A JOURNEY TO THE UNITED KINGDOM
Entry Ten

The Rose of England is a wonderful old two-story building perched on a corner. The lower level is the bar area which is completely packed that isn‘t any different than home. The live music is upstairs. Oh my… we have managed to get through the tour with few stairs- this will be memorable all two tiers of them. We load in and help the headliner Deltarays with some of their gear. We have enough room on stage to put some of our gear up as well since we are next to last. We don’t want to have any slack time where we might lose the precious few in the audience. There are two other bands before us. Mesh-29 is one of them and after hearing their song at sound check I tell the band that we have to make it back to hear the whole set after we walk around downtown for a few minutes. Mat tries to round up a few more people for the show. Troy is busy snapping away pictures. He meets up with another photographer that might make it out to see the show. We make it back to see Mesh-29 and they do not disappoint. I knew I would like it. After they finish the set I buy a cd and find out that they are going to get a full band pretty soon. I tell them that the duo had great energy for me. I tell them that I felt that the keys drove the music like bass does and the keys and guitar both had percussive elements, but I am excited for them to add more players. They have great melodies and I wish them luck.
Poor Troy has his sound work cut out for him. He just sort of stares at the sound system. It isn’t a look of awe it is a look of wonder… wondering how in the heck he will get any low end out the thing. Yep, you guessed it, no subs; just a decent pair of main speakers, but the big puzzle is the powered head with a built in graphic EQ. He scratches his head and I hear the word “old school”. Mat and I get up to do our little line check and Troy grabs knobs and murmurs a prayer. He manipulates the heck out of the system. He makes it do things it didn’t know it could do. The owner or manager even ventures upstairs to comment on the sound. I love the stage- it is nestled up to a half moon shape of windows that overlooks the downtown area. I wish we could come back and record a DVD. We might have to buy ourselves an audience to clap but I think this is a great room and would love to record here. We do enjoy the people who are there and tell them thanks for coming out to the last show of our tour. We sell some cds and make some good contacts with finish up the night. They are fun to watch and apologize that their crowd did not come out early enough to catch our set. We tell everyone goodbye and pack up the rest of our gear. I am pulling away from the curb as the drummer runs out like a maniac hollering that we have come all the way from bloody America and are now leaving. We like him and all agree that he reminds us of the guys back home in the band Hogleg. There is never a dull moment when they are around. We think that the way back to the hotel should be a breeze but we add a new element- fog. So if there did happen to be a sign for where we should turn off we now need to spot it through a heavy blanket of the stuff. A long time later we yell out, “There it is!” We stumble into our room after telling the concierge to wake us up in a couple hours so that we can catch our ferry in Dover. He feels for us and promises to not let us oversleep. What seems like minutes later we are back out in the van. I have a moment of panic when I am missing my purse which has my passport in it, which I sort of need. And I was worried about loosing the one set of van keys!!! I race back inside and the concierge lets me back into the room for me to flip UPSIDE DOWN. My next sinking thought is that I might have left it back at the club and how I am going to get a club owner out of bed to go search the place at this hour. Not good!!! I make it out to the van and Troy says that he was lying down on the floorboard where we made him a makeshift bed to sleep on and he felt something lumpy. Hooray- the lost is found!
Now if we just have enough gas to get to Dover where we can fill up and use our cheap gas vouchers from our Air force gig buddies. The vouchers will not be any good once we leave England and we have to turn our van back in on full once we get to Paris. We pull off when we see signs for a ferry- we are in line behind a dozen sports cars all alike except an array of different bright colors. We are very interested in watching them because when do you ever see such a sight? (Could be a Storm Thorgerson’s photograph if they were just melting or something else weird). But each one seems to be taking forever and are taking up several lanes doing it. So much for automation- there is one attendant running around working her magic in getting them through the computerized stations. It is our turn finally and the machine doesn’t like our ticket either, but only because we are at the wrong ferry. My face drops when the teller comes over to explain and I show her our gas gauge. She heads us in the right direction and the van is pretty quiet until we coast into Dover on gas fumes and I let out a cheer as I see a Petrol station. Apparently, we have to use the gas vouchers in the exact denominations that they were written in not one cent over as was not explained well by the attendant working inside. We basically waste one and can’t give it away to anyone else because it has to go with the license number on our vehicle, which is a rental so we can’t even save it for next time. We probably waste only as much as we save. Even-Steven as Seinfeld says. We finally make it to the right ferry and decide to pay about $60 more to leave on an earlier ship. I figure that is a bargain to squeeze out a couple more hours in Paris since we are only there for a day.
This ferry is a much smoother ride. They are even showing Pirates of The Caribbean in a movie theater onboard. But, nothing can compare to a little sleep after only napping the night before. Well, we are old pros at this Ferry business and listen closely for the announcement to go down below to our vehicles and casually drive off to pass through another customs checkpoint. They give us a little fright when they make us drive through a second level checkpoint but they just questioned us more thoroughly. The lady was very friendly and sympathized with us for trying to see Paris in a day.