hibernation?

Sooo what have I been up to?
Besides watching a gazillion movies, working, playing soccer and the usual action that is.

I went on a trip to Arizona to kill two birds with one stone as the English saying goes.
First off a gig with Suffocation, Immolation and Skinless was to take place on November 8 in Tucson and since my ginger love Tom lives in Phoenix it seemed a great combination for this trip.
I booked rather early flight so on the 8th I got up at 5am and sort of miscalculated the time I would need since it froze that morning. So I had to scrape the ice from my windows asap and drive to the airport in record time. Fortunately all that went well and since I didn't have any luggage to check in I got my boarding pass quickly and the layover in Houston wasn't too bad.
Airport food mostly sucks but what's new?
After arriving at the Phoenix airport Tom was all set to take me to the house he rents with his fiancee Rhonda and we chilled out a bit. Then we took off for Tucson and hooked up with some friends of Tom Dave, the head of the Tucson mansion, made some pretty good burgers and after chilling out some more we drove to the venue called The Rock.

Suspense.

When we got there all the lights were off, no tour busses and almost no people around. When we walked up to the entrance there was a note saying "Tonight's show has been cancelled due to technical difficulties". That was all.
So after getting over the initial amazement we just headed back to Phoenix.
Slept in a bit and the next day we went to some pancake place for breakfast which had the following menu option: CLICK ME!
We checked out some CD stores, where I obviously bought some albums, and went to a liquor store. At first I couldn't find any palinka and it wasn't until I looked in the bottom shelves and behind the first line of bottles that I saw THIS.
Since I knew I was going to drink having good food in my system was the next step and we went to a tasty Mexican place where we loaded up on some fine food.
Before heading out to the British Open bar we had some shots and I refused to drink anything with alcohol they had in the bar haha. Kept saying we should go back to Tom's place (which was within walking distance) and take some more shots. Eventually one friend offered to drive us and I got seriously drunk but not completely wasted. Good times as the pics proof:
http://s10.photobucket.com/albums/a137/Saldiac/AZ%20trip/
They're in a rather random order but photobucket messed up during uploading and I didn't feel like removing all the pics and re-uploading them again haha.
I also met another Dutchie who's one of Tom's friends. I think his name was Peter, though it also could have been Pieter. Same pronunciation and I wasn't sober so....

I contacted Ticketmaster the next day to try and get a refund for the cancelled gig as I had pre-paid/ordered tickets online. The response informed me that they had to wait for the official word from the promotor. I contacted the bands too and they told me they were at the venue and read the same message and that was it. So rather fucked up for all involved!

We got breakfast at Subway, visited another CD store and went to World Plus where we bought some Tim Tams and Dutch "stroopwafels" (caramel bites). In the afternoon we visited a "Belgian" fest. For a good laugh check out what "genuine" Belgian dishes they served: yeah right!
At least the beers were actual Belgium beers haha.
Later on we went to the British Open bar again where I shot some pool and won a few times but also got crushed several times by these AZ dudes.
Since I had to get up at 5am (again!) I went to bed around 10pm after which Tom and his clan went back to the pub to get more wasted. The next morning I missed my cab since it left at 5:27am instead of 5:30am which was the agreed on time. After calling the main office they sent his ass back to pick me up hehe.

Stand out things about AZ? Cacti, lots of them. Strip malls everywhere. I would get lost within 2 minutes cause it all looks alike: big lanes with shitloads of cars and even more strip malls.
A personal stand out thing was the leaky air mattress I was sleeping on. I woke up several times per night when the mattress was empty again and I had to blow it up again. Thankfully using some fancy automatic button thing. The last night I gave in and slept on the couch though hehe.

The flight back via Detroit went fine with just 30 minutes delay on the entire itinerary. After landing in Pittsburgh I drove straight to the soccer field so I could catch about 45 minutes of the soccer game :-)