US Trip.

A little late, whatever. Me and Tank spent the days between March 11th and April 12th across the pond and had a blast. We went over with no real plans other than to eat pizza, and the only thing we had to base anything on was a few gig dates in various cities. We made some amazing friends, saw alot of crazy shit, went to alot of incredible shows and came through with our plan to eat lots of pizza. A few highlights, from what I can remember:

(photos are up here - http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=3472909&albumId=2164916 )

New York: Flew into NYC, immediately shit ourselves as we realised we were in America on our own for 5 weeks and had no clue what we were doing. Took a cab into the city to our hostel, took about an hour and we took pictures of the stupidest shit ever the whole way. Heading into New York City for the first time was such an insane experience, very overwhelming.
Our hostel was right next to Central Park which was cool, and we were apparently two or three blocks from Harlem (a no-go area according to a dude from the hostel)! Walked pretty much the length of the park after we had checked in, just walking towards the huge skyscrapers. The walk from the end of the park through to Times Square and beyond was another thing i won't forget, I felt like I was in a cartoon or something. Shortly following this we had our first pizza of the trip at Ray's Pizza. Dead good.
The next few days were spent mainly walking around, riding the subway and eating pizza. Other than a few highlights like The Empire State Building, The Village (and the best record shop ever), the World Trade Center site and some other mad stuff, New York got boring pretty fast. So, after 5 days we decided to leave NYC. Now, our original plan was to head north to Boston for St. Patricks Day and spend a couple days there, but Boston being full of American Irish etc, everywhere was booked up. So we just decided to ease Paddys day and go south to Richmond in Virginia.

Richmond, Virigina: Jumped on a Greyhound bus to Richmond and just headed straight down there. The driver managed to get lost coming into DC on the way down and had to be directed by a passenger. We also passed a shop in a small town called 'Bombay Gaylord' and me + tank proceeded to absolutely crack up laughing for a good 5 minutes, while everyone else wondered why we were laughing...

We arrived in Richmond and realised we had no way of contacting the lads we were mean to be staying with, so Tank had to phone this girl Amanda whose number we had, and her and her friend came and picked us up. The next three days were spent floating around the Richmond suburbs, sleeping on the floors and in the cars of these two girls, it was pretty surreal. The second night we went into Richmond to see The Ladies, Shoot It Up and Cloak/Dagger in a tiny bar/cafe place called Ramakins, our first show of the trip. It was rad, especially The Ladies, as it was their first show and their set was about 5 minutes long, but perfect for all 5 of those minutes. We still hadn't gotten hold of the boys we were meant to stay with though, and we had no idea what they looked like which didn't help. We asked around a bit, but no luck. The next night was another show in the same venue, and was even better. The Ladies played again, also with Brutal Knights from Canada and local boys Wasted Time, who were amazing. There were people spilling out onto the street, diving off the bar, just going mental. This was an awesome night too because we finally found Judge and Kage, the guys we were supposed to be staying with.

Now, this was a very important turning point in our little trip. See, we thought we had been having a pretty good time up to that point already, and we were super grateful to Amanda and Tori for helping us out and being cool, but everything just got fucking amazing as soon as we threw our gear into Judge's car and headed to Trey Brown's house. We had gotten talking to Judge and Kage about 6 months prior to our trip through Kage responding to an email I had sent to Swamp Thing about 6 months before the trip (Kage played bass in Swamp Thing at the time), and it turned out that their dad was from Liverpool, and they said we were welcome to stay with them anytime which was cool as shit. Anyway, I think it must have been between midnight and 1am when we got back to Trey's house that night, and me and Tank just thought we would be getting in and going to sleep. But, over the next half an hour people just started coming into the house and chilling, and we were introduced to the likes of Dan (Snax), Brett, Trevor, Jessica and some others I think. It was just crazy that it was 1am on a wednesday night and these guys were just like 'So what are we doing tonight?'. They decided we had to experience 'Sheetz' which turned out to be a kind of petrol station/all night diner combo, so we all piled into cars and drove out there, where we met a bunch more hardcore kids and ate M&Ms + laughed til our faces hurt, it was boss.
(That night, and in the weeks to follow, we met easily some of the best, soundest and craziest fuckers we had ever encountered. Our holiday wouldn't have even come close to being as good as it was if it wasn't for the Richmond kids. I just want to say thanks to Judge for driving us absolutely everywhere (including Miami!!), taking time off work to chill and do cool stuff with us, and just being a boss dude; Kage/K-Pei/Belmar for being the funniest and weirdest guy ever; Dan (CEO of Snax Inc...) for driving us to Philly and moshing when excited; Trey Brown for putting up with us taking over his couch for like 3 weeks, thanks so much mate; Brett for being massive and from New York, for making fun of us non-stop for being English, for riding an FBM and for killing abot 45632 kids at United Blood; Trevor aka Space Trigg for doing the dance of death to Mind Eraser and trying to puke on purpose, and for being well funny; Mary for letting us ride in the back of her pickup truck, sorry we got you pulled over!; Ethan for being totally unhinged and having the best most intense rants about hardcore ever 'you know why he loves Bitter End? Coz he's never heard Void!!'; thanks also to James, Ashton, Anna, Caroline, CRAZY ZACK, Greg, Sean Patrick, Lil Lexxx, Sean from Naysayer, the crazy guy who worked in 7-11 that kept calling me New York, Swamp Thing, Mind Rot, COMA and STEP ABOVE!!! + anyone else who I've inevitably forgotten, thanks! We love Richmond.)

The three weeks we spent in Richmond have kinda melded into a big blur in my mind now, but I'll try and remember some individual incidents.
Earth Crisis night was a good one haha. Me, Tank, Dan and Trevor went to see Earth Crisis, Terror, Sworn Enemy, Shai Hulud and Down To Nothing at Alley Katz. We missed DTN and the rest of the show was fucking crap, afterwards was awesome though. After the show everyone went a few blocks down to this club where one of the local hc kids was doing a rap set at a dance party under the name Lil Lexxx. It was crazy, about a hundred hardcore kids just crashed this club, went crazy for Lexxx then left haha. After 'Da x God' was done, a few of us drove around looking for pizza places that had closed and put leftovers in the bins out back. After a fruitless search, we went to this guy's flat and one of the lads we were with just walked in, took a pizza from the kitchen and ate it outside. We chilled outside this guys flat for about an hour or two, during which we pissed off the whole neighbourhood by shouting at student houses, setting cardboard on fire and having Crazy Zack piss on it, and Dan screaming at some drunk girls while trying to pull a street sign out of the ground. We had the police called on us twice that night...
I'm at the point now in this recollection where I have realised that to carry on like this would take me days, so I'm just going to list some other highlights and leave my memories in my head.
Boss shit: Our trip to DC to see 86 Mentality's last ever show, which was one of the best/scariest things I've ever been to. Judge driving us almost non-stop for 24hrs from Richmond to Miami then staying for one night and driving back so Ana could go to a job interview. United Blood fest being amazing, and getting to see THE WRONG SIDE and MIND ERASER. Illegally going onto Belle Isle, then getting stopped by the police for riding in the back of a pickup at 3am, and being put on the Richmond City Police gang files. Oh and Tegan getting royally fucked with haha. So much more.

Thanks lads.