My friend and I are taking a 10 day, 2,000 mile road in the northeast US this March. We're not doing it to see the sights, we're not doing it to 'find ourselves'. We're following a band. We'll be living out of suitcases and couchsurfing with friends. You see, we are moe.rons. Like Slipknot and their Maggots, ICP and their Juggalos, fans of the band moe. have embraced this self-deprecating moniker and wear it as a badge of honor. After this tour, my friend and I will have seen this band a combined total of 158 times in the last 7 years. These excursions have resulted in some of our greatest memories. We've met heaps of people along the way who have turned into great friends that we can count on seeing at future shows. Tales of hotel parties that shouldn't be reprinted in public domain (how would you feel if you knew we were doing ecstasy with your child's kindergarten teacher the night before?). These trips always bring out the best and worst in people, and some make it into rotation as stories that will be retold for years to come. Focus: I want to hear your road trip stories. Did you pack 8 people into a sedan and set off westward? Hitchhike your way across the country? Hop trains back in college? I want to hear about it. Share your experiences. From tips and tricks to emergency fixes to engine block foil dinner recipes. Focus (The Second): Recommend some off-the-beaten-path touristy things to do along the tour at any point. Restaurants, museums, hole in the wall bars, offbeat oddities, etc. The tour runs from Burlington > Boston > Albany > Stroudsburg, PA > Buffalo > Pittsburgh > Philadelphia > Baltimore. We have 2.5 days to kill between shows in Stroudsburg and Buffalo, there's gotta be something cool to do in that time frame.
Alt-Focus: I feel obligated to tell you that Scranton is between Stroudsburg and Buffalo. Although, our tourist attractions revolve around coal, trains, and The Office. The bar scene is not terrible, but we are pretty close to New Jersey. Between the fake tans and the fist pumping, you might not be able to see out of one of your eyes in the morning.
For me road trips have always been gruelling endurance tests. I spent a lot of my childhood summers doing the three day drive to Kegaska, Quebec (Near uh.. Natashquan and Harrington Harbour. Whatever it looks like this Spoiler When I bought my car my goal was to get one that could mission for miles without a fill up (and I can get 1000 km out of a tank, so mission accomplished) but I've yet to really put that to the test. Closest I've come so far was going Toronto > Buffalo > Chicago trying to get to Lollapalooza. Only highlight was our desire to find and have White Castle for the first time.. and stopping in some shitstain ghetto on the east side of Cleveland to do so. It took my british friend 20 minutes to convey that he wanted a 'Fanta' to the mess behind the counter (there is no way to describe her any way else. She was riddled with acne and wider than she was tall), and my friend being told by a topless black guy 'Yo man this bike fo sale' when he went across the street to a convenience store.
After high school a friend and I drove from Columbus down to Miami and back up through Nashville. Miami was definitely the low-point of the trip. All the beautiful women can't make up for the over-abundance of wiggers and old people. Nashville was pretty great though. I'm not a huge fan of country music, but it was a fun experience to walk into just about any restaurant and hear live music. We also went to a hole-in-the-wall strip club called Brass Stables. Apparently, being in the "historic district" part of town meant they could ignore clothing and contact regulations. A middle-aged stripper gave me my first lapdance to "Dani California," and then effectively ended my childhood by showing me what a vagina looks like after years of abuse.
Ugh, I know plenty of people that do that "festi-tripping' shit with their "festi-families." Makes me want to puke in my lap. Jerry died a long time ago, you shouldn't need a miracle to take a bath. I've come to love road trips that my friends take for college football road games. One of my buddies tries to make it to every one, regular season and all, depending on the circumstances. We've been on three bowl game trips in the past few years and everyone has been funner than the last. The biggest tips I can give for summer trips if you are going to be at a festival for 3 days in the sweltering heat, is bring an industrial size bottle of Gold Bond and buy dry ice for your cooler. Dry ice is cheap as is but beats the fuck out paying the jacked up prices at music festivals charged for ice.
You're not far off. There's one festival that I'll attend every year, and that's moe.down. It's close to home for me, and it's relatively cheap. I know I'll constantly be running into friends from all over the US who treat it not just as a festival but a family reunion. I haven't missed a moe.down since my first five years ago. It's also the only time I'll go from Thursday evening to Monday afternoon without a shower. It's funny that you mention the gold bond. Our 'festi-family' if you will has gone under the name of Camp Gold Bond at moe.down since its inception 12 years ago. Every year, the denizens of moe.ville elect a mayor*. It's usually an inanimate object. Previous mayors include A Carbon Rod, Taxidermied Squirrell Humping a Can of Utica Club, Tits n' Whiskey, and Vagina Scratcher (a tie between Vagina and Buttscratcher). Gold Bond nearly won this year until Bob Weir was nominated last minute and swept the vote. With slogans like "Splash Your Gash" "Paint Your Taint" and "99 problems but an itch ain't one", we think we stand a fair chance this year. *- much like the points on Whose Line?, the mayor of moe.ville elections don't really mean anything. moe.ville exists only during moe.down, the elections are held Sunday night, and the mayor has no responsibilities or powers. It's more of a bragging rights type of deal
My friends and I were the types who would get bored with our city right quick, so we road tripped a lot to surrounding cities- Kitchener had some decent bars, Hamilton fucks sucks dick, Niagara Falls in a personal favourite that can be reached in less than 2 hours-- Toronto's fun depends on the quality of beer bar you know or the quality of chemical drugs you ingest. I think one of my favourite memories happened on the ACTUAL road, but it's funniest from my point of view-- I was always the driver for our road trips, one night when we were going to St. Catherines I took a hit of some of the crazy ecstasy that was being passed around in 1999. My friends (who didn't do that stuff) didn't trust me to drive, so my friend Shemp drove. Now keep this in mind: Never ONCE have I let somebody else drive my car. Never ONCE have I ever hit an animal with my car- seriosuly, not even a squirrel. Coming down Hamilton mountain, my buddy smokes the largest raccoon in the history of North America with my car while I'm tripping balls in the back seat between my two huge friends. I mean, raccoons can get big- this thing was the size of a small beanbag chair, the car lept off the surface of the road. At the same time, the traffic in front of us gridlocked, so Shemp had to zig-zag between stopped cars after hitting the roadkill booby-trap, missing other vehicles by inches on either side. Not a scratch. Fifteen seconds of terror followed by five uninterrupted minutes of howling laughter. One of my favourite road moments. Lots of Ontario cities, but I am still yet to try Montreal. It is the one and only city that I hear nothing but good things.
Yup. Focus: I want to hear your road trip stories. We'd pulled into a big roadside motel kindof place and two of the group disappeared off into the halls so that the other two of us could book a two-person room for all four of us to sleep in (we got kicked out of a different motel at about 1am earlier in week for pulling the same stunt, although they only found out there weren't two people in the room because the four of us convinced the three friends with us to join us in ecstasy & singsongs) - obviously any way to save money on these things you take. Except this place was full, and a few mean fucking drunks hanging round the lobby angry that they couldn't get a room started taking the piss out of my mate for looking like jesus - he's about 6'3, long hair, bearded and had a bad 'absolutely fucked on cheap rum/wearing a dashiki' combination going on. While I was finding out we couldn't get a room, he'd reacted to this teasing by talking down to them and claiming that he was a famous singer in a psychedelic rock band on their way to london for a big gig. They ended up insisting we play them a song, but my mate was so fucked he couldn't remember the words to anything except "Knockin' On Heaven's Door", so I ended up playing the song with a howling, drunken, african-dressed jesus in front of a crowd of piss-heads ready to fuck us up if we proved not to sound like a famous psychedelic rock band (we didn't) and a crowd of bemused people waiting to see if they could get rooms. They followed us out to the car, which was tense, but it turned out that as the only sober person (driving), I was the only one who realised how fucking awful we sounded, so they just wanted to point us to the next nearest motel and wish us luck with our tour.