July 21, 2007
Tour Blog: East to Iceland
Written by Girth McDürchstein on July 21, 2007 12:34 PM
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Splitcock Tour -- Europe & Japan '07
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Unfortunate scheduling forced us to ferry our truck back into Finland and drive clear across the country to get to Russia. We spent most of the day enjoying the Finnish countryside.
It was dark before we got to the border. The road divided into three lanes with wide medians as we approached large checkpoints. A man in a midnight-black uniform came from the guard-shack, assault-rifle slung over his shoulder. He came to the truck and spoke hostilely in Finnish.
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
The soldier sneered at me. “Little,” he grunted.
“Well, here are our passports,” I said, handing over the five passports.
The solider looked at the passports, scanned the cab of the truck, and said, “I see only two.”
I glanced at Margo, then back at the soldier. “The other three are in the back,” I said.
His eyes widened. The soldier tore the gun from his shoulder and aimed the barrel into the truck. “How dare you?”
“What the hell’s your problem, man?” I asked.
“You do not sneak men over border in back of truck.”
“I’m not sneaking them. I gave you the fucking passports!”
“In old times, I take you out of truck and shoot you in the woods,” the soldier said.
“Wow, Iceland used to be pretty bad-ass, huh?”
“Iceland?” he grunted incredulously.
“This is the Finnish border with Iceland, right?”
“Russia!” the soldier shouted.
“No, no, that’s—wait, are we in Iceland already?”
“Iceland is 5000 miles away!” the soldier screamed.
“From where?”
“Son of the bitch! Do I need to draw a map?”
“No,” I chuckled. “I already have a map.”
Little Riffs Nicky, who took a cartography class in junior college, had drawn a map to help us plan our tour of Scandinavia and Japan. We’ve been carrying it around for weeks to guide our trek:
I showed the map to the soldier. He aimed the gun barrel at the ground as he looked at the map. He glanced up at me, eyebrows raised. “What is this, joke?”
“No,” I said. “That’s our tour.”
“You show me picture of penis with blue vein and call it the map?”
“Huh,” I said, considering it. “It does sort of look like a—”
“One minute,” the soldier said, waddling into his guard shack. He returned with an old, beaten atlas written in Russian. He opened up a large-ish view of the North American continent— and damn if he wasn’t right all along! Iceland is a large island just south of Greenland. It surprised me that Riffs didn’t know that.
“Shit,” I said. “How are we supposed to get to Iceland by tomorrow night?”
“Turn the truck around, boss,” said the soldier.
I ignored him. To Margo, I said, “Baby, we gotta make this one. For the fans. Can we get a flight?”
“What do I look like, Expedia? How the fuck should I know?” Margo asked. She was a little testy because earlier, she’d spilled a bit of muddy Finnish coffee in her lap. The lack of caffeine buzz combined with the recent searing pain made for an unpleasant ride.
I whipped out my cell and didn’t have anything resembling a signal. I turned to the soldier and asked, “Can I use your satellite phone?”
“My what?!” he asked.
He didn’t even have a walkie-talkie. I looked into the dimly lit guard shack and saw a phone that might have been installed in 1923. It was rotary, so I assumed I couldn’t use it to push all those stupid buttons and make an automated phone reservation.
“Hell,” I grunted, pulling away from the guard shack and trying to figure out how to make a three-point turn in a truck I’d never driven before. Nine points later, I was turned back around in a one-way lane. Fortunately, very few Finns have any desire to get into Russia, so we were able to drive the wrong way until we got back to the correct side of the road.
Unfortunately, as you might have already guessed, we’re stuck in Finland until we can find a way out. There’s a 99% certainty that tomorrow’s show in Reykjavík will be canceled. I would like to apologize, on behalf of Abysmal Crucifix, to our enormous Icelandic fan base, and I’d like to take the opportunity to thank you again for making ¡Paz, Hombre! the #8 song in your country back in 2001. We’ll plan better next time!
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