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Baltic Tour Volumen 1's Tour Diary (2003)
(Tour:Baltic) - toured with Josh Vanek, Andy Smetanka, Mike "Private Dick, Dirty Finn" Valentine - Toured Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania |
09/05/2003 Doug and Bacon get wet
Day 5 - Entry 1
Right now we are zipping down the highway towards Helsinki at 120 kph. It's 3:30pm and we are just leaving Porvoo. The show was nuts! It was just us so we played 2 sets and really gave it our all. People were really receptive to our sounds. After a few drinks, and into our second set, they started dancing and whooping it up. We sold some cds and passed the hat around.
They gave us a case of beer and everyone wanted to buy us shots. Finns don't seem to take refusals to drink offers so well, so we quit trying... heh. The bartender was mixing up special shots for us to try and I noticed that he was writing them down (even though he was offering them). So, I started to worry that this was going to be a "Blues Brothers" situation. But, that wasn't the case at all. Chris (the bartender) aand Jocke (the owner/bartender/sound guy) made us feel like kings.
After the show, we went with a local composer/jazz musician to his sailboat and had some apple and pear cider. I was enraptued by him (as, I think were the rest of us.) He learned all his english on the road when he was touring as a musician. He didn't know a lot of words, but he spoke how Hemmingway wrote. He called his boat "my Harley". The water is like the highway and the islands like gas stations. It was awesome.
Anyway, as we were leaving, Doug (who was in Duggie mode) freaked out and jumped off of the dock onto the soft river bank. Only, what looked like a rolling bank was really the tops of reeds that were about 10 feet up from the river bottom. Bacon saw what was happening and tried to catch Doug and Doug sorta tackled Bacon at the same time. Anyway, long story short, they both got wet and a little bruised. At this point in the evening, it was getting chilly so they hauled ass for the 20 some-odd blocks back to the guesthouse. Andy and I stayed at the sailboat and made sure our new Finnish friend, Antti, was cool. All night, every time we'd step out of the cabin onto the deck, he'd say "Don't go in the water". So, when we did, he was a little concerned. Anway, crazy end to a crazy night that we'll never forget.
NOTE: It actually wasn?t the baltic sea. That just sounded more dramatic. It was a river. Miikkaa gave us a hard time about it, so thus the corrective footnote.
NEW: Allright, here it is! The picture you've all been waiting for. Here's a picture of the treacherous walk up the dock. Notice those reeds to the right of the picture? Well, if you are wasted then it's very possible to confuse those reeds for a soft river bank. However, they are 8-10ft reeds in 3-4ft of water with a nice rocky riverbed underneath.
Here's Rusty and Bryan showing of Antti.
Here's Antti's boat (it's the red one in the middle).
And, last but not least, here's Doug's dumb ass, soaking wet!!!!! I think, at this point, he still isn't sure what just happened. I mean, look how happy he looks! When we pulled Bacon out of the water he exclaimed, "You tackled me into the water!" or something like that. To which, Doug responded, "Don't blame me". Heh heh... See, it's funny because it wasn't me.
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