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This is piggy, our tour mascot:

We finally made it home after about 26 hours of traveling. Mom, Tracy, Lucy, and Eli greeted us at the airport which was nice (we often end up just cabbing it home). The tour was good. Australia was fun, and I hope to go back (hopefully with some time to actually check stuff out, but we’ll see). I met a lot of great people that I’ve heard a lot about over the years. Thanks to everyone who made the trip possible and to everyone who came to see us: thanks for the support, and for really making the trip possible. And thanks to the fellas for REALLY making the trip possible. I probably wouldn’t have made it to Australia in my life had it not been for this, and I hope to make it back (next year?).

That being said. . .it’s nice to be home.

It’s just about that time. Our last show of the tour was (thankfully) at a place that was only a few minutes from the hotel. The show was alright, definitely not as good as last night - or most of the other ones for that matter. I think everyone’s pretty worn out - I know I am. We fly back home tomorrow. It’s gonna be a looooong day. We’re estimating about 24 hours of travel time. I need to try to get some sleep.

Today’s my 28th birthday. I usually get reaction whenever people ask how old I am. I don’t really have any perspective on how old I look, but people often seem to think I’m in my early 20’s. Pops and I took the tram to St. Kilda this morning. We walked around there for a bit and saw the amusement park (which was cool, but closed), and I got to go to the beach. By “go to the beach” I mean that I walked to the concrete pathway just before the sand and sat on a bench for a few minutes - I’m not a big beach person, so that was all I wanted anyway. I was so exhausted today that I had a really hard time functioning while we were out. We ended up just walking up and down the street looking for food before settling on just getting some soup and taking the tram back to the hotel.

We played a show at a place called Don’t Tell Tom. The place was packed out nicely and there was some energy and excitement in the room which was very helpful since I was so tired. Toward the end of the evening Pops wished me Happy Birthday onstage which sparked the audience to sing “Happy Birthday” to me. After the show, we had cake that Annabel maintained that Pops made (thanks for the cake Annabel!). It was a good birthday.

We played at a place a bit outside Melbourne tonight. It’s the final long drive that we have (though there are only 2 more shows so it’s not saying much). The rest of the shows are more in town. The show was good (thankfully, most of the have been good - aside from a few technical difficulties here and there). I’m really getting worn out from the tour. It’s still fun to play, but it’s been exhausting doing this night after night thing. I’m not really complaining, just tired.

We had an afternoon show at the Harmony Row vineyard today. We got kind of lost on the way (there’s a noticeable lack of signs on the freeway here - Canada has a similar problem if I recall correctly), but we still made it on time for the show. I’m continually amazed that people drive to these places to see shows out in what seems to be the middle of nowhere. We did another (our last) radio show once we got back to Melbourne. By the time we got back to the hotel all the restaurants in the neighborhood were closed, so we went to the grocery store next to us. I was really tired and was having a difficult time coming up with anything to eat. I finally settled on salad in a bag with Newman’s Caesar salad dressing, and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (I decided that I wanted something familiar).