A JOURNEY TO THE UNITED KINGDOM
by Amy Rickertsen

Today we are finally leaving. I can’t believe the organization that went into getting our stuff packed in nice tight little 99-pound bundles. I searched far and wide for containers that would meet the airline dimensions that would hold our pedals and misc. stuff - all my cute vintage luggage pieces that I usually use just wouldn’t take the abuse. I’m terrified of our digital mixing board leaving the security of its shock mount case for a compact lighter version with no shocks. I won’t watch that one as it scales the conveyer belt. What in the world will become of Troy’s tube amp? He did his best to armorize the thing by building wooden face plates that protect the grille and knobs on the front and the tubes in the back - nothing to help if it‘s dropped. He designed a cool plexi glass front that would have been easy to take on and off when it goes through security and customs but in the final placement of some hardware - he uses his fingers to pry something instead of going and finding the tool and the plexi splits open his forefinger and middle fingers of his right hand- basically the two fingers he needs to hold a pick!!!! He goes flying past us saying, “I messed up, I messed up... I can’t look!” At first I am mad, but just because I said, “Wait let me get the vise grips!” And he didn’t listen. Then I move on to being scared. I’m a freak about infection and germs. That’s what happens when you study microbiology. You get to worry about all the stuff you never knew existed. Just like the vise grips, I have no influence on convincing him to go to Mediquick and have them really get his fingers bound up right. Instead I fly down to Walgreen’s and buy about fifty bucks worth of bandages, and new skin goop. I do find a cool new bandade that stretches 360 degrees. By the time we finish Troy says they look like Frankenstein fingers with all the layers of new skin that I kept adding. Maybe somebody knew something was going to happen and it will be a blessing that we don’t have any shows the first couple days in Amsterdam. This will hopefully give his fingers a chance to seal up more. We finally make it to the airport and we will see if we need to employ plan B for shipping our gear to Europe. We really can’t imagine them accepting all of our stuff and keep FedEx in the back of our minds. Miraculously they do. We’re not sure if it’s because it is 5 o’clock in the morning and they just want us to go away but they accept everything and do not charge us for oversize just overweight. This amounts to several hundred dollars saved and we are sort of giddy acting. Could be that we have been up all night and are about to stay up for another day and night. We caravan our parcels over to security and watch them load them up on the x-ray machine. I have missed something funny- Mat reenacts one of the workers talking about our loads. (Imagine this with a southern accent) “This one here’s 99 lb, that one there’s a hundred pounds, another one at 100 lb S H E E E T !” Oh yeah, and I miss Troy’s amp getting wedged in the machine and them having to shut the whole thing down, climb up in there and yank it back out. Where is our camera?
We are on standby for an earlier flight. This is on the good advice of a former baggage handler that told us we would have a slim chance in making our connecting international flight in Philadelphia if we stuck with what we booked. We do not want to be separated from our stuff. That guy was right. Our Woodcrest friends that were traveling with us kept their existing flight and missed the scheduled international. They were rerouted through Scotland and basically did a whole lot of hustling around. We have hours to kill in Phili waiting for our Amsterdam flight so Troy takes off to get in some miles of walking. He covers the airport several times. He looks crazy to me. He is flying by people doing his speed walking since he can’t jog that day. Listening to his mp3 player with his in ear monitors cranking, he is really in his own world. I am off to find a place to mail Jason’s Follow tour shirt. I want him to have the first one of the actual tour since he is the one who travels with us everywhere he can to help the band set up and sell our stuff while we play. He’s a huge deal to us. Too bad we couldn’t have packed him along with us. Oh yeah, and it’s time for Troy’s first bandage change. I don’t really want to look either. Well, it doesn’t look good to me, but at least it’s not green with streaks running up his arm. I resist the urge to add another layer of skin goop. We finally get on the international flight. I can’t believe it - they have movies. We have been so busy lately - I have really missed TV!!! I should be sleeping, but they're showing X-Men!!! It's great... they blow up something on screen & we hit a little turbulence & the plane shakes. It's just like Universal Studios!