Current Location: Outside Flagstaff, AZ
Current Song: Whiskey, Whiskey, Whiskey by John Mayer
Current Beer: Dragoon Amber by Dragoon Brewing

My first John Mayer song for “Current Song” on the post. There’ll be more, I assure you. I basically listen to John Mayer’s Sirius channel 24/7 because, honestly, it’s fucking amazing. Yes, he is a douchebag. Yes, he’s a fuck load of pretentious. You know what he also is? A REALLY great judge of good music, and I’ve almost never hated ANY song that’s come on… my only knock is that they only play like three new songs a week that rotate quite often. I’ve heard “Origami” by Sienna Spiro WAAAY too many times. It’s a great song, but literally every fucking time I turn on the radio it seems to be playing. Just saying.

Anyways, shortly after this song came on he (yes, John Mayer personally handles it live, SHUT UP) played “Midnight Train To Georgia” by Gladys Knight and the Pips and I remembered how even as a kid I was like “I want to be a Pip!”

Even at 8 or 9 years old, wherever I was when I could process music like that, I was basically conceding “I want to be the guy in the back doing the coordinated dance moves!” These guys are badass. Come on now…

And you could ask, like, you didn’t look at some lead singer or lead guitarist who could put his foot up on the monitor speaker and just OWN… you don’t want to be that guy?!? WHY WOULDN’T YOU WANT TO BE THAT GUY?!?

Everyone wants to be that guy right? Well, no. No, they don’t.

The beauty of being a Pip is the underlying support of the effort that goes unseen in the moment. You don’t even realize how important what the Pip is doing until you go back and think it through and go, “oh man, those guys in the back were killing it, weren’t they?”

And my life has unconsciously lined up with that idea. I was the keyboardist. (Ugh.) I was the bassist. (Ugh.) I was the second harmony line that legit turned us into fucking CSNY in front of a bunch of 20-somethings that couldn’t appreciate it even if they were sober.

I’M THE FUCKING I.T. GUY. Enough said.

Then there’s something about this channel that makes you listen to things differently… to his credit, he kinda brings that out of you, the listener. So listen to the song to the end.

The last chorus, right before she hits the last “…then live without him in mine”… she is COMPLETELY out of breath. Listen to it, she’s hit the absolute end of her lung capacity and it is absolutely perfect. I’d put that on par with Merry Clayton’s crack in Gimme Shelter.

What I’m saying is, John Mayer is fucking amazing and I don’t care how much of an asshole he is. Michael Jackson maybe probably diddled some kids, and we can still listen to his music, so wtf who cares.

Also what I’m saying… “No More I Love You’s” by Annie Lennox just came on, and those laughs and weird dialogue in the background of the bridge-ish part just confused the absolute shit out of Goose.

Speaking of Goose… this fucking dog, man. This FUCKING dog…

First, to start where I left off last, we got to the campsite outside San Diego. Last time I stayed there must have been during the week and/or out of season. There was absolutely no one there last time, so I was thoroughly shocked when I pulled in and it was PACKED. And I mean energetically packed. Like every site barbecuing and kids playing and music and drink… the whole package. Everywhere.

Thankfully there was quiet hours after 10pm so everything shut down and there was peace. We also had a great view out the back of the van.

Woke up Sunday morning and drove straight back to Arizona. We spent a couple of nights at a decent site outside Sedona that I somehow took zero photos of, and have been camped outside of Flagstaff since Tuesday afternoon. And until about 5 minutes ago, we were completely alone for miles. I pulled up and my IMMEDIATE thought was, “I’m starting a fire.”

This may be my favorite spot so far. I pulled up and basically just went, “how the fuck is no one camped here?” Like I literally thought I had maybe gone too far down the forest road or something, I must have messed this up. Even when I accepted it was a legit spot, I knew someone would eventually show up and take the other half of this huge spot. And like I said, about 5 minutes ago they did. They at least don’t seem like assholes, so we’ll see how that plays out.

Either way, we’ve been here and it’s been amazing.

We’ve also been testing Goose’s range on roaming the world and getting back to me. As previously mentioned he GOES… FAR… when he gets his shot. I started sending shots of him off in the distance to try and let Jenny see how far he goes and he still comes back. Except she couldn’t make out where he even was in the picture, so I started circling him before I sent them.

Seriously, that’s how far he goes. And he always makes his way back. Huskies, man, I tell ya.

But then just to be a dick I keep circling the dogs in the pictures I send to Jenny.

This feels like a forever gag, I can’t wait.

As mentioned, some people just showed up to share our huge spot. I didn’t have much of an argument against them staying as this spot is a) LARGE and b) AMAZING. But it’s not ours to own, and this is probably just a good catalyst to move along tomorrow afternoon.

We’ll stick around Flagstaff through Friday night into Saturday, stock up on supplies and then head up to northeast Arizona / southeast Utah. Not exactly an area stocked with big box stores like Walmart, so we’ll need to make sure we’re covered for a while.