I’ll say up front that this day felt like a two-for: it really felt like two days. As the remaining days of the tour draws thin, having more experiences to enjoy is a commodity. We left Helena early to get to Havre, but after our gig we returned to Helena to experience another days worth of very noteworthy shenanigans.
In the morning, we went downstairs to our lobby at 6am we found a sleeping Sam and grinning Allie to greet us and have (free) breakfast with us; once again a reflection on their hospitality and tenacity for the hang (if not just an appropriate response any undergrad should have when offered free food).
Havre is approx. 40 miles from the Canadian border, a small college town we performed at months ago during our spring tour. They invited us back to do a fall welcome week concert. If you recall from our first encounter with the school, a few key elements made our experience memorable: 1. The old rickety stage which was a lesson in plate tectonics stood in the cafeteria, awaiting our stomping and convection-current like feet; 2. Our good friend Hammar crashed our radio interview holding a 4 gallon tub of pretzels which he ate by the handful; and 3. our good friend and Canook Desiree demanded that we take our shirts off.
Ok, back to a chronological description. After we set up, the local radio station just down the hall invited us to do a live interview on air. The DJ who was a charming and learned veteran of college radio had done his homework. He had heard our tunes and had read my blog. His questions were quite prepared to engage us in our distain for Olympia (read blog entry “Get me the hell out of Olympia, WA”), as well as thought provoking questions about the music industry and the philosophy behind being an independent artist. We took a break to play a song on the air and a former Olympia resident called the radio station to question the DJ as to where exactly we were in the city and what venue we played at! I watched as my half of the awkward conversation unfolded. When we got back on the air I invited said Olympian to call back and we’d give him a free CD as amends… he never called.
The show was actually in front of quite a large audience of hamburger engulfing college students. It’s always hard to play in front of such audience because it is not captive, and it’s hard to engage even the captive ones because they are eating and it’s 12 in the afternoon! The pro to noon time shows is that there will always be more students on campus. The con will always be that it’s hard to get ppl into rock music at lunch time and harder to hang out with ppl after since they have to go to class. On stage we kept on having difficulty reading the crowd: late applause, dull and removed facial expressions… much to our surprise we sold more CDs than at any other gig(!) The show went great. Again, there’s really just a limited amount of energy an audience can reflect at that hour, but the kids obviously liked our music and brought the CDs home. Special and mad props to Leah and Cori who sold the goods.
(Day 9 part II starts here)
After a short lunch we loaded the van and headed back to Helena. I was still skeptical about the likelihood of a bunch of ppl I hardly knew putting a birthday party together for me, but, sure enough, Sam and about 20 students were waiting for us at Riley’s pub downtown!!! I couldn’t believe it up to the point of walking into the bar and seeing a bunch of ppl, most from the night before chatting and throwing darts in a reserved area of the bar! I got to chatting with more wonderful Carroll students and we all engaged in eating, drinking, and dart throwing.
Then Sam posed the question very bluntly to the birthday boy: 3 options, chill at his place, go Skipe hunting (where you run around the forest with burlap bags hunting for edible ground-fowl), or driving out to a lake for a bonfire. I selected option 3. So we loaded up 3 SUVs full of students, grabbed some s’mores and headed for the mountains along a dirt road. We got to the lake after driving around a gate that said “day use only”. Needless to say, we were alone at the shore of an expansive lake surrounded by forested peaks. David, my ride and apparent closet male-stripper was fast on building a fire via road flare while a large contingency of us decided to explore the lake. In the center there appeared to be an isthmus leading to a small rocky island with a few trees. We walked over there to find that the isthmus was actually several sandbars connected by partially submerged rocks. I immediately decided to take off my shoes and brave the intervals of wading and barefoot rock jumping, with Allie and a girl named Mary heeding the call. The others chickened out, with no other explanation.
The island was much farther and involved much more wading on slippy rocks than I anticipated and it took us close to 30 minutes to get out there. When the three of us finally arrived we wanted to stay and enjoy it so we sat on the rocks and the conversation got deep. I mused about the apparently supernatural ability for Carroll College kids to connect with us in such a short time. The girls explained that the culture of the college, established through programs like mentoring ministries and tight knit dorms, was truly familial; strangers bearing the same Carroll hoodies would look after and open their lives to each other. They said that there was a maximum of 1 degree of separation between every student and I believed it. The school’s philosophy on community was highly similar to the philosophy I hadn’t discovered until adulthood; I mused at the fruit of learning such a lesson so early in life and improved my outlook on Catholicism.
Nate started calling for me. He claimed that he had dim sum for me back at the bonfire (Jonny was happy to echo him). We could hear everything across the lake crystal clear because there was roughly a 13 second echo to everything you said, every sound cascaded across the valley back and forth. We slowly made our way back across the isthmus. One of us had to fall in, and it was Mary, taking one for the team. Hell yes, my shorts didn’t even get splashed!
Back at the campsite we cooked up s’mores. Sam and the Carroll kids (I can call them kids now that I’m 30) surprised me with a cake and everyone sang to me as I impaled the cake with a burning ember only to be blown out after the singing. The campfire was warm and toasty, the conversation was engaging, Nate and Jon were hacking away at a tree. Nate managed to cut it down with an axe much to the detriment of his hands and arms. Jon used a saw and went at the log with hair-raising vigilance. Needless to say, there was no shortage of firewood.
Then, leave it to Nate, he dared one of the guys Sean to go in the lake and said the famous last words: “I’ll go if you go”. Sean went. Nate was wearing white boxers. Kayla, skip the rest of this paragraph. The two of them returned to the bonfire, Sean clothed and damp and Nate with boxers only, wet, clinging to his shivering body. I invited the girls to look away while Allie got our shivering Cali boy a blanket from her car. I refused, refused to go in the water because I had enough from my little island journey. But, Pete and Jon, our intrepid gentle boys said they would go in if the birthday boy went in (an absolutely irresistible proposition) and sure enough, my shoes were flying off and my body was in the lake. In fact, every guy at the campfire went: the band plus Sam, David, Sean, and Mark. Sam’s encounter with the lake was noteworthy: rather than diving in like the rest of us, he stood shivering waste deep, hesitated, squatted down, and splashed water on his head so he could claim he went in; I saw the whole thing (cuz I was peeing).
Ok, I think I’ve described enough. I had a very, very good birthday and I have the Carroll college kids to thank for it. My 30th was spontaneous, fun, far beyond what I expected, and most of all it injected youth into my veins. I could not ask for a better way to turn 30, thanks to all.
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