Test Run.

Last night I drove up to Portland to take the bus on a test run. I've been trying to name the bus Loretta, but I think Israel wants to call it Carpenteria, because that's the California city it gave most of its life to.  I drove it around  Ryan Dobrowski's neighborhood (apx. SE 17th and Powell) for about an hour and that included sometime in the Fred Meyer headquarters parking lot. Ryan's originally from Eugene he paints, the cool Degas, Monet, Picasso way, not the way I do - the Sherman Williams, Benjamin Moore way, and plays drums for the Portland band Blind Pilot.  I got to catch the end of their practice which included some new songs of theirs I've never heard them play and a cover that the band hasn't played together but that I've heard Israel play a few times this summer,once was while I was painting Zoe Fenton's house in Astoria.

I'm not going to ruin it, you'll have to come to the show but I'm stoked, in the Carpenteria California way (God I hope Carpenteria is in So-cal on the coast or in the valley because if it's not then that joke doesn't make sense - Oh Snap! it is.) Not the, uh - um coal fired engine way ... or is that the same is there any other kind of stoked? - the wood stove way?

The interior of the bus is pretty much finished, minus a couple of details that we'll get hammered out as we go.

Israel and Ryan painted the exterior of the bus - with brushes.  I painted a car with a brush for Hank Tallman of Nehalem, OR. It was a fun exercise in: the wet edge, topping off and brush strokes. I underestimated the effect of brush strokes in the prime coat showing through.  Israel and Ryan's paint job looked really good, in the dark. I guess I'll see it tomorrow morning when we are packing up and I bet it still looks good - artists!

I drove down I-5 for about an hour and back for an hour in the middle of the night last night just to make sure that Israel, Luke and Kati could sleep on the bus while it was in motion.  I brought my brother-in-law Drew Woodworth along because he's my brother and because he likes the band. We have this fascination with the "thanks for letting me in" running lights flash that truckers'll give you if you let them in, or give them the "the all clear" with your head lights when they are merging, or lane changing. I was trying to show Drew that I can flip on and off my running lights and I accidentally hit the head lights but then I got the running lights.  The trucker in front of me thought maybe I was trying to tell him something so as we approached the exit where I was going to turn around he blinked his running lights twice, and then when I didn't respond and as we got to be about a 1/4 mile out he did it again.  I think he was angling for an H.J. "Sorry it took me so long to pull over... had to get my pants back up.", as a truck driver once said to a hitchhiking friend of mine.

Sound Check is at 3:pm tomorrow in Bend.