Chapter 3: Oren dazed and confused after waking in motion

 

 I awoke dizzy and disoriented somewhere around noon to find Doug behind the wheel, tired, veering onto the rumble strips built into the shoulder of the highway…time for another switch! We drive in shifts like maybe the military does, one driver, one navigator and a shift change means a good 10 minute break of rest area, ammonia filled bathrooms and a leg-stretch, the likes of which you cannot truly appreciate until you spend 10 hours with your feet balanced on top of a snare drum or road case of some sort. With newborn legs and bloodshot eyes, we make our way back into Tiny Elvis for the next thousand hours of driving…our campaign slogan: A sticker on every toll booth, every toilet, rest stop, gas pump and anything you can reach through the front window! Miles to go before we sleep… – soundly anyway!

Tennessee, a long word to spell and again, holy crap a long state to drive. I’m on point and the sun is shining as we enter Knoxville, TN. Nothing but a straight shot now through Nash-Vegas (that’s Nashville for you northerners) all the way past Memphis. Barely into the trip I was already stating that we WOULD BE stopping for gumbo on Beale St on the way back. Somewhere just west of Memphis, our  credit card, the one that we were using for gas,  got flagged for fraud…as if a cult of gas thieves were touring the country charging their way to greatness.  That was a load of fun.  A bus full of high school band members and cheerleaders made up for it though! We pulled into the first rest stop we could find before the AK border alongside what I’m going to call the “Band Camp Bus” to an out pouring of high school girls in band T-shirts. We must look like a rock band or something, because they were right on point asking us if we were…we said sure, hang out, we have some free stuff for you!  As I jumped into the van, I encountered what shall now be known as The Sleeping Doug.

Chapter 4: The Sleeping Doug… As told by Oren

• The sleeping Doug- a sleeping Doug is not easily awoken. From the dark corners of Ireland come this odd animal, whose snores sound like the mating call of a door that needs to be generously sprayed with WD40.  Extremely heavy and hard to move when not willing to move.
• The awake Doug – a promo assembling animal of epic proportions. Able to maintain for hours upon hours of stickering cards and pasting download cards onto said cards, without batting an eyelash…all this animal requires is an albatross and a stiff cup of coffee.
• The Interim Doug – falls asleep on top of all the merch and promo stuff he assembled while in the awake state.

Cheerleaders waiting I climb into the van’s back seat to grab some stickers and download cards for the girls – what did you think I was going to say? That’s not even legal in Arkansas! – Only to find them under a very heavily sleeping Doug. First a layer of blankets, then Doug, then all our merch, a formidable tour bus bed… I look down and see white and think “that must be the back of a pile of stickers…” I reach and bring back a sleeping Doug foot with a white sock (pretty clean white sock thank god!) on it. Go fish…dammit, he’s laid out all across the merch bag and stuff he was working on! I get my inflatable hulk muscles on and roll him until I have 2 square inches to grab some stuff for the eager hands outside. Ahh mission accomplished…everyone has what they need, Tiny Elvis has cooled off, cheerleaders appreciative – again, minds out of the gutter please We finally cross the Mississippi River and find ourselves in Arkansas…Ahh Arkansas, I like to call it the rip-off state. Yes, the state that gave us Bill and Hlll is also apparently short on original ideas for city names.  Ar-kansas, Arkedelphia, Texarkana, we shit you not.

More to come....stay tuned!