ryan and Nelli’s place out of consideration for her. Ryan and Nelli live in a large house near campus with four other people. Katie and I have had multiple friends who have lived in this house over the years and due to the constant drama that has gone on in the house because of its inhabitants’ active social lives, it has earned the very appropriate nickname of “The House of Doom”.

Shanna was staying at the House of Doom as well, so Katie dropped me off there with her. We then went to a nearby park where Ryan and a couple of her other house-of-doom-mates were playing “bike polo”. If you’ve never heard of or seen bike polo before, it is really a very interesting game to watch. Basically the best way to explain it is that it’s a game of polo (yes, polo) played by a bunch of young hipster-type kids on fixed-gear bikes instead of on horses. They also play on concrete and in this case the game was being played on an old street hockey court at OSU. Shanna and I stayed to watch the whole game, which was pretty fun and then we walked back to the House of Doom with Ryan and one of her friends.

The next day I hung out at the house all day. It was really a pretty dull day until Katie called me after her work to go out for BuffaloWings. We picked up our friend Todd once again for the event. Afterwards, since Katie still had some work to do back at home, Todd and I hung out for the rest of the night and ended up going on a two-hour bike ride with a bunch of kids from The House of Doom and like 30 other people. I borrowed somebody’s bike for the event which apparently happens every Monday night in Columbus.

The Monday Night Ride, as it is called, is basically just a bunch of hipster-type bike kids riding bikes through all of Columbus while consuming alcohol. Todd and I each had a can of JOOSE for the event (a Sparks knock-off) and had a really fun time. It had been a really long time since I last rode on a road bike (I used to only have BMX’s) so it took a bit of getting used to. By the end of the night though, I was having a great time cruising through the streets with a massive pack of bikers. I was also very impressed by the community feeling that this group gave off. At certain intersections, bikers would block traffic to make way for our large group, much like a funeral procession. And whenever one of the riders got a flat tire, our entire pack would stop and wait for them to make the repair. It was a great time and we eventually finished up the ride, and Todd dropped me off at Katie’s where I slept for the night. In the morning, Katie dropped me off at the Greyhound station.

I got a Greyhound bus to Akron where I was meeting up with my friend Marissa. Marissa is one of my good friends from college who is actually getting married very soon. Unfortunately since I’m on tour now, I can’t make it to her wedding. So I decided I’d make an effort to meet up with her while I was in Ohio, and on Tuesday we hung out together all day with our friend Katie Kranyak. We went for a walk in the park and at one point I had an allergic to reaction to a flower that I smelled. I think I got my nose too close to it or something.

Anyway, I stayed the night at Marissa’s new house too and woke up early the next morning to catch a Greyhound out of Cleveland – this one traveling to Syracuse, New York for our next gig. Katie dropped me off at the station around 8:00am. I tried to doze off on the bus but had a hard time falling asleep so I ended up making conversation with the woman sitting next to me for a while. We talked about all sorts of topics from traveling, to family sizes, cell phones, and Michael Jackson, just to name a few things. I love meeting random people while traveling. Greyhound buses always make for the best social experiments and situations, but never for a comfortable sleep unfortunately.

Finally, when I arrived in Syracuse, Mike Huebner picked me up from the bus station. We drove to Oswego where we are now staying in a small house with five bedrooms. The town is quite small and has lots of hills. I brought my skateboard and so I have been riding around town quite a bit. It’s a lot of fun riding these hills and our proximity to Lake Ontario makes for some nice scenery. Looks like this will be ‘home’ for the next two months or so. It is nice to finally be settled down for a little bit. As much as I love traveling, it’s nice to finally have a chance to stay in one place for a while, even if that place is located in the far part of northern New York in a little town called Oswego. Damn, it almost feels like my college town of Wooster all over again.