As a Virgo, I'm always super prepared and organized. When not on tour, I'm having repairs done on my van and tinkering with any problems that it may have. After growing up with a machine shop in my back yard and seeing pump after pump come down the driveway to be repaired, I have grown to love the idea of maintenance. These pumps would come in old, dirty and broken down with who knows what kind of chemical residue on them. But one things for sure, they'd leave looking like new. I'd watch the millwright work as if unfazed by the wreckage and continue to take his notes and measurements. He'd always find the reason the pumps had failed and say something about the operators not caring about their jobs.
At the time, I owned a 1967 Mercedes 300 SE and I began to view it the same as these old pumps coming in. I was obsessed with taking care of it and keeping it working properly. This idea has always been a part of my life, wether it was an old Huffy bike I sanded down and repainted or the 1972 VW Beetle I worked on every weekend as a kid.
This practice has followed me on the road in my VW van. It is the reason I can trek back and forth across the country without many problems. It's silly to think that we don't have to pay close attention to our vehicles. When people come talk to me, usually they ask how many miles are on it. Like, how could you be doing this in a old van? But what they don't know is how much care I put into keeping it running like the day it came off of the factory floor. There's a lot of respect for the machine and it's many moving parts.
However, there are days when things happen out of my control. So far on this tour, I've made two trips to the mechanic. One in Atlanta for a leaking coolant hose and then in the lovely Cape Cod after wading in the waters counting my blessings, I ended up on a tow truck and spending the night outside a shop awaiting the mechanics to show up on Monday morning.
One thing about van life is it's always easy to get that sense of home no matter where you are. In the parking lot that night, I was home. Sure there were uncertainties but I ate a good meal, read a book and looked forward to finally getting to the bottom of my clutch issue. I ended up needing a new flywheel and my sponsor, GoWesty, couldn't locate one in a rush so I had to find one on eBay. The whole process of finding parts and talking to the mechanic became just another part of my tour.
Because my tours are hosted by long time fans of my music, I end up staying in the homes of people who I only once knew from an email. My breakdown in Cape Cod was embarrassing but it couldn't have happened at a better time with my tour schedule. I'm staying in Jamestown, RI with the Krause family and have been here for well over a week. It's going to be like two weeks total by the time I get out of here, but I have found a new set of friends. Found a new family. No one wants to make mistakes or have failures but today I'm thankful for my music career not working out like it was supposed to. Every tour I go on starts to develop more and more and my network of friends is growing across the country. My tour bus doesn't have a bathroom or a driver who leaves the AC running all day so the star doesn't sweat, but I do have a repair manual.
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