After a brief hiatus from tour blogging I’m back.  The last few days have been busy and brought us some great stories, most of which are available for consumption through video on our facebook group.  But for those of you who have sold your soul to WhoreBook here’s the low tech version.

Saturday night we had a fantastic turn out at Corbett McGee’s Irish Pub in Anderson.  The pub was great for hosting us and it made for a fun show for all of our friends.  Our good friend Daniel Machado was good enough to drive up from Columbia and open for us.  He played some great tunes off his upcoming album, which you should definitely be looking for in the near future.

The real story began when Daniel got back out to his car after the show.  He had one tire that was, in his words, “devastatingly flat”.  In the process of putting the spare on his tire iron split and, when he was forced to use wrenches to take the nuts off, he encountered one that was diabolically tight.  While attempting to remove the last nut we (the group of macho dudes who had inserted ourselves into the situation) managed to strip the outside.  Finally, Daniel decided to call it quits for the night and come bunk with the rest of the band until we could get back out there with bigger tools on Sunday.

We returned on Sunday with some tried and true tools, courtesy of one of our awesome band parents - Jeff Martin.  The tools included vice grips, a hammer, a sledge hammer, and a smattering of wrenches.  Instead of making more progress on loosening the bolt we (Daniel working while Stevo, Jamie, and I watched) only succeeded in striping the outside of the bolt further.  The highlight of the McGee parking lot experience was the sledgehammer putt-putt that was birthed from our boredom and a found golf ball.  Eventually, we called in the cavalry and towed the old Mustang to Wal-Mart for the help of professionals.

While in Wal-Mart we passed the time until the car was ready by consuming unholy amounts of Icee in Subway.  One great quote from that time was Daniel’s take on the porn industry: “I have mixed feelings about porn.  On the one hand it’s completely disgusting and perverse but on the other hand they look like they’re having a good time and making good money.”  Wally world’s prognosis on the car, once they got to it, was that we would have to go elsewhere to get the bolt removed.  Even the professionals couldn’t get it off.  It didn’t help though that they had “saved” his car until last, which meant that every other place in town was closed by the time we had the chance to take it elsewhere.

So Daniel decided to take matters into his own hands and bought a blow torch, crowbar, and chisel.  We spent the next two cold hours applying the blue flame to the nut and attacking it with a screwdriver, chisel, crowbar, and hammer.  We had given up on ever actually unscrewing the nut and only hoped to break it off or whittle it down to nothing.  All of our work was for naught, however, when we were done we had a dull chisel, marred crowbar, and a little less of a nut.  The indestructible lugnut lived on.  We decided to go ahead and have the object of our wrath towed again to Firestone where we hoped it could be taken care of early the next morning.  With all the speed of a one legged squirrel, the tow truck arrived and a good three hours later the car was in its next resting place.

On Sunday, after almost 48 hours of full out war, the Firestone employees had used their mechanical wizardry to remove the amazing indestructo-nut.  Apparently, it was on so securely that the rim had been destroyed in the removal process as well.  We weren’t really surprised.

While the weekend was long and frustrating at times, it ended up being totally awesome.  The show was great and we loved getting a chance to play for our friends and fans.  Daniel did an awesome job with his solo performing and, best of all, new friends were made during the trying time spent angrily attacking the nut.  Daniel aptly referred to our time as the “Fellowship of the Lugnut”.  For a more pop-culture approach to the story check out our video recaps on facebook.