First off. The particulars of the trip:

The Main Players:

• El Danno (StonerRock.com Owner, Van Owner, Witch Mountain Driver)
• Robwrong (StonerRock.com Writer, Witch Mountain Guitarist/Vocals)
• Nate Mountain (StonerRock.com Member, Witch Mountain Drummer)
• Dave (Witch Mountain Bassist)
• Johnny (Witch Mountain Rhythm Guitarist)

The Statistics:

• Total Miles Driven: Approx. 6245
• Days on the Road: 15
• Shows Attended: 13
• Total Different Bands Seen: Approx: 45
• Rolls of Film Taken: 11
• Best Show: Sunday at Emissions from the Monolith 2

Several months ago Witch Mountain received confirmation that they had secured a slot to play the 3rd day of the "Emissions from the Monolith 2" stoner rock and doom festival in Youngstown, Ohio on the long weekend of May 25, 26, 27 � 2001. Considering that this huge festival, held at the Nyabinghi Club, would feature upto 35 heavy bands and would be headlined by the likes of Boulder, Bongzilla, Raging Slab, Earthride and the almighty Spirit Caravan this was not an opportunity to miss. Even if it was almost all the way to the other side of the continent! (Note: Witch Mountain is the band that travelled the farthest to perform at this festival.)

In order to make this trip possible a few financial obstacles had to be overcome. IE: "How in the hell are we gonna pay for all the gas, food, lodgings, van rental, trailer rental etc involved in a cross country trip?"

To cover most of the expenses, to get the Witch Mountain sound out to the people and to make a truly exciting roadtrip adventure out of this trip Nate Mountain took the initiative and booked a tour along our driving route to the festival. The itinerary of which is as follows:

• May 17: Boise, Idaho w/ Blood Party
• May 18: Salt Lake City, Utah w/Burner
• May 19: Colorado Springs, Colorado (Cancelled)
• May 20: Denver, Colorado w/Blackened Goat Tongue
• May 21: Drive Day
• May 22: Minneapolis, Minesota w/Bonzilla & Swamp Mongrel
• May 23: Chicago, Illinois w/Weedeater & Cuda
• May 24: Milwaukie, Wisconsin w/Bongzilla & Weedeater
• May 25-27: Emissions from the Monolith 2
• May 28: Iowa City, Iowa w/ local bands
• May 29: 27 hours of straight driving!!!!
• May 30: Missoula, Montana w/The Lazerwolfs
• May 31: Seattle, Washington w/Bloodhag & Blessing the Hogs
• June 1: Back home in Portland for a good sleep!
• June 2: Portland, Oregon w/Blessing the Hogs

Theoretically, and I don`t use that word lightly, playing a show every night should keep a band in gas money and food for the duration of the tour and since I (El Danno) also wanted to attend the festival I offered up my own cruising van as transportation, saving van rental costs, as well as providing my pleasant company, emotional support and my services as "tour van driver extrordinaire". My offer was graciously accepted and the wheels were in motion. Except for some new "issues" that I brought to the table. IE: "How am I gonna run StonerRock.com and do the shipping for the All That`s Heavy Online Store if I`m going to be on the road for 2 weeks?

I couldn`t just take 2 weeks off because the site needs attending to on a daily basis and so does the shipping for the store. A brilliant, but "farfetched" idea came to mind: "I`ll do it all from the back of the van while on the road!" - "uhh.. but how?".. As you may already know, I`ve already been planning to take StonerRock.com on the road permanently and inclusive therein was running the site and possibly doing the shipping from the back of the van. But I have been waiting for wireless internet technology and my personal cash flow to pick up before even attempting this. What the fuck!? Now`s a good a time as any to give my "big ideas" a beta-test run.

My original plan was to bring my full size desktop computer into the van and hook it up via some form of wireless modem internet connection. But with 5 guys already occupying real estate in the van the full sized computer was a no-go. Well what then? A laptop, of course, it`s so obvious right? Yeah, if you`ve got a couple of grand to spend on a "suitable" laptop and a few hundred more dollars to spend on a wireless internet connection and subscription. Hmmm.. That ain`t me, that`s for certain.

After some brainstorming I decided to post a message on the StonerRock.com Discussion Forums inquiring if anyone out there in the StonerRock.com Community had a couple (2 because Robwrong needed one so that he could also do his work (reviews, news etc) from the road) of laptops that they wanted to "donate to the cause" or at least sell to us for a reasonably cheap price. And what do you know? Within a day we had a 100mhz IBM laptop and a 150mhz NEC laptop in the mail on the way to us. Each purchased for less than $200 (super sweet deals!) thanks to Nolan and Juggernaut - both active and regular members of the StonerRock.com Community. Thanks guys - you were a big help in making this trip, tour and feature possible!

Next obstacle. "How do we get the laptops connected to the Internet?" - Like I said before, I`d been waiting for technology to catch up with my plans so I had hardly even looked into wireless internet connections besides to find out that they were slow, only available locally and basically SUCKED ASS! But where there is a will there is a way and after some research we found out that all we needed was $112.00 "dongle" cable (yes you heard right, a fucking short little cable that cost over $100!!!) in order to hook our laptops up to the cellular phone that Robwrong already owned. Cool eh?! Well, sort of cool, I guess. We were told that we`d get national 14.4kbps internet access with our setup. Nope! Well, we did get the 14.4kbps internet access - but ONLY while in major metropolitan areas! Once we were out of the bigger cities (even by a few miles) there was no connection to the internet available. Fuck! There goes our ability to work "while on the road". We had to cram all of our working time into the few hours before and after the shows while we were within bigger-city limits. This limited the amount of work we could get done but didn`t make it impossible for us. Robwrong and I did, however, manage to get much non-internet work done while in rural areas. I did the packaging of orders on the bed in the back of the van while bouncing around on the freeway and I printed invoices etc. Robwrong listened to CDs on his laptop with headphones and wrote reviews and prepared news articles offline getting them all ready to post as soon as we hit the next city.

Compounding the aforementioned problems was the fact that the advertising network (Bla-Bla.com) that supplies all of the banner ads for StonerRock.com as well as the hosting for our MP3 Jukebox and Live Photos sections went out of business and was sold to another company (UGO.com) 2 days after we left for the tour. Because of our sluggishly slow laptop computers and internet connections there was nothing we could do to rectify this situation until we returned home. Our apologies for this "situation" but there was obviously nothing that could be done about it. (Things are back to normal now though!)

Part 2 of this feature is now online! Click here!