It was 88 degrees that day in early June when the band pulled out of Orlando for a road trip that would eventually take us to Mackinac Island in Michigan. By the time we got there it would be almost July so I didn't pack any winter clothes in an attempt to save some space.
You haven't lived until you've traveled for 18 hours straight on cushions from an abandoned couch on top of the band equipment in a cargo van with three other guys. I am pretty sure whoever designed the only two seats in the van (driver and passenger) was a masochist.
It was a warm sunny morning in late June when we pulled out of my cousins driveway just outside of Point Pleasant, West Virginia (see my blog, It's Good to Have Family) after quite the large time we had there.
I brought shorts and T-shirts and I believe I had my hooded sweatshirt with me for those chilly, northern summer nights. We headed up north through Ohio into Michigan. The further north we got, the grayer the skies became until we hit sleet, then snow and then summertime was gone.
There were still piles of ice on the side of the road and it was almost July. My Florida cracker brain was frozen and couldn't process the reality of being cold after the first day of summer. I hate being cold. My feet had just thawed out from our last road trip up north.
My Canadian born and raised bass player was the only one smart enough to be prepared saying, “You know it might be cold when we get there.” “Yeah what the fuck do you know? It's summertime, man” the three Floridians said to the guy from Winnipeg, aka Winterpeg, Winnie the Pooh's hometown. Bears are smart enough to sleep through the nasty winter cold. At any rate...
We reach our destination and it's 22° Fahrenheit and the wind is whipping out there on the dock. We only have a few minutes to get ready before the ferry leaves and we would have to wait until the next day to catch the next one.
We made a mad dash around the tourist type town that hadn't finished opening for summer yet, trying to find some winter clothes for the three of us idiots that totally underestimated the Michigan weather. The shelves were stocked with summer clothes as the store was in the middle of transitioning from winter.
As our Canadian bass player smugly put on his winter gear with his toque (which I've always called a toboggan because of some long forgotten childhood memory), the other guitar player put on the only winter jacket in town that he had just sweet talked out of a naïve, giggly young clerk at whatever store we found open. The drummer and I put on every stitch of clothes we had in an effort to stay warm on the crossing.
We had never played this gig before and the booking agent didn't bother to tell us what we were in for. There are no vehicles allowed on Mackinaw Island. We saw they had a ferry but we weren't allowed to put the van with all our gear in it, on it.
Just like any other tourist trap destination they charge for every little thing like renting carts to put our equipment on so that we could get our gear on the ferry and across to the island.
There were gigantic Clydesdale type horses sharing the ride over with us, thank Poseidon, because if it weren't for them I would've froze to death. I snuggled up in between them. They didn't seem to mind me and I didn't mind the snorting, the dirt or the apple farts. My gray hooded sweatshirt was black by the time we got to the island but at least I wasn’t frostbitten.
Once we were on the island we had to offload our equipment from the carts we rented to get it onto the ferry. We then had to rent carts that we could use on the island to move our gear. It was uphill all the way, and, as we were unaware of the venue, we brought our entire set up. No one bothered to tell us they had a house PA (sound system) and all we needed was our monitor system and personal rigs.
We had to rent a place to store our excess gear for a few days because space on an island is always at a premium and the stage was not big enough to hold all our stuff. It was a long skinny stage. We had to set up in a line with the drums in between the guitars and the bass rig.
The band apartment was something you would see in a place like Amsterdam with tight twisting staircases that led apartment to apartment without any doors for privacy. Lucky for us the island wasn't fully occupied yet so lack of privacy wasn't an issue.
From what I can remember it was a fairly fun gig even though it was cold with snow on the ground. We had some good West Virginia weed with us so that made the entire situation a little more tolerable.
It's a pretty neat island. At the time I thought the Edmund Fitzgerald was just a clever song until I found a postcard with a picture of the actual Edmund Fitzgerald that really did sink just like the song said. It was a moving experience.
The drummer decided he was going to prove how tough he was by swimming in the freezing cold water next to the sign that read, “No swimming. Raw sewage.”
“That boy is about as sharp as a bowling ball-“ Foghorn Leghorn.
We had him worried he was going to catch hepatitis A,B,C and D. I don't think he could read actually.
When it was time to go we packed our gear on the cart the bar so generously let us use now that they got to know us and liked us well enough to let us use their wheeled cart for free in order to get our gear to the boarding zone of the ferry, where we had to rent a different cart to put our gear onto the ferry back to the mainland.
Somehow or another the push back to the dock was uphill also. We were asking ourselves how it could be uphill both ways, to and from the dock. We huffed and puffed the entire way. I have asthma that is triggered by cold dry air and I coughed until my voice was hoarse.
Once again my feet didn't thaw out until we got to Georgia. It was 95° in Kennesaw where we stopped at the Golden Corral Corporate Training Academy to have lunch at the all you can eat buffet and salad bar. It was fun to look at all the flare on their uniforms, hat pins and buttons with corporate friendly, cutesy sayings for example, “Smile, it makes people wonder what you've been up to.”
☮️❤️😁🎶👣🌞
" Wow man, imagine if this was a big pile of cocaine." I was wearing borrowed shoes because my flip-flops didn't have enough tread and were too slick for the snow and ice. 😆
Korkie, Brent, Hutto on Mackinac Island securing the carts that we rented for our gear.
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