Beginning of the Halloween Tour!!!!

HIIIIIII!!!!! The One-Eyed Doll Halloween Tour has begun! I’m going to be honest, it got off to a rough start for me. Work’s been pretty crazy and stressful since last tour. I gave myself a few extra days off from work before leaving, but because I haven’t had any free time in the past 4 months, it was a few days of me stressing out trying to get merch made, things packed, and everything in my life inorder so I could be gone for 2 months. I did make sure I took some breaks and went to do fun things so I didn’t completely stress myself out. I feel super unprepared for this tour. I haven’t even had a chance to dye my hair in the past 6 months (though a guy on the street in Seattle complimented me on it), so I wasn’t feeling like my usual, shiny Snork self.

The clouds look so fluffy!

I got to OED headquarters Wednesday. This tour with have Potato Erik doing lights again, Ben Riggs from Arcanium stage teching, and the super awesome Jeff, who took us to NASA last tour, driving.  That’s right, we finally have a full crew! There are also a few other surprises that I don’t want to ruin for you. It was really nice to see everyone, but we still had to finish taking inventory, packing up merch, figuring out what we still needed, then load up all the merch and gear. I think we were up until 4:30 am before we finally took a break to get a little bit of sleep. Jr woke me up at 9:30 so we could finish. Then, after all of that, we had to go get the bus and load the bus. THEN the trailer needed new tires. We were originally hoping to leave for Portland at 4 am, we finally left the area at 10 pm. Luckily we’d given ourselves an extra day.

The work wasn’t done when we got there though. Jr had all of the new merch shipped to Portland. Luckily he talked the venue into giving us a really early load in time so we could deal with all of that, plus other first day things like how the stage is going to be set up, meeting the new bands, etc. Speaking of which, we brought friends along this tour! We’re touring with Run 2 Cover and Stitched Up Heart this tour :) Be sure to get to the shows early to check them out.

Finally, once (almost) everything was set up, some familiar faces showed up (Hi Ben!) and the show got underway, I started to get into the groove and enjoying myself. Still sad about my faded hair, but it doesn’t look terrible.

Got to see Ed again and meet Natalie for the first time in person!

First show was a bit rough, as is always with the first show. There were mistakes made while working out the kinks and getting into the groove, but Kim always makes it entertaining. There was one point she was wearing a witch hat and Erik had her lit in green. She looked like the witch from The Wizard of Oz. My picture doesn’t look as cool as it actually was in person, so you’ll just have to pretend.

Portland over all was an awesome turn out, good crowd (and good merch night). Great way to kick off a show, especially in a city they haven’t been to in a few years.

Next we were off to “SeattHELL”, another first for me. There was an awesome little VIP girl at this show epically head banging along. Kim also got distracted at one point which spiraled into completely messing up a whole song. Kim however made the awesome analogy to a Hockey game or NASCAR race. You go to see the fist fights and wrecks, just like how you come to an OED show not for the good music, but to see them mess up :P

Ben is AWESOME!!!!!

Later in the meet and greet line, Kim broke out into New Orleans. I don’t know what started it because I was working, but suddenly everyone was quiet and she was singing to a fan. He was on the verge of tears the entire time and may have cried a bit at the end. Watching him enjoying it so much almost made me cry. I keep telling Kim she needs to stop doing things that turn me into a crying fan girl because it makes it really hard for me to work for them.

The next day we had a day off in Seattle. In true OED fashion, we slept until sometime after noon. We then went into town and the first thing we did was end up in a toy store. I bought a “Plumpee” Bumble Bee stuffed animal. Sadly we didn’t have much time to look around because they were closing :(

Collecting friends! :D

Seattle Skyline

Sunset on the pier

Ivan is the "flounder" of the Seagull Society

Next, we hit up the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory across the street. Why do all RMCF’s not sell frozen cheesecake on a stick? *pouts* Despite no cheesecake, we ended up gorging ourselves on chocolate and ice cream. We then walked down to the pier. The rest of them got some fish and chips and fed the sea gulls french fries, then we found this really cool museum/gift shop, "Ye Olde Curiosity Shop."

"Sylvester" the mummy.

"Silvia" another mummy.

Tiger rug :(

2-headed calf

4-legged chicken

After that we rode the giant ferris wheel.

Looking up from below.

Coastline + The Space Needle

Coastline the other direction.

Looking down from on top.

Blurry Ferry and a Blurry Me!

Then we had to walk back to the bus in the cold and rain :( I fear I may be getting sick, so I’m trying to get lots of sleep, vitamins and drinking tons of tea. Anyways, drove to another area, got some food, and as we were driving down a side street to leave, SOMEONE JUMPED ONTO THE BACK OF OUR BUS! He was yelling something about Jesus and hanging onto the ladder in back or something. We didn’t want to keep driving around with him there, especially on the highway, but we didn’t want to go out and possible be attacked by a crazy person. So we carefully drove around town until we didn’t hear him yelling anymore, then stopped and the boys got out to check and make sure he wasn’t still hanging on somewhere. So we’ve officially had our first Bus Pirate. We didn’t even know that was a thing.

Crosswalk in Seattle

The next day was another day off. It was mostly spent sleeping and relaxing. Erik, Jeff and Riggs did some laundry at the truck stop, we picked up some groceries and more merch tubs, and Jr made copies of the bus keys for everyone. We managed to stop at Chico’s Pizza in Moses Lake and got some AWESOME pizza from Riggs’ childhood. No pictures because we devoured it too quickly. The veggie one was COVERED in veggies, you couldn’t even see the cheese, and the meat one was COVERED in bacon. After that it was on the road and off to Montana.