The Silent Suffering Of A Tourbus





Somebody had drilled a hole in the tank and siphoned the gas out of it overnight. Walter found himself underneath the van, gluing the hole shut with epoxy in the hope that it would hold for the rest of the tour. That was last night.

Before that our car had been broken into on numerous occasions, with glass panes shattered, all locks except for one ruined by amateurs and a bloody attempt at getting the radio out of its slot without the front panel attached. If the thief had only thought to look under the seat for a tool case, we would have been spared all the blood on the seats from the cuts on his hands.

We've had to drive from Teplice to Cologne (a ten hour drive) in torrential rains with only a piece of cardboard to cover the shattered pane, and during our last tour in the spring our bus got towed - luckily at the end of the tour, but still - in a country whose language I don't speak and whose customs as far as the towing of vehicles are concerned I am not familiar with. And it was Sunday. The bus got scratched in the process, but we got it back without too much fuss thanks to the club owner's help.

We depend on that car to get us from A to B to Z with all our equipment, without a fuss and, most importantly, on time. When you're messing with our bus you're messing with our tour schedule. So - you know - stop messing with our bus, people! Go break into some muscle car or something. You might find more stuff to filch from there than from the always cleared out inside of a jazz musician's touring vehicle.

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