Day Nine: Saturday 11 March

   About 4pm we depart for Duluth (outside Atlanta) for our last show at a place called, I think, The Club. I am driving and instantly get pulled over for driving without my lights on. After I show the man my coldsteel Tek9, he backs off. Actually, what I probably said was, "Oh, sorry, officer, I didn't realize that was a problem." He let us off with a warning; we're lucky. Well, Michael & I are lucky; Dave is out $93 from PA...

   Outside of Duluth there is a massive unbelievable traffic jam, but eventually we get to the industrial park where the show is supposed to be (it's not a club but a warehouse where punkrawk kids put on shows). In big letters in the window it reads: Home of the Disgruntled Milkmen and Chambers of Horror. Strange. Stranger still is the fact that no one is there, though it's around 7pm. We figure we're just early and head back over to the huge mall complex by I-75 to find something to eat. We end up at a Chili's (um, a very punk Chili's...) and get a table for 10, since Michael has not yet rejoined us from Atlanta. As the rest of us order some food and drink, Andy and Rachel depart to go meet some guy south of us who is going to sell Andy some Nintendo 64 stuff. Apparently the Pony Express doesn't run up to State College...

   Anyroad, time passes, Michael & Bob return, Andy & Rachel return, and eventually it's after 9pm, and we've not roused anyone at the phone number we've got for the club, and our periodic drives back to the warehouse show us nothing. So we've got a pretty good idea the show isn't going to happen at all, which is kind of upsetting. (Days later a fan in the area reported that HE was told, when he called the club number, that there was a gas leak and the show was canceled for that reason. Of course the BAND didn't receive the courtesy of that call...thanks, Brett, Disgruntled Milkman booking guy.) We go to a Borders Bookstore across the street whiling away more time, where I cannot resist the irony of purchasing a Noam Chomsky CD (Smash the State!), and eventually we all head back to the club around 10.30 for one last try.

   It's still deserted, but we decide to try the doors again, and this time, it's open. Several of us run inside and see stacks of stereo equipment and computers, and then--comically--we set off an alarm and run outside panicking just as the ISG van pulls up. We scream at them to HAUL ASS!, which they do in their ISG-driving fashion: Andy calmly waits for a car to pass by the entrance, and the people inside the car (we imagine) are taking a pretty long hard look at all of us, what with the two suspicious vans and the alarms going off in the Chambers of Horror...

   But we pull out and get about a mile down the road and pull off and are just laughing ourselves sick: it's a great caper. I caught much of it on videotape, so that someday we can be featured on a FoxTV show about "Dumb Bands Who Videotape the Crimes They Pull". It's actually a really, really nice way to end the Tour.

   We decide to drive back to Gainesville, and ISG to begin the trek to PA, so we say our goodbyes with hugs and CD trades and genuine regret at seeing it all end. They're good people, and we wouldn't have enjoyed this trip half as much without them. We hit I-75 and are home around 4am, tired but glad to have rocked and not died. Ultimately the Tour was great fun, but man, I don't want to think about planning another one for a while. But hooray for us, I say. The wheel keeps turning...

   The very next night Dave's other band the Exes plays in Gainesville -- it's like the Tour never ends.

On to the Wrap-Up.