Silkworm had just started a tour. We had played in Missoula, first show. Stayed over with our folks there. Left early next day to pull an all-nighter to Columbia, Missouri.
Had a show in Columbia, after which we were to play a half dozen shows with Shellac out East.
Stopped in Livingston on our way and ate another great lunch at the Myers Ranch, which was Michael’s grandmother’s farm. Incredible, straight-off-the-cow hamburgers.
Dinked around the farm for a bit. When you’ve got to drive 1500mi by the following evening, there’s no good way to divide it up. Leave at noon, leave at 5PM. It makes no difference. Plus this way we would have ended up in Kansas City around lunchtime. Ideal.
Decided to go through Nebraska, since we didn’t make it through there much. Which meant dropping straight down through the heart of Wyoming. We left Livingston. It was 65 degrees and sunny. It was also late March.
We were on a semi-voluntary jag of either Achtung Baby or Zooropa in the van. More often than not, we wouldn’t play anything in the van. You get enough music when you’re on tour. But one of those albums got played over and over again, because it was stuck in the tape deck and we couldn’t get it out.
Sun went down. Had been getting chillier, and now it got colder more quickly. The van was heated, but not too warm, in the interests of staying alert.
I saw the faint outlines of snow snakes form on the road in front of me. Signs on the side of the road suggested we “tune to AM 760 for weather info,” but the U2 tape was stuck, and the radio was therefore unusable.
Ssssssst. I felt the back wheels give a little bit. The road looked clear. It wasn’t. Quite slick. I tapped the brakes and felt the van wriggle to regain traction. I cut our speed from 65mph to 50mph.
Fog descended to ground level, slow but persistent. More fog. More fog. Visibility cut. 40mph. Well after midnight. Roads worse if anything. It started to dawn on me that we were going to have to bail on Columbia.
Right shoulder, 1/4mi away, taillights poked through the fog.
Left shoulder, same distance, headlights poke through the fog. Someone has spun out or slid over from the other lanes. Someone else has pulled over to help him. I lifted my foot off the accelerator.
The fog parted. Center of the road, “UPS” and “UPS.” Two big brown shields, one on each trailer of a double-length tractor-trailer rig. The headlights on the left, the taillights on the right. Rig stretched from one shoulder to the other.
We were maybe 1/8mi away. I hit the brakes. Antilock went shugga-shugga-shugga.
Van did not slow down. At all. The road is a rink.
To my left was the median and a gnarly V-shaped ditch. Everyone else in the van was lying down asleep, except Michael in the passenger seat. Sideways would be bad.
Trailer was softer than the cab, but it was 2 1/2 or 3 feet off the ground. No telling what would have happened if the hood peeled up into the windshield.
I kept the van straight to take the blow to the front. Aimed square at the tractor’s front edge to stop us without a slide.
We hit the corner of the cab dead-on, 30mph, maybe slightly less. Radiator went poosh. Three-foot geyser of antifreeze.
Sleeping passengers fell off their seats. Joel flew out of the loft onto Andy. Andy flew off a seat onto Vick, who was on the floor. I bashed my knee on the dash. The truck cab corner had cleaved a neat, deep V into the front of the van, stopping at the engine.
Quick inventory. No casualties. We got out of the van. The road had an inch of solid ice on it.
A trooper was there. Yards away, just behind the semi, in the process of closing down the freeway. He had only just gotten to this jackknifed truck. A woman had run her SUV off the road a half-mile farther south, killing her child in the process.
Tow truck and ambulance got us to Cheyenne, a few miles south. We ended up at a Ramada. Made a call, and my father-in-law and a friend of his drove 800mi from Missoula to fetch us and all our stuff the next day.
Then we drove 800mi back. I was driving when we hit a snowstorm on the legendarily shitty Homestake Pass outside of Butte. Complete whiteout. White-knuckled it over and on to Missoula.
Michael took the Greyhound from Missoula to Seattle and borrowed a van from our friend in Engine Kid. 1000mi round-trip.
We drove 1700mi from Missoula to Kalamazoo and played the last of our six shows with Shellac and a show in Chicago.
And then we drove to Minnesota to make the Libertine record in 3.5 days.
And then we drove Steve back to Chicago.
And then we drove 2000mi from Chicago to Seattle.
Nine weeks later, I flew to Denver, rode the Greyhound up to Cheyenne, and got the van back from Cowboy Dodge in Cheyenne. State Farm had the shop fix half of it before they realized it should have been totaled, so they went ahead and finished the repair.
I drove it straight 1200-some miles back to Seattle. A few weeks later, we went back on the road.
8yrs later, I sold the van with 250-some thousand miles on it, after we moved to Chicago. I still see it on the street every now and then. White van with blue panels, Shellac sticker on the back window, where Bob put it.