This American Tour Life

Right now we're sitting in Nashville, waiting for our van to get fixed. For about the fifth or sixth time in our career, we shifted into broken-down mode with ease, pulled essentials out of the van and watched as unnamed AAA guy hooked us up and trailed our home into the distance, spilling money out of the side doors and into the hands of a local Ford dealership. Kind of like the way someone who gets pulled over all the time knows to reach for the license and registration, roll the window down and put the hands on the steering wheel, without the slightest uptick in their heart rate.

We were lucky enough to be broken down while with our best friends from The Young International, and were also fortunate that they let us borrow their trailer, while Relient K let us borrow their Suburban, so that we could make it for our two Indiana shows over the weekend.

So it's kind of a weird life, and not somewhere I imagined ten years ago, or even five years ago when I boarded onto this adventure. Most people my age are working jobs in the daytime, progressively moving forward. I feel like I'm moving forward, but in a quite zig-zag manner. However, without any of this I wouldn't be able to travel to a place like Nashville and meet up with 10 different friends, and sit on a back porch 'til five in the morning, recalling memories and dreams that we've all shared together and the struggles that only we've known. That said, I do miss home at times like these as well, and I do miss Kimi, and I hope that they can be distracted by their own lives so they can juggle mine while I try to navigate this skeleton of a destiny I've constructed over the last five years.

I hope those I love realize how much I appreciate their sacrifices and someday, when our van is rusted and in pieces in a junkyard somewhere, and our shirts and CD's are in thrift stores around the country, they'll still be there and vibrant and as much a part of me as this life I've been tracking down. Because this life is more than I could ask for, and the people I've been given are certainly more than that.