February 4, 2004 - Missoula, MT

I know I always mention how funny a guy our bus driver Jeff is. He loves to joke around and make us laugh. But he's also very serious about what he does and the ride to Missoula was one of those instances where his expertise came through for us. Missoula is where we were expecting the worst weather. Before the tour started my friend Suzanne McKillop who lives in Missoula had been warning me about the treacherous weather they've been having. They've been having a lot of below 0 degree temperatures.

Apparently right after I went to sleep the weather got really treacherous. First I heard that there was a lot of fog. Although he tried to avoid it, he hit a deer. The right front of our bus sustained some damage. Ted had been sitting up front and he said, "I did not need to see that." Later on in the drive while I was in the back lounge sleeping I could feel that we were on an incline and that the tires on the bus were spinning. It seemed like it was going on forever. We didn't have any traction at all and I could feel the bus sliding from left to right also. Although I was too tired and sleepy to be scared, I could tell it was really bad. At one point I got up to raise the blinds and see what was going on. I could see that we were riding dangerously close to a cliff. Snow was everywhere. I remember saying a short, silent meditation and I resigned myself to the fact that it was all in Jeff's hands. I must have slept another hour so when I woke up and went up front I remember walking by Derico's bunk and he said to me, "Did you hear all that sliding around we were doing?" When I got up front Joseph was sitting up there with Jeff while he was driving. The weather had cleared somewhat, but it was still kind of bad. Joseph told me the whole story about going up the snow covered mountain and how the bus was tossing and turning. Joseph jokingly/seriously said that we had gone 400 something miles and 50 of those miles were from the tires spinning. He said at one point Jeff stopped the bus to get out, check things out and wipe the windshield and it was so slippery that every step he took he almost fell. Personally it was the second scariest incident I've had on a tour bus. I want to express my gratitude to Jeff for being such a professional. I'm going to let Joseph tell you the story in his own words.....

Joseph: First we were driving to Missoula and we were driving pretty slow. The curtains on the front of the bus were closed and it's really foggy outside. All of a sudden I hear this "Y'all hold on now!" and then I hear the brakes screech and I hear this Baammm! I figured at first we had hit a car but then I noticed that we didn't stop. I look outside and there's these 3 three deer in the road . We had hit a deer. So we stopped and Jeff looked to see what kind of damage there was and fortunately it was minimal damage under the bus. Thank goodness because it was a pretty big deer that we had hit. So we're going on our way and everybody else had been watching a movie and had drifted off to their bunks to sleep. I'm the only one upfront, as usual I don't always make it to my bunk. I noticed the bus slowing down so I go up to the front and I look outside the curtains and it's all white out there but it didn't look very deep or dangerous but we were going VERY slowly. I could hear the driver cursing under his breath, you know. I look out and he stops the bus to check the traction and I noticed when he starts up again, that every step he takes he slides at least a foot to 18 inches towards the lane of incoming traffic. The road is 'banked' you know because it's a curve….and I'm thinking, 'Oh man, oh man, oh man!" So I go up front with him and we're just creeping up very slowly. And he's just spinning tires left and right and all the gauges are starting to show that things are heating up back there because all we're doing is spinning tires and spinning tires. So it's REALLY quiet now. I'm always the one telling all these jokes and instead I just shut all my jokes up! I'm just thinking - please let us just get up this hill! So we're just going and going and it feels like this hill is just never gonna' stop and we're just sliding like crazy. I had Jeff laughing at me - it was all over, I thought. And in my head I was saying "You know Lord, I haven't spoken to you in awhile - remember me? This is Joseph. I got a couple of favors to ask you!" It was pretty scary but after awhile we finally got up over the hill and slipped and slid right on into Missoula. That thing was just going straight up for miles and miles! Is seemed like it wouldn't ever stop. As we were going along, eventually, one by one everyone started creeping up to the front to see what was going on. They could either hear the wheels spinning or the bus slowing down. It was me, Derico, Anthony & Kurt sitting up front just as quiet as can be in the dark just hoping to get up this hill. Every so often the driver would open up his side window and ask someone driving by in the oncoming traffic how much longer it was going to be up the hill and they would say, "oh just another 4 or 5 miles" and we'd be thinking, 'Oh no!" That was pretty scary. Not just that we were spinning tires, but that we were also sliding. He had to keep making adjustments for the sliding. Buses unlike tractor trailers have only one pulling axle so that's why we were spinning so many wheels. It was not fun at all - it was definitely not cool!

As we were coming up on the town of Missoula, Jeff was pointing out landmarks. We saw some cows that had funny looking faces. He said that they were 'beef-alo' a mixed breed of cattle and buffalo. When I looked closely at them I could see that had buffalo heads on cow bodies. It was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. We drove up to the town of Lolo, MT. I think the book/movie 'A River Runs Through It' was based in that town. When we got into Missoula I was amazed by how beautiful the snow covered mountains were and we were right up on them. We weren't playing at the same place we were last year. But we did ride by the Wilma Theater. This time we were actually playing on campus in a ballroom at a University Center. The school provided a whole lot of loaders for us, so load in and set up went incredibly fast. The ballroom wasn't designed to be a concert area so the school hired a company to set up a stage and sound system. While I was setting up basses I hear somebody call my name. It was my friend Mark Mallard and his fiancé Pat. Mark's nickname is 'Duck' and I'm guessing it's because his last name is Mallard. We email each other pretty regularly through the year. Later my friend Suzanne McKillop and her son Forrest showed up. I hadn't met her son before. I liked him immediately. You can look at his face and tell that he's a good kid.

While Derico, Joseph and I were testing instruments we started playing old school tunes by Cameo and the SOS band. We had a lot of fun. After sound check, Mark and Pat said they would give me a ride to the local Ducati dealer. I was glad that I was finally going to make it to a dealership. At the dealership I showed them the bikes that my wife and I own and I hunted around for deals on accessories. After that we went to a Staples and a Best Buy to do some 'gadget' shopping. We then went to an Asian restaurant and we saw Kurt Story having dinner with Suzanne and Forrest. We took some pictures and then we headed back to the venue. Just before show time the band met in the dressing room to decide how we would start the show. The show was very good. My friend Mark used my camera to get a lot of good snapshots of the band. He took almost 70 pictures and most of them were excellent. At some point Toné and I are going to put a whole bunch of new pictures up on the web site. As a matter of fact Toné has a page that she's about to post soon as a 'Backstage Pass' for the 2003 tours VERY soon. Even though all our shows are non-smoking shows there were a couple of people that lit up during the show. From the stage we could see puffs of smoke rising to the ceiling. But they weren't smoking regular cigarettes if you know what I mean. But hey, they're college kids - what do you expect? We decided to do a funk set for the encore instead of the Earth Wind and Fire tune because we figured the crowd would be too young to remember that tune.

After the show we broke down the gear extremely fast. It was one of our fastest load outs and we had tons of help. My friends Mark and Pat decided they wanted to go to the show in Spokane the following day so I decided that I would ride with them. The bus was leaving that night. Mark, Pat and I were going to leave the following morning. I was hoping the band wasn't going to leave tonight because the weather was still bad and they had to travel through 'Lookout Pass' which is pretty treacherous in the winter. It was extremely dark and snowing, but I knew Jeff could handle it. I was happy to be getting a full night of sleep in a hotel room. I was also excited about being able to see 'Lookout Pass' and 'Fourth of July pass' during the day. I like traveling in this part of the country. The land is so different from what I'm used to. Once you get to the west of the Continental Divide, the terrain is totally different.

Here's a picture of Kurt, me, Forrest O'Connor and his lovely mom Suzanne McKillop...

peace & blessings

anthony