San Diego 5/16/10

San Diego is always our favorite part of tour. For going on ten years our good friends at the OTRO house have taken us in, nursed us back to health, fed us, and then left us with some of the worst hangovers of our lives. The kind of hangovers where you feel like you’re spelunking in a pain cave without any water and the only flashlight you have is a hundred pound strobe light that is medically implanted into your brain. The kind that you would be really bummed about if you hadn’t spent the entire night laughing so hard you cried with ten of your favorite people in the world. This time would be no exception.

Our show in Mesa ended early so we made the executive decision to make the six-hour trek over night so we could wake up in SD and have the rest of the day off. First things first though, we needed to stock up on crappy energy drinks. As a general rule the worse the name, the better the chance that they are going to be more like the water from a meth lab mop bucket, in both taste and potency. We gave these a shot.

I think Aaron described it best when he said, “This just tastes like bad.”

Rolled in to SD about six AM and crashed out until we were shaken awake by Jeremy and Steve Carder, who had flown in to party with us. Jeremy was hell bent on heading out to Ramona to go shooting, so after a couple hours of trying to wrangle the troops we all loaded in the van an d headed for the hills to go shoot at some clay pigeons. The first sign that this was heading for trouble was when the van decided that eight people and all the gear was not what it wanted to stop heading down a two-lane mountain road. After letting the brakes cool we did our own personal version of the Baja 1000 but instead of a highly specialized one-million-dollar trophy truck, it was in a 1996 ford Econoline van with eight dudes and eight-hundred pounds of gear in the back. By the time we got out three people had no more fillings, and my lower back pain was no more.

Bryan: first time, first shot:

By the end of the day, he shot a cocktail olive off of David’s head using a mirror, with an eye patch on.

Steve got yet another nickname: LadySteve.

He looks like he’s modeling for a women’s gun catalog circa 1950.

A bunch of trashers showed up and started getting a little squirrely with a handgun, all it took was the sound of one ricochet to send me hiding behind the van. When they left John finally talked me down, but I was still a little shook:

As the sun set we made our way back to the house were things got awesome. Margi had just shown up from L.A. and she was so happy to see us that she had a seizure:

Then we talked to Lizzy and Bethany who were on vacation in Paris. I know I’m going to sound like my grandfather here, but it still blows my mind that you can video chat with someone on the other side of the world. That’s some real Spaceballs shit right there.