Curt's entry, 6/26/2000

Greetings to all, we're in Florida right now staying at Bob's brother's house and it has been a great time.

We've been fishing a lot cuz he has a lake in his back yard and we met a bunch of his friends who are super cool and we partied WAAAAAY too much. But now it is Monday and I am recovered for the most part. And due to all that partying, we now have the most awesome pair of boobs on film to date. This chick was getting nutty showing off her fakies, and so I persuaded her to give us the whole 10 pounds for keepsake on video. She quickly obliged my request and KABOOM!!! I've watched the "scene" about 20 times now through the viewfinder.

Florida is cool. All the shows with 311 and Incubus have gone great and were so much fun. We partied in Nick's bus a couple times (his bus is known as "Club Hex". He's got a disco ball and lights and bumpin' house music, and, of course, girls.) it was super nice to be playing with them, not only because our friendship is close, but also because everything with them is just kick ass: the people, the sound, the professionalism, the atmosphere, the fans, the food, and the whole vibe. It was all a great experience and we picked up lots of new fans and friends along the way.

As we were driving south after playing New York City, Bob and Ii started getting a real jonezin' to go fishing. So we stopped into Walmart in some small town in Delaware (or maybe it was Virginia) and bought some retractable fishing rods and some "sure to catch the big one" lures. Once we got going, every body of water, including small mud holes, left us with visions of 15 pound bass jumping onto the bank for us.

At once, we spotted our vision as we passed this sign for a rustic little camping area with a 5 acre lake on it. We turned around and headed in to see what the dilly was. We were told that, "Yes, they do have cabins for rent." and "Yes, they do have bunk beds in them, though with no phone line." We were sold.

We saw all these pictures of huge fish on the door to the "lodge", bought some worms and drove back to our cabin. As we got back to the camping area, we saw cabin #7. The problem was that it was not a cabin at all, it was more like a wooden tent that was a house for bugs and small creatures of alien descent. The bunks we line with dirty old army issue mattresses that looked like they could have been from the civil war. There were cockroaches that flew (nearly 3 inches long) and moths that were the size of small birds. We took pics. We were in nature. We weren't gonna let a couple giant size, unrecognizeable insects ruin the great fishing trek that Bob and I were on. We killed all the bugs that we could see, went back the lodge, bought a couple cases of beer and traded the people there a couple of cds for use of their paddleboat to use for traversing the lake.

We fished and fished and fished and fished, and eventually came to the conclusion that this was hardly a lake as much as it was a hole for rain run-off. And all those pictures we saw of the huge fish caught out of the lake were from 1971 or something before the place became run over with insects and strange, very strange, water creatures. After close to 200 casts, Bob finally caught a 6 inch bass. We were in business!! Then I got another as the sun was going down, but it was no bass. It was litterally a 3-eyed, mutated bull-head that could only flip its tail in one direction. I came to the unruly conclusion that this fish was, as a result of his messed up tail and 3rd eye, only able to ever swim in circles of one direction. The poor mutated little fishy.

Upon seeing that fish, Bob and I thought it would be a good idea for us to get out of the water. We docked our paddleboat, but continued to fish until way into the night from the banks. We kept catching bull-heads. I ended up stopping fishing cuz I was tired of putting worms on my hook. I hate putting hooks through worms, cuz I am sure that they feel pain by the way they clinch their bodies up and writhe in pain and squirt out all of their poo.

Bob kept on going, though. as the night wore on and the realization set in that our sleeping situation was not that great and the bugs were coming in force and we had no "Off" spray, we realized that we were going to have to drink as much cheap "Bore Ice" as possible to sleep through the night. At one point we took a walk into the woods where it was pitch black and brought our video camera with us to kind of do it "blair witch" style. Once we settled deep into the woods we noticed something very beautiful. There were hundreds of thousands of fire-flies around us and it looked like we were in the center of our own galaxy. It was incredible.

Then as we got deeper into the woods, and after being plastered by huge spider webs many times, we started to freak ourselves out. Every stick that cracked was a killer human on the other side of the blackness. Every nightly sound was a threat to our survival. The moments when we were deathly silent and trying not to laugh from under our breath, and ready to turn back, got only more intense, snowballing through our conscious until we were actually scared, like being in a nightmare.

As we turned to go back we turned on our flashlight and it would not turn on! Here we were in the middle of the woods with no light and no way to find our way back but to put our hands in front of us and feel for the "path." Nearly two hours later we found our wooden tent, but by that time were covered in bugs and spiders and ants with no way to clean up but to wipe a towel over our bodies and smoosh the bugs to death before they bit us. I had a spider in my hair that was big and hairy and about the size of a 50 cent piece. I put my hat on and smooshed him in my hair with my hand.

At this time we got heavy onto the "Bore Ice" beer (I think it was the lodge people's own brew) cuz we had to forget about nature. Nature was killing us. At the time we returned and killed all the bugs that were crawling on us, Bob and I went to check the lines we left in the water. Bob reeled his in and of all the freaky things to happen next, he had a 4 1/2 foot black eel on his line. It was so fucking weird. We all screamed like little school girls as it flipped and twisted itself up in the poles on the bank. It made a hissing noise, like a snake too (maybe it was a snake but we were too drunk at this time on the bore ice) whenever we got near it to cut the line. Finally after 10 minutes of the eel dillemma we were able to cut it free.

At this point we had all had about 20 beers a piece over the course of 5 hours or so and it was time to go to sleep. I slept for about 3 hours total and once I awoke, hungover and still half drunk, I noticed thousands of little gnat-like bugs crawling all over everybody. Rather than wake the crew up from their tender sleep and sweet dreams, I thought it would make for the perfect photo opportunity. So as they lay there, mouths agape and at least a couple hundred pinhead size gnats teaming on and around them I snapped away. It was funny. I was laughing to myself so hard, but I had to laugh real quiet so I wouldn't wake them up, which made things even funnier for me.

The next morning we all knew that we had had too much nature, and Bob and I felt a little guilty for making everyone have to deal that hard in order to feed our fishing obsession. But, as I look back on it now, it was one of the funnest days we've had on tour, and definitely one of the most memorable.

Spread your wings and fly,

Grubb