Quintessential moment of the tour

Steve has a horrible hacking cough that makes me cringe when I listen to it. It's like listening to nails on a chalkboard. As we're leaving Claremont ferrond he's doing his basic disoriented thing and he's mumbling about how he needs a pharmacy but he's pulling the old martyr thing of how it'll probably be too difficult to stop but he really needs to get to the pharmacy. I try to calm him down and I tell him that we're definitely gonna hit a pharmacy on the way out of town.
After playing my song the night before we went back to the house of the promoters which was not that bad and crashed. Mika and Roco drove with a friend to saint ettienne after the show so that Mika could spend the day with his daughter who he misses very much. In the morning I got to talk to marlin one of the promoters for a while and it turns out she's very nice. I think the show exhausted her a bit because since they do the shows in different spaces there's a lot of equipment and food and drinks to move and set up. I forced myself to chat her up and get info about doing a show in the spring which changes my whole perspective on the evening. Turns out she's not nearly as indifferent as she appeared and I was impressed by some of her ideas and aspirations. Basically I figure all the absurdity of this tour is ok as long as I get something out of it that I can use. At a certain point in the afternoon we decide to head to saint ettienne and as it's only an hour and a half away I figure we're in no rush so I keep my eyes peeled to a pharmacy. Steve is chain smoking away as per usual and catching up a storm when I find a place. He's goes in and comes out with a successful impression on his face. A loud hacking coughing fit later and we diacover that no, he did not bother to pick up any cough medicine but he did renew his supply of over the counter codeine. Priorities people. Besides which he claims it's great for his cough.
The hour and a half drive to saint ettienne turns in to a 4 hour plus extravaganza as Kamil recommends taking the scenic route which involves crawling up mountains at 15 kilometers an hour. I do have to give it to him because I saw some of the most beautiful unreal serene scenery of my live. Incredible drooping expanses of trees blanketed in grey frost. My biggest regret is that I was driving and I didn't take any pictures. I feel like given the timing I'll never see something quite so perfectly peaceful again. My second regret is that of course made us late to the show and Mika was a little bit panicked. The bar where we played was not really a music venue so setting up sound was definitely going to be an issue. He really wanted his hometown show to go well. Kamil let me go first this time because he felt bad about the previous night which was nice of him. I did a good job of keeping the volume down and easing in to the set as I could tell that noise was gonna be an issue when I stood outside the bar during sound check. Chantel Morte went on after me and the hometown crowd lives it. Saint ettienne in the house! Afterwards I crashed at Ives place. He had let us crash there at the beginning of the tour and we had done a bit of recording. It's a shame we didn't really know the tunes at that point. If we'd done the opposite and left time to record this time through we might have gotten something worth using. He's a great guy and has the perfect temperament for a recording engineer.
The next day we drive to Marseilles and had a great show. We played in a little dive of a punk rock club in feint if a super enthusiastic audience packed in like sardines. It reminded me of playing in Austin way back in the early days of drums and tuba. I got to play first again and thus time I just went for it and blasted away. What's ironic is that this night was the most fun I'd had since Bourges and it turned out that a big group of people from there had moved to Marseilles and it was they who put on the show. Thanks to Jerome and the Bourges crew for a great night of food and music...
The next morning it was off to Bordeaux (not ideal routing) where we arrived to find a squat with a strong smell of piss and a performance space in the shape of a 50 foot narrow stone tunnel. Only at the highest point point could I stand comfortably without fear of banging my head. Two in a row was clearly too much to ask for. I had to get away from the others as steve was starting to freak out. He had done that on me the night before but he was completely wasted so it was easier for me to lack sympathy. Tonight I can totally relate and that makes it much worse to have to deal with the the 62 year old child thing. He's clearly afraid of having to sleep in a cold cat infested piss smelling stone squat. I'm pretty sure that if we don't get him a real place to sleep he's gonna lose it. Although I have been constantly impressed by his ability to recover from drug and alcohol induced states that would destroy a weaker person like me. Just when I think he's lost it he rallies at continues on.
One more week left. I can't figure out if that makes a night like tonight easier or harder. On the one hand you can smell the end so things should be more bearable with the end in sight but since the end is so close the prospect of freedom and release makes the lack of it so much more bitter. It's like when you're on your way home and you have to piss. I'm usually fine until I hit the long walk up five flights of stairs. The need to go multiplies incrementally the closer I get to my toilet...