Dear Jonas-

Last night we played the Stork Club in Oakland, CA. It was cool to find out that Oaktown pioneers Green Day (were you thinking MC Hammer? Me too) were playing a secret show 3 blocks down the road, so the place was a-buzz…although, I think a few more people in town went to that show than ours. The night went well, and it was nice of all of our Nor-Cal friends to make it out. We sincerely thank all of them for their hospitality and friendship.

We were driving home from the venue at about 1:15am to our friend Justin’s house in Oakland Hills. It was my turn to DD, and I had been drinking ice water for hours. We were in the 2nd-to-right lane of the 4-lane highway, going about 60mph on I-580, and all of a sudden it sounded, and felt, like a bomb went off in the van’s caboose. Somehow, to our continued amazement still this morning, we had been rear-ended while making forward progress at proper speed on the interstate. Judging by the impact, if we were going 60, this person had to be going 85-90mph minimum. It took about 15 seconds for us to realize what just went down, and by the time we gathered ourselves, pulled the van over to the shoulder, got out and looked around, we realized there was not a soul in sight. Somehow this person had drilled us and either sped off into the night, or fallen off a cliff on the side of the road for all we know. We have NO IDEA what happened to this car that hit us, and now 12 hours later are still baffled by the entire sequence of events. We remember seeing a white Yukon go past us after the impact, and after playing Nancy Drew for the rest of the night we have figured it was that Yukon. Jake and I, from our countless hours of property damage assessment at Enterprise, have noticed some white paint transfer on the back of the van at the proper height of a full-size SUV ass-plower, so that’s our final conclusion. We never called the police, as we didn’t have anything to really tell them. It was, and still is, a nearly unbelievable mystery.

Amazingly the van, although a bit roughed up in back, is fine. We have pretty large dents in the two rear doors, and the bumper took a big blow, but the doors still latch, the locks work, and nothing happened to the whip from that point forward (like tires rubbing on fenders, etc.). In addition, all of our equipment in back escaped unscathed…except for the merch box; it was leaning up against the rear door, and therefore got plastered. Unfortunately our beloved Upper Peninsula Beauty Supply suitcase will be retired as soon as we can find a decent receptacle (or box) to put all of our CDs and t-shirts in. Also, the big plywood divider we have between our chairs and the equipment in back probably saved some injuries, as otherwise we would have had flying drums and guitars taking off heads. Who knows, maybe our amps won’t work when we plug them in tonight, but for now Jake’s phenomenal packing job after the show came in clutch-cargo.

Most importantly however, we are all fine. Stuff like that can get pretty scary when you reminisce, and for the exception of having no justice and being angry that we can’t get our van paid for (we only have liability insurance), we experienced probably the best possible outcome.

This entire trip we have said at least twice a day, “Man, I wish Jonas was here…he would have loved it.” Now we’re glad you weren’t, otherwise you would have been posted up without a seatbelt, staring at one of us by the coolers in our traveling living room, and probably ended up being plastered against the windshield as a result. Now, we’re all just glad you can stare at us when we get home.

Your dog-nanny,
-Pat