The Carolinas. I am a fan. Plus some other news.

At 4:00 this morning we finally found a hotel that is not a poster child for those 'Black Light' tests that they advertise late at night. Ahem... I guess we picked the worse possible time to NOT make a reservation in Salem NC How were we supposed to know that there was some furniture sales extravaganza and that every hotel in a 50 mile radius has been booked to the brim for the past 5 months? "No big deal, we'll just head down south about 30 miles and find a Hampton Inn (our favorite Hotel -so far- for the buck) and drift into a sleep Brigadoon.

"We're sorry sir, we all filled up on a count of the race and all. Nearest Hotel might be up in Salem." Which is, of course, where we just were. So 17 miles south of whatever-town-that-was and 7 smoke-infested-lobbies-inhabited-by-hotel-clerks -telling-us-they-have-no-vacancies later, we found a clean hotel and bit the bullet, spending over 100 smackers a night for the next few days. We saved some money and slept in the SUV for about 4 hours until the nice guy at the front desk could let us check in early and not get fired for not charging us a half day.

But first... we went to Ihop and gorged on some sinful breakfast. Well... I did anyway. aaahhh. I haven't eaten that scrumdiliouciously in a while. After Ihop we camped out in the Hotel parking lot, turned on some Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour" just soft enough to NOT hear it clearly, and drifted to sleep. We were awakened by a few gentlemen in the car next to us who seemed to be in the mood to tell each others life stories while smoking and laughing. LOUDLY I might add. Never had I wanted to punch a man so badly. I actually came really close to tossing a cup of day-old water over the top of the SUV to gently ruin the story-telling mood and break up their little pow-wow.

In other news....

We played at Jammin Java, Columbia SC last night and it was a load of fun. Before playing there I admit I had decided that was not a fan of coffee shop gigs. They are not Amber's fav's either but hey. However the Jammin Java crowd made the playing a worth all the expresso-machine-noise that you can endure. It is not the coffee, the people (sometimes) or the coffee shop milieu in general that bugs me, it is just that I have zero concentration powers in that environment. My concentration powers is to coffee shop what Superman is to Kryptonite, or Samspon is to Delilah, or Homer is to Donuts, or Gilligan is to Skipper. Little Buddy!!!

In other, other news...

We will be slipping through Nashville on the way home to see a few fine folk that we know there, participate in a Chili Cook-off, hopefully get to meet in person C-Hammer if you are reading this, Friday meet a few of those Nashvillians in the Label bighouses and then Saturday we are back to H-Town.

Unfortunately Shaun Groves and Brian Seay will be out of town so... Toilet Papering their house would just be half as fun. There went that part of the trip. Geeze. That reminds me, Contgrats to Shuan Groves for, from all accounts, a great show. I am sure it will be a hit record even if he thinks he sounds like Neil Diamond on one of the recorded nights. "Sweet Caroline... We commin' to America....TODAY!!!!"

Cheers to all and to all a good night. Thanks to all my blogging buddies for posting fun, thoughtfull and entertaining material that has helped me to every-other-nightly unwind. Special thanks to B-diddy (Brant) for the idea to write a Chesterton Pirate song. I don't know if I'll have time but it sure sounds fun.