One of the best parts of summer are the summer tours. Each year, several of your favorite wizard rock bands spend months driving across the country to play shows, promoting their new albums and getting to revisit with their fans. While I have been on the receiving end of these tours quite a few times, I realized that I didn’t really understand what went into packing up your life and taking it on the road for weeks at a time. What better way to find out than to do just that?

Well, unfortunately, I didn’t have weeks to be able to follow wizard rock bands around. With the time I took off for LeakyCon and the other Muggle obligations in my life, I really only had a few days. These few days definitely gave me a new perspective into what these bands go through on a daily basis – and it’s not quite the crazy rockstar life that you might think.

Tour started for me when The Whomping Willows’ Matt, Justin Finch-Fletchley and the Sugar Quills’ Justin, The Moaning Myrtles’ Nina and Lauren, and their merch girl, Sammy, came to Pittsburgh to play a library show for their summer tour, dubbed ‘The Glass Ceiling Tour’. After unloading the equipment and merch, setting it all up, and playing an enthusiastic set, it was time to tear everything down, repack it all, and then manage to get it back into the SUV they had rented. Everything fit precisely, so there was little room for error. That night was Lauren’s birthday, so we grabbed some dinner to celebrate and then headed home for some rest before starting off to Ohio the next day.

The next day involved coordinating showers for seven people using one small bathroom, eating some breakfast, repacking suitcases, repacking cars, and making sure we were on the road on time to get to the house party outside of Cincinnati. Things went smoothly; I grabbed my tourmate, Kathleen, and we were off!

About four hours into our drive, I started to notice the really dark skies straight ahead. I realized we were about to drive right through the storm, but didn’t think much of it until I got a frantic call from Sammy that went something like this:

Her: Are you guys ok?!?
Me: We’re fine. Why wouldn’t we be ok?
Her: We just drove through a TORNADO!!!
Me: Uh, is that what’s ahead? It’s starting to rain.
Her: There’s hail, too!
Me: AHHHH! Yeah, that’s hail. I’m going to stop talking and drive now.
Her: GO! DRIVE!

I spent the next five minutes literally ducking every time the golf sized hail hit my windshield, driving at about 20 miles per hour, being pelted by rain, and scanning the horizon for tornadoes. Luckily, it seems that we missed the worst of the storm – the high winds, heavy rain, and hail were definitely not quite a tornado, even if the driving was less than fun. Thanks to Twitter and Alex Carpenter’s screencap, you can see exactly what Matt, Justin, Lauren, Nina, and Sammy were going through, about 10 minutes ahead of us:

We arrived at the house party and unpacked our trivial amount of things from the car. There was food, plenty of friends, and hours for all of us to get to hang out. I even found out about a brand new wrock band there – Professor Filk! The show that night was a much more relaxed affair. The bands alternated songs, threw in some Muggle covers, and took requests from the audience. When they were done, we continued to hang out until people left or passed out. I drifted off sometime around 4am on a comfy futon, with a roomful of wizard rock fans doing the same around me. I have to admit, it was a pretty nice feeling.

Day two – Akron is crazy for wizard rock!