Still Ohio. Still cold. Still sick. With a cold. And it’s cold.
Holy shit it’s cold. This isn’t news to anyone. It’s certainly not news to anyone back home. But holy shit, I don’t think I’ve ever been this cold. It’s absolutely disgusting how cold it is. Temperatures have been hovering around 20 degrees in the sunshine with a windchill of negative 10 or lower. Incredible cliffs of icicles along the highway, snow drifts and skirls of white and still that merciless, cloudless sky that lets you fool yourself into thinking that THIS time when you get out for gas…
Nope, still freezing our Coosawatchies off.
But it’s stunning. The flat plains of Western Ohio have given way to the rolling hills of Eastern Ohio and the setting sun is throwing long shadows out ahead of us. The primordial cold outside just highlights the stunning beauty of it all. Orange glows and black shadows pooling with one another as the sun sets behind us. We’re meeting up with friends for dinner round about Pittsburgh and we’ve just hit 4000 miles for the trip. If we’d been going in a straight line, we could be on our way back from Seattle by now.
That’ll have to wait till autumn.
This was a pretty killer open mic – you walk in and you think “oh god, what have I landed in, where’s the stage? Where’s the host? Where IS everyone? And then you go through the door behind the bar and you realize you’ve tot a HUGE stage, killer stage, full lights… and the list’s almost full! 
This is Billy Zenn host of the King Avenue Five open mic. We met a bunch of cool people, sold some CDs and got called a “ringer”. We crashed in Columbus and planned to head to Pittsburgh and then home!
Last night we were surprised by the venue we popped into to play. After doing some research I had a pile of three open mics to pick from : I eliminated open mic 1 because they didn’t mention Live music ever on their website, so they obviously didn’t really care about it… probably just a shitty sports bar…. I eliminated open mic 2 because there were a lot of boobs on their Facebook page. Generally I’m in favour of boobs, but using them to advertise your beer, your Live music, pool, fried chicken AND your open mic? The place seemed waaaay too trashy and I figured we’d check out open mic #3. I’m really glad I did.
Upon walking in, I was unsure… there were signs up saying that the open mic was delayed due to a private party, and looking around there was NO sign that anything was going. TVs, TVs, TVs… sigh. But then I saw the back door. And the back hall. And the back room… the back of King Avenue 5 is a REAL music venue with a nice big stage, good lights, great sound… the private party was just wrapping up and I got there just in time to sign up for the open mic and catch the host’s set. And I’m really, really glad we did. Billy Zenn was a friendly host, ran things clear and smooth – and has one Hell of a voice. Good songs, old beat Yairi, and a voice that just WAILED. Good list of local singer/songwriters and lots of friendly humans in the audience. We played our little hearts out, met some good people and sold some CDs, drank some whiskey and went on our way…
We even made it back “home” in time to play some card games with Jason and Alissa and their other friends. I’ve finally been introduced to Munchkin, which I won despite not really following what the Hell was going on thanks to fatigue, some sort of winter lager, my cold and my cold medicine.
Kristen stumbled off to bed while me and our hosts sat up and chatted until absolute exhaustion settled in and the siren song of our beds became irresistible. Despite being so tired it STILL took me forever to fall asleep – but that’s my way.
Surrounded by the silhouettes of some of Jason’s newly acquired Star Wars figures I tossed and turned and lamented by snotty fate, eventually fading into trouble dreams of drowning… just in time I’m beginning to really, really, really miss my own bed.
One more night.
