Greetings again, it's Mike here from Our Lady Peace. Tonight, I'm writing from Fort Wayne, Indiana. It's been a while since I last wrote and we have been busy, too busy. We just finished the Everclear tour with Letters to Cleo with us opening. Then we got into the swing of that Xmas thing - radio stations throw their Christmas parties and have multi-band bills, inviting us to do them. We're flattered and honoured to play with the other bands, but the routing of these shows is punishing, large drives; some of them have to be flown to because the drives are impossible. This might sound glamorous, but the reality of it is that the air travel is a lot like bus travel, just further off the ground. Everyone is tired, a little grouchy and not entirely sane. This isn't anything that we expect sympathy for, but perhaps a little understanding is in order.
 
    I once promised myself that I wouldn't be one of those musicians that you hear whining about the life on the road. I must have made that promise before I had any idea what I was talking about. We began touring for this cd on January 7th of this year....the cd didn't even come out in Canada until the 21st! We just didn't feel like waiting. Since then, by our crew and our best estimates, we have had a total of two months off. The time off generally occurs a couple or three days at a time; the longest stretch was nine days. We don't have a problem with working hard, in fact we pride ourselves on our work ethic; we may not be the most gifted group of people but we are the hardest working.
 
    But that isn't to say we can't recognize our limitations. It is definitely time to go home. We get home on the 17th of December. There is a photo session for a Canadian magazine called Shift on the 17th, interviews on the 18th and then we have to edit the film that we shot for the video portion of our arena tour (in Canada) starting on January 7th. That should take a couple of days--that takes us up until the 20th......I guess I'll start my shopping then. The visual portion of this update is from the show in Fort Wayne, and an introduction to the rest of of the people on the road with us. Kevin is our Road manager and lighting designer, his job is to keep us organized and on time, as well as the great light shows that you get to see around us. Roger is our Front of House engineer, the man that makes us sound good to the ears of the people in front of the P.A. James if the guy that you see handing me the differently tuned guitars that I use. Finally there is the man with our life in his hands, Rick, more commonly called Noof, our beloved philosophical bus driver.
 
    Just after the end of the Everclear tour we were in L.A. to shoot a video for our song "4 a.m." with a Canadian director by the name of Tony Pantages. We had a photographer friend there, one of the next entries will tell you all about it, with pictures of us looking silly....videos are tough. We're musicians...not actors.
 
Til Later,