21-06-98 Travel day. London - Dallas - Baton Rouge, LA.

Kafka's little men with hammers have had a field day this weekend. I'm woken up by their tapping on my ankles again. I can hear them laughing.
It's 6am.

We get to the airport at 8am. Since the airline messed up the guitars and the equipment it's all already waiting at the airport. The problem now is that UK Customs won't give us the guitars back. They think we bought them in America and we're trying to sneak them into the UK without paying the rip off import duties. Those dumb bastards. The guitars are ten years old.

They are all battered and dirty and have obviously had a good kicking around the world. A blind, drunken cretin could tell that these guitars aren't brand new. Customs men are soft cops man.

"Where we the guitars bought?"
"England."
"Do you have proof of purchase?"
"Do you have proof of purchase for anything you bought ten years ago?"
"Just answer the questions please Mr Clayden."
"No, I do not have proof of purchase."
"Where were the guitars made?"
"What?"
"Where were the guitars made?"
"I dunno, where ever Ibanez makes them . . . Japan?"
"So they weren't made in England."

This guy is a pituary retard. How did he get a job at customs?

I have to let the manager deal with it. I'll stab this guy if we go on.

Ten hours in the air later and we are back in America, back on the silver shark, back on the way to baton Rouge. The air conditioning has broken down on the bus. The thermometer reads 91 degrees Celsius. Ten miles down the road from the airport and he bus driver starts shouting. We all run down to see what the emergency is. The road is on fire. It's so hot that the scrub inbetween the opposing lanes of the freeway has caught fire. The cars and trucks have to drive through a cloud of smoke. The thermometer is up to 93 degrees. Welcome back to America.
I feel weird. No sleep. Continent hopping. I have to stop and take stock of the fact that we've just played a gig with Black Sabbath to 20,000 people. Seems like a dream now. A few hours ago I was watching Tony Iommi work his magic. Now I'm back in the USA on the way to New Orleans. I even managed to stop in with Mark and say hello to our parents when were in the UK. One minute I'm in Dallas, the next I'm chatting to my Dad, then I'm on stage to 20,000 people in a super bowl, then I'm back on the bus in Texas. Quantam fluxing.

BANG! As I'm mulling over the weekend's events there's a massive crunch on the other side of the freeway. As I watch a car full of people hits a lamp post and rolls over a couple of times grinding to a halt in a cloud of texan dust. We call the emergency services but the people are OK.

Man, this is the Highway to Hell. Road fires, car wrecks, ACDC would have a field day.

We decide to fuck the road off for today. 93 degrees is too much for us.

We've only slept 4 hours a night for the last 3 nights. We need a shower, air conditioning, a pool and veggie food. Hello Motel 6!