And so it was that we borrowed the Visuals' van and headed to Vermont.
     The six of us piled in on Friday afternoon and didn't emerge until early Sunday morning when daylight savings had already bent time a little...
  Sometimes it seems like that. It all gets rolled up in your head like a big ball of dough; where one gig ends and another has begun becomes quite mixed. There we are rolling down the road at night while the world is swirling around outside with wind and snow. The only constant is the van. Enclosed in our little capsule unchanged, we shoot along at the speed of our headlights, with time passing around us. It is all relative, or so the theory goes.
      We might have played Burlington first, in the rain. Nearly tipping over onto the slushy sidewalk as the delayed doppler effect hit the brain, or perhaps a red shift as the universe receded. Nevertheless we found ourselves at the kaleidoscopic Radio Bean, airy and intimate. A flock of flying boom boxes fluttered above the stage; a stage about the size of a bean I'd say. Ah, knee to knee, cheek by jowl we bent over the table and our beer intent on our work...or was it play? I swear the banjo bit me so I kicked it quick when no one was looking. And so on, we tussled with the tunes long into the night. Ho Hum was the motel, and it was so far (not) so bad. When they passed the stainless bowl around it clinked a lot, someone even gave us a button off their shirt. Well maybe we was so deep in the pocket that they pulled it up with the lint in the corner, I don't know.
   But we woke up with grammar on our minds so Kimon and Ry began to discuss. Later on in the van they held a little seminar called "style, the semicolon and you". Further south we stopped at the Langdon St. Cafe in Montpelier to watch the rain and the Onion River roll. Too bad there aren't any semicolons in Scrabble because I would've kicked butt. But there aren't...
     At least there still is a Middle Earth Music Hall. Oh wait, that might be closing too? Ah the mind reels, what's a gnome to do when the mead runs out? Well at least there is plenty of Switchback ale flowing, and not too much feedback in the mains. Yes we will miss Chris and Sue who have treated us so well over the centuries. Some woman said she named her cat Ruby, cuz she was mad at her dog I guess. I'm not sure what we did play and when. It started with that's how I got to Memphis and ended with white lightning and in between we must've played a few... I don't think we will play honeyed out any time soon.  But we will try again with Ry's new one, Sean's there I go again and sometimes I forget (no shit sherlock); and on like that. White freightliner, deeper in the well, the shape I'm in, you always hurt the one you love, I'm so lonesome I could cry, take me back to Tulsa, you ain't nothing but fine, see mama I think I'll stay here and drink, Yoshimi, Kern River, beertown, something heavy, month of Sundays, Amelia, gelato man, booze, drinkin' and drivin', trinity, born again, water, whip smart, lighthouse light, coal oil Johhny, Ruby, just because, pop life, and taxes. Did I miss a semicolon somewhere? I'm not sure but I do remember riding in the van late on 89 in the wind and the rain, past flares, spun out cars and cops.
   And so it was that we borrowed the Visuals' van and headed to Vermont.