July 23, 2007
Tour Blog: Gone to Grenoble
Written by Girth McDürchstein on July 23, 2007 2:10 PM
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Splitcock Tour -- Europe & Japan '07
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This tour has had its share of financial difficulties, and our lack of income from not playing any shows (so far!) is really putting a chink in our monetary armor. In fact, we’ve spent so much money that yesterday I had to turn in the truck to Lainata Sinä Kuorma-Auto in Helsinki and figure out what our next move was. We couldn’t afford to fly to Reykjavík. Hell, we couldn’t even afford to fly to Grenoble, the French city where we planned to just chillax until we went to Japan.
Then Margo came up with a brilliant idea: “We can pack everything, including us, into a huge shipping carton and ship it to the EconoLodge in Grenoble!”
Carl interjected, “Stupid question: won’t we die?”
Margo shrugged. “Doubt it.”
“Good enough.” I clapped my hands together and got on the laptop Margo stole from the CIA four years ago. Twenty minutes later, we had a total from FedEx.
“Ninety-two hundred euros?!” I roared. “Jesus fucking Christ! Wait—how much is that in real money?”
“It’s, like, $13,000,” Margo said.
“Dammit!” I groaned, shoving myself against the wall of the alley where we had temporarily decided to live. “I only have $100 left on my credit card. Do you guys have any money?”
Carl shrugged. “There’s probably a check from the Blue Lantern waiting for me at home.”
“You son of a bitch!” I snapped, shoving my full weight against Carl. He was bigger, both fatter and stronger, so it had little effect. “Why didn’t you remind me you owned the most profitable coffee shop in Cedar Rapids?”
“Because I don’t want to spend my life savings so you can go to a sex club in England,” Carl said.
Behind him, Mikey snickered. I wished I could afford a hit man.
“Wait a sec,” Margo said. “I got something.”
She had pulled up an online Yellow Pages search with a coupon for a freight company called Rasia Tehdas.
Below that, we found an English translation stating: “We will sent anything, includes human cargos, to any location for €50 plus low-cost Pepsi.”
“Sounds legitimate,” I said.
We left Riffs and Mikey to guard our instruments and took the bus over to Rasia Tehdas. Margo stopped at a grocery store across the street and fished one of their coupons out of a free weekly paper, Viikko Astua Raskaasti, which looked like it was about hookers or something (it had a bunch of hot naked women with prices and what looked like street names next to their name).
The Rasia Tehdas office was small and grimy, all gray oil-stained walls and sleazy, balding fat men standing around a teapot, chatting in Finnish. They didn’t stop talking or even turn to look when the bell over the door jingled. I could smell something acrid in the air—testosterone, rage, and body grease.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” I said, approaching the front counter that divided the office in half. They gave us cursory glances and continued yammering at each other.
“Dammit!” I slammed my fists against the splintery wooden counter. “I have a coupon! Kuponki!”
This got their attention. One man, barely five feet tall with a thick crown of orange hair surrounding a pink scalp, waddled over to the counter and said in English. “May I help you, sirs?”
“I’m not a sir,” Margo grunted.
“Would you like to prove it by coming to back office, in more way than one?” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
Margo looked at me as if waiting for approval. I shook my head sternly, then said to the man, “Sir, we need to ship five people and 500 pounds’ worth of instruments to Grenoble, France. Can you provide us with adequate packaging?”
He nodded and swung open a hinged flap on the counter. “Follow me.”
The atmosphere seemed to change as we moved into the back section of the shipping company—it somehow felt windy and overcast, despite one section of room not having its own climatological system.
The other men stared as the orange-haired fellow led us to a door in the back. He shoved through it—literally, putting his whole body weight in to force it open. “It sticks,” he explained on the other side. We all nodded as we walked past him into a huge warehouse—
Filled with coffins.
As far as the eye could see, coffins were sprawled outward. To the sides, they had stacked crates and cardboard boxes of various sizes, but in the center of the warehouse, all the way into the fog (the back wall of the warehouse was not visible to us), it was just row after row of coffins. The place was quiet as a tomb—I suspected they didn’t do a lot of business.
“You’re not going to…kill us, are you?” Margo asked with caution. Carl and I exchanged uneasy glances.
The shipping clerk let out a hearty belly laugh and bellowed, “Of course not, don’t be ridiculous! You see, we steal coffins from funeral parlor to the north. We find loophole in international shipping—coffins go free. So fifty euros are all profit, except for keeping cheap-ass warehouse and non-human boxes, plus cost of theft. Even so, we make big bucks, chief.”
“That is fascinating,” I said, “and sad.”
Under the guise of shaking his hand, I slid a €50 note into his palm, leaned in close, and whispered, “Give us your finest coffins or you’ll need them for more than shipping living people.”
He gave me a hard look and said, “Fuck off, motherfucker.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“Hey, bitch.” The shipping clerk tossed a little, scallop-edged gold coin in the air. “Don’t forget to buy me can of Pepsi.”
I caught the coin in my hand. A 20-cent euro piece. I glared into his steely eyes. “I thought we got the free soda.”
“Who said nothing about free soda? We buy €1 soft drink from you for 20 cent.”
“Huh,” I said.
I went across the street to the grocery store and bought a Pepsi. Twenty minutes later, we had lugged all the instruments and equipment down to the Rasia Tehdas warehouse. The balding, orange-haired clerk measured us for coffins, and I must admit I was pretty impressed with the quality. All five of ours were ebony wood, lined with purple crushed velvet. At first I was a little claustrophobic, but before long I could hardly tell the difference between lying in a coffin and having Margo lie on top of me, as she sometimes does. After awhile, I fell asleep, stirred only periodically during portions of the trip when the coffins were man-handled by men with little respect for the deceased.
According to the packing list, sixteen hours had passed between our coffins and packages departing from Finland and arriving at the Grenoble EconoLodge. I snuck out of mine and found myself in a large, damp boiler room. I went to the motel office to check in. I informed them that I had a shipment that should have arrived. The motel clerk acted irritated about the delivery, but he just had me sign a few forms and then told me my things were in the boiler room. He made no offer to lead me there.
As I turned to walk away, the clerk shoved his greasy bangs out of his eyes and muttered, “You know Maison De Chat Airways had a sale, €10 per person from any Scandinavian city to any French city. Could have saved from being lugged in a coffin.” He shrugged as if he didn’t really care. I almost let him know about the high-quality sleep it afforded me and that I had made a mental note to bring the casket back to America with me as a sleep aid, but I let it go. I’ve learned over a 15 years of touring that it doesn’t pay to piss off the motel clerks.
I went and got the rest of the band, and together we lugged all the equipment and coffins to our adjoining rooms.
We’ll be hanging around Grenoble for the next three weeks or so, just chillaxing as I said before. Any French Crucificionados in the area can feel free to stop by rooms 117 and 119 of the Grenoble EconoLodge. We’ll gladly sign autographs or invite you into a sex cauldron or whatever turns you on.
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