Tour Diary: Dragonette

Reporting from tour on a bus with ten people living in close proximity to each other, I have concluded, along with the only other female aboard, that the experience is a lot like camping. Without the wilderness.

A kind of urban camping on the road. Although there are many activities that a tour bus enables, such as sleeping up to 12 passengers in individual bunks, watching t.v., use of wifi and some select appliances in the ‘kitchen’; the undertakings which are not allowed come in to focus pretty quickly: there is a loo on the bus, but no solid waste allowed. Shit.

The other morning, after consuming a very low caliber of delivery pizza the evening before, I awoke to the feeling I was dreading: the # 2 feeling. The bus was rolling along the highway as I jumped down from the upper bunk and shuffled into the front area where I threw down my requirements in as lady-like a fashion as I knew how – ‘Um, I really need to drop the kids off at the pool’, the words stuttered off my tongue like a delivery gone wrong. ‘Are you crowning?’ the driver responded. Immediately, I felt my face get hotter. ‘Just let me know if you have to hot bag it and I’ll pull over to the side of the road.’ I sat down, a little puzzled – was this conversation really happening?! Luckily the turn out was positive, and after sitting as still as possible for the next 20 minutes in a kind of zip-it-up meditative state, I was relieved at the next truck stop. Just another day on the tour bus. Doo do doo.

- By: Brooke Perrin