Day 31: Gainesville, FL
Welcome
Yesterday was the final day of this month-long, bicontinental tour, ending in Gainesville, Florida.
Our day began in the lobby of a Holiday Inn Express & Suites, located in Ybor City, Tampa East. At 11am we assembled and formulated a plan for the day. The drive time was going to be nice and short so we inserted a new event into the schedule: one hour for a pleasant sit-down breakfast. The place we settled on was King State, a popular micro-brewery that also has a fearsome café attachment out front serving sandwiches and salads. I ordered a breakfast sandwich on a buttermilk biscuit with scrambled eggs, bacon, turkey sausage, and some fresh greens.
Morale was high after a night of good sleep and a morning of good food. We left Tampa around midday and hopped onto Interstate 75, heading northeast, back up into the centre of the state. It was another warm and sunny day with plenty of jolly cumulus clouds crowding the skies above us. We passed a historic tower, standing just off the freeway, and it made me very happy because even if Florida doesn’t possess an impressive sky needle like Auckland’s Sky Tower, it has an even more handsome cigar-shaped water tower that proudly graces the northern bank of the Hillsborough River.
The Sulphur Springs Water Tower dates back to 1927, when it was built over the opening of an artesian well, allowing this spring water to be pumped up into the 400,000 litre storage tank at the top, and then supplied to commercial and residential customers in the tower’s vicinity. It was constructed from pre-poured concrete sections that use pieces of railroad rails for rebar, and with its solid rock foundation and buttressed base providing immense stability and strength, this 65m tower will likely remain one of Tampa’s most distinctive landmarks long into the future.
If you have done any driving around the sunshine state of Florida, you will know that baby alligators are everywhere. Every couple of minutes it seems you pass an enthusiastically-designed billboard that advertises opportunities to see these creatures in every little town off the highway. Yesterday we gave in to this advertising onslaught and went to see some real baby gators. They were in the last aisle of a souvenir shop, basking on a flat rock in their glass tank, enjoying the incredible diversity in coffee mugs, shot glasses, and fridge magnets on the nearby shelving. I looked one of them in the eye and it felt like it marked me as an enemy for life.
We continued towards Gainesville and soon the weather worsened. A heavy thunderstorm appeared with little warning and we could barely see out the windscreen. We were grateful for Kayleen’s skill behind the wheel as she moved into the right-hand lane and slowed right down, allowing the more confident drivers to zoom past at their more confident pace.
High Dive is one of Gainesville’s most popular spots. It had that small club energy that we love, everything is sticky, and all the equipment is a bit shit, but the people and the vibe are great. The venue sound engineer was extremely helpful despite being a bit overwhelmed that we had used every single one of his microphone cables. Above the stage the ceiling was too low to fully inflate our fish in its vertical orientation, and there was no lighting bar to hang it from horizontally. The solution came in the form of a guy rope attached to the fish’s side, preventing it from reaching its full magnificent height and holding it steady on an attractive cant, 10º off the vertical. For the first time it looked like it was leaping from out of the waves, to bump it’s nose on the lovingly homemade sound-dampening panels above the drum kit.
After completing a thorough and successful soundcheck we went out for dinner, and then Tristan and I took an evening stroll. There was a park a few minutes down the road and this represented my last chance to see a proper alligator while we were here, in the city with the largest gator population in the US. Depot Park takes its name from the historic train depot that stands just across the street from this beautiful green space. What was once a heavily polluted industrial site has been extensively restored and now functions as a stormwater catchment and filtration system, as well as a wildlife habitat, and a public recreational facility. I walked around the many small bodies of water in this park, each of which serves a different purpose in this stormwater treatment system. I was looking for eyes and a round snout, something that is very easy to conflate with the splash of a feeding fish or the peeking head of a turtle. Finally I found one in the largest pond. It was floating patiently, and when I approached the fence at the water’s edge the alligator came over to say hi. It look friendly and curious, quite unlike the captive baby demon gator from earlier in the day. I made the call over the radio and the rest of the team came from the venue, to meet the new gator friend. Although the likelihood that it was patiently waiting for a bite of food from us is high, we still hope that this alligator enjoyed our company.
Playing at High Dive in Gainesville was a great way to wrap up this tour. 200 people crammed together in a sweaty wooden hall where it feels like everyone is a part of the action; these were ideal conditions for a great night. We played a set that felt tight and rowdy. The crowd were excellent, singing along at every opportunity and screaming requests whenever there was dead air.
Packing out after the gig had its own logistical challenge and Liz and Gabe spearheaded this task. Half of the gear was staying in the US to go back into storage and half was traveling to Europe to meet us at the beginning of next month’s tour. Every case had to be checked, numbered, and extremely well labelled, to prevent confusion between the two different shipments. At half past midnight a man turned up driving a white cargo van, and he very patiently waited while we got everything organised. We stacked the two loads neatly in the back, as he instructed, and papers were signed before he drove off into the night carrying the entire Beths touring rig.
The end of tour celebration was omitted yesterday evening as we had a 7am lobby call to prepare for. One final wakeup, just to prove we could still do it. As we were checking into our Holiday Inn I walked across to a quiet corner of the lobby, my natural curiosity urging me to have a go on the big TV screen which was presenting as a large-format digital assistant. I found that on the TV you could open a web browser and this is how I discovered the correct format for reading the website breakfastandtravelupdates.com. I had not realised just how good this website would look in a giant portrait orientation with text size nicely proportioned to the screen size. The breakfasts are easy to see, the words are easy to read, and it’s nice to finger a digital publication that handles on the same scale as a large format newspaper.
I am hugely grateful to everyone who followed along on this tour, and also to everyone who came out and watched us.
I am even more grateful to Kayleen, and Mathias for safely and comfortably driving us around, and selling our shirts.
Massive thanks to Jake and Apple for their love, their support, and for just being bloody good at their jobs.
And pure thanks to Tristan, Jon, Liz, and Gabe for a great month of shows and hangs.
Finally, thanks to my partner Tess and to my family for everything you do to make this life feasible.
Ben