Back in the House of Elrond with Cecelia, Justin, and Matt. When we walked up to this bridge Justin was like “Yo I literally bought a post card of this bridge earlier without knowing we were coming here” it was pretty funny.

Whatcom Park is what it’s actually called I believe.

The trails sort of lead straight through the city so people will often take a nature walk on their commute to work. Not a bad thing.

Cecelia took us to this spot where the kids do wild stuff.

No not drugs (or probably drugs too) but they jump off of cliffs. There are some kids right there. Lemme go around to the other side, hold on

…just a sec…

lemme just get situated…

there we are. Here is where the kids do crazy stuff. So you got those same kids up top , a girl who already jumped down below, and a guy behind the tree branch (who’s shadow is visible). I wasn’t able to get him in that shot though

Though I did get one in this one. See in the upper fourth of the picture the shirtless dude? There’s those two girls from a few frames ago to give you size reference. Big drop.

This one girl (on the right) sat there thinking it over and over. We waited a few minutes to see if she would get the courage but she reached the shit-or-get-off-the-pot moment and did nothing so we left.

We were gonna attempt to go down by the water but it was steep as shit and none of us had treaded sneakers on (‘cept maybe Cecelia)

We later gathered at Bo and Cecelia’s to meet up with the van. I have no clue what Matt is doing in this one.

This is Wuv at the Seattle show. Sometimes there are some gaps in the timeline between photos. I think this couple days has a bunch of gaps because I was tired, or driving, or something.

Wuv wears these little animal ear things like Gretchen Weiners does on Halloween at each show. Ilya’s quote about them was “we wear our ears so that you remember to wear yours”

Conor with some sort of camera malfunction. The venue reminded me of a west coast Silent Barn. In between the show and walking back and forth to this other bar spot some folks were at we heard karaoke coming from next door at an Irish bar. This dude was doing “Mother” and me and Matt went in to sing along. Justin took some video (edit: which won’t upload for some reason). The end of the night we hung out in the street talking to one of the dudes from The Exquisites who was basically the west coast version of Lubrano. We then had to make the hour and a half drive straight back to Bellingham for the 23rd time.

The following morning Bo got an early call that the van was ready. We gathered once more and collected all our shit and began to load it as the members of So Adult showed up one by one. Somewhere in the process we must’ve forgot to load the tapes into the van so they were lost forever, bummer shit. Also I’m pretty sure this is when the infamous “a tribe called quest” story happened. I was upstairs at the time so here’s what I heard: Bo was wearing his ATCQ shirt. A skinny white nerd walks up and says “Oh I just moved back from where they’re from. (Bo’s inner voice asks “oh, Queens huh?” while New Yorkers Justin and Conor watch this turd in disgust make a fool of himself) I’ve been listening to jazzy hip-hop all day. Just started making beats two days ago. Look me up – Jew York.” UGH. We then picked up Joe at his place. While there we saw his awesome screen printing set up. Up there is Conor with himself.

We had to make the drive from BHam to Seattle once more to grab Matt from Uncle Kenny’s (his fake uncle’s place who lives in Seattle) then we had a lovely long drive down to Portland. No AC. Quite a blast. I think that was our first long one, maybe like 12 hours or something. I can’t even remember because the days are blending.

The Portland show was a low point in my opinion but it didn’t matter. Hanging with So Adult was fun so it didn’t matter that people weren’t there.

So Adult tried a few songs that weren’t in their normal set and sort of failed. I loved it. They also played Citizen’s Arrest (the video jam) and it was splendid. That song rules.

After the show we drove to Bo’s sister’s place which was about 40 minutes south of Portland. The house was pretty banging and we stayed in the movie room. Lots of Pirates of the Caribbean posters in there. Good shower. So on.

Funny stuff taking place in the van during the no AC period. A few days before Matt would pretty much never pop his shirt off for any reason but the heat just drove that man to the edge. I did start the shirts-off party the day before, but Matt was carrying the torch.

Justin and Joe. I would later learn why Joe preferred to keep his bag on his lap…

Here is where everything changed (click to make it bigger). We stopped in the desert somewhere to fix the AC. Double charged it and finally the windows could be rolled up without everyone dying. More coming soon.

So we’re still in Seattle at Gasworks here. A bunch more photos because it was just so incredibly beautiful there.

There’s the space needle with Matt onlooking.

We were just talking for a while about who knows what, either way Bo was obviously a great dude and on the same level as us so it was  a sign that the next couple weeks with these guys we don’t know were gonna be good ones.

I was starting to feel a bit of the lag at this point, especially baking under the late afternoon sun. I kind of wanted to crash, but Conor had other ideas.

He decided to roll his ass down the hill. I mean of all the hills to do it on that was definitely a good pick. They were really rolly hills.

Slightly dizzy, Matt helped him to his feet.

What are you grinning at, ghost?

Here is one of the few that usually happen where my camera turns on me. Funny note about this photo – notice I am wearing shorts and a hooded sweatshirt. As a New Yorker I rarely put pants on from the month of June to September so it just made sense to me to pack the same stuff for the west coast. I didn’t really put too much though into it but after a while I realized that we are a lot further north in Seattle and Bellingham than we were in NYC. Definitely wore that hooded zip up quite a bit in the first few days.

The color is really fucked on this one unfortunately but I’m too impatient to fix it. Anyway, after we hung at the Gasworks and the Jolly Green Giants finished up their set we headed over to get some grub at a Thai spot. West coast Thai food was being really hyped up so I was pretty stoked to get some. It was aiight. I am very loyal to my Yajai though.

We still had some time to kill so we went to the space that Shook Ones and So Adult record at to kill some time because it’s fairly close to SeaTac. I guess they had some baseball seats so Matt wanted to sit in them. The lighting was super dim so I made him sit still. Thats why it he looks crazy and out of focus.

Here’s Justin loading his stuff up and getting on the bus, a spike lee joint. We then made the hour and a half ride back to Bellingham for the 11th time. We got back to Bo’s and crashed pretty hard.

The next morning we woke up to a beautiful day in Bellingham. This is Bo and Cecelia’s kitty. Really cute rolling around in the grass.

Cecelia and Bo work at a local farm and one day a week (or a lot more than one I guess) Cecelia sets up a stand at the local farmer’s market. Bo asked us if we’d like to join him for a bit in helping Cecelia to set up. I’ve never seen such a delicious looking set up.

We ended up doing a lot of berry work – packing blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries.  The farm also does orders for local businesses.

The best part of this was when a chef or restaurant owner dude walked over and asked “do your raspberries still taste like little buckets of jam?”

Wait, no actually the best part was when Justin jumped in and started acting like he’s worked for the farm since it opened in ’74. He was bippin and boppin, spreading the word and trying his damndest to sell everything to passersby.

“Yeah they’ve been organic since they opened in 1974 and never converted at any point. Would you like to try a berry?”

This puppy was cute, it didn’t work at that stand but it just took refuge in that shade. We literally stuffed ourselves full of berries and edible flowers, carrots and various other delicious things and headed back to Bo’s. I can’t remember which day we did it, but Bo, Conor and I went to this insane lake at some point. I didn’t bring my camera cause I didn’t want to get it wet but it was insane. If you know me well then you know my feelings about still water so I wasn’t too psyched to jump in at first. At least there wasn’t any seaweed type stuff where we jumped but the water was freeeezing! Really refreshing either way and quite a site with the mountains as the back drop.

Later we went the So Adult practice space under the bowling alley. This was also our introduction to the world of Joe Olmstead. We walked down to hear Joe jamming by himself cranked up to 11 like the rock and roll hero he is. The So Adult fellas gave us some time to test out the gear we’d be sharing with them. They are loud as fuuuck. I can’t stress how awesome those guys are for hooking everything up.

Justin looks nutballs in this one but it’s funny.

After our little jam sesh we all met up behind the bowling alley to load the van. This was the official introduction of everyone in each band to one another.

Pretty much right off the bat I could tell we were all going to get along because they were all cracking jokes and making all the right references.

I even spread the Turncoat philosophy of “king mosh” to them and they took right to it.

Here’s Conor again.

The poster that Conor was on also had a funny little detail – an ex-Weed Hounds thing. Definitely very true, but still really funny to me.

We got to the venue for the kick off and the first thing I noticed was this awesome building. It had what seemed like a date, 1892, on the front but I’m not certain if it wasn’t an address. Either way it looked really fucking rad.

So here is the beginning of the sad. As you see on this Deep Pockets spread we have two t-shirts and a bunch of tapes. Joe and I got to know each other a bit earlier than this shot was taken over about 50 folds and a rota-trimmer. We made two versions of the Deep Pockets / So Adult split tape. We also had our last copies of our demo tape. We’d soon somehow lose the box that held both of these things. A beginning to the string of wacky luck we’d end up having.

I think we played pretty well that night because we were very amped up to play. I was even more amped up to actually see So Adult for the first time. They did not disappoint at all. Everything about their live set was awesome. Their tones, their presence, their tightness.

I loved these guys right off the bat and was really fucking stoked to get to see them night after night.

Also I was blown away by Bob-o’s magical fingers. The end of the night we loaded back up and headed out in a few vehicles to a sort of Russian perogi place. By the time most of us were there and starting to get to know each other we found out the next bit of fun luck popped up. The boys riding in the van were first pulled over by the police for not having their headlights on, then the van wouldn’t start up. Turns out the alternator died out. Bo and Conor, along with maybe Joe and some others ended up staying with the van for a lot of the night while the rest of us headed back to bed. I think Conor felt comfortable because Hank got to show his face for the first time.

The next day we had some time to kill before our show in Seattle. We found out the van wouldn’t be ready for it so we had to take two cars. Bo and Conor stayed back with the van to unload the gear. Cecelia took the rest of us to experience some really beautiful shit that Bellingham to offer.

I have more to scan but from what I remember it was pretty much like walking into the house of Elrond. More stuff to come.