Oh, Albuquerque!

What an awesome town Albuquerque is... at least the Knob Hill area/few blocks that we explored during our stay. We rolled into Albuquerque really late Monday night/really early Tuesday morning after driving all night and pulled up in front of what the GPS thingy told us was Nirvan’s sister (and awesome jewelry designer) Dream Mullick’s house. Unfortunately, it was NOT Dream’s house that we pulled our noisy Road to Oprah tour bus in front of at 5am-ish. It was Susan’s. Fortunately, Susan was a real sweetheart. A stewardess for Southwest Airlines who offered us coffee, cereal, and a bed to sleep in if we needed it. No wonder her garbage man has a crush on her!

We all hit the hay pretty quickly after saying good morning and good night to Nirvan’s Mom, sister, and boyfriend Sterling. While I slept until the smell of food cooking woke me up in the afternoon, Brett (who slept on the bus), was awakened by Susan bringing him a cup of coffee. She then took him on a tour of Albuquerque. Oh yeah, and did I mention that she left 3 boxes of cereal and a carton of milk on the steps of our bus for us? God bless Susan the stewardess!

Upon awakening, we were off for some local promoting of that night’s event at the STOVE Gallery. There was a big animation festival in town, so we figured we’d hit that, and then the college. En route to the Animation Fest, we attempted an ill-advised U-turn, which caused our trailer to jackknife and busted the hitch. We stashed the caboose in a High School parking lot and called Dream, who proved to be our guardian angel on this stop. She took Levi to the auto shop while the rest of us hit the animation fest where we met some awesome folks from the Adobe company (who may donate some software for The 1 Second Film and website) as well as some nice Volunteers who really dug the project, the tour, and engaged us in a much-appreciated hug-fest.

Everything got fixed and we all regrouped to head to the space and set up, where we got to have our first “official” band practice with the current lineup (for 30 minutes) before the show started. At first it didn’t seem like many folks were going to turn up, but then the trickle turned into a stream and at one point in the evening we did have quite a nice, packed house.

At one point we had a crowd of people sitting at the edge of the stage (just like the old days!) playing all kinds of instruments – from tambourines to xylophones to sleigh bells to kazoos – for one of my favorite renditions of Home that the Evangenitals have ever played. Everyone was playing and singing at the top of their lungs and we got it all caught on tape… coming soon to YouTube!

It is my great hope that Mike and Nirvan will get the illusive “intro video” up on YouTube today so that we can start sharing the VIDEO version of all of our various and sundry adventures and encounters on the Road to Oprah, as well as my random ramblings.

It’s wonderful: I miss LA and I’m loving this life on the road. Ah, the miracle of simultaneity. We’re in the midst of a few brutal days of driving and playing. Texas is huge, and it’s where we’re heading and right smack in the middle of where we go after that. Right now, we’re closing in on Roswell, NM to shoot some footage of the Evangenitals and the Aliens (and impromptu Ode to Scientology video perhaps?) and then to Carlsbad Caverns to play in the caves. After that, we drive as far as we can before passing out for the night, in the hopes of behind close to Austin in the morning.

Oh Austin!