Day 38: Houston, TX

Awoke in the bus at a hotel in Houston where the rain is coming down in sheets. I believe Texas really does rain better than any other state. Grab the keycard from the bus table and find my way into the hotel and up to the room for quick shower, the end of the Brazil / Netherlands game (interesting) and a cup of half decent hotel coffee. Then its back to the lobby and head out to the NASA Johnson Space Center on the other side of Houston. Amanda couldn’t quite get the morning brain in gear so its the lads only crew. Thom is driving us in a Suburban; its fairly heroic that he got us there in an hour; the rain and lightning is beyond belief.

Tim greets us and we proceed from building 110 through security to a building full of mock up space station modules and space shuttles. I believe these are used primarily for familiarising the astronauts with the layout and basic controls of devices. We get a seat in the Shuttle flight deck and its truly awesome; I’m immensely jealous that Tim actually gets to ride here in a matter of months. It’s also terrifying to imagine the Richard’s, Butler and Good, in control of this thing. The Space Station mock is enormous – must be amazing to pull up and dock with this mini city in the sky; it dwarfs the Shuttle and the Shuttle is big! I’m fascinated by the spacewalk and we get a glimpse of the air-lock process that takes place and hearing him describe that first moment stepping out in to space is almost a bit tear-inducing; the thought of stepping into vacumme with your home planet below you really is a mind blower. Apparently you get a few minutes to accustom yourself to that fact and lose your deathgrip on every grab-rail and, at the end of your ‘shift’, you may take a few minutes to just look at it all. In Tim’s case he finished up with a view of the sunrise over the Earth. It’s funny that he thinks our job is cool. When i grow up is still want to be an astronaut. I wonder if they allow replica lion-heads in space?

We also get a grand of tour of three Mission Control rooms, the main Mission Control Center which is live and working 24/7 (they were dealing with a missed cargo ship docking), the rebuilt Apollo Mission Control which will become a museum soon, and the Space Shuttle Mission Control Center where we actually get to wander the desks and our Flight Director friend, Courtenay, talks us through some of the processes. Tim is scheduled for what was to be the last Shuttle mission but has been shifted to the second to last mission. November 1st launch date. I wanna stop off on the way home from Belgium! To my mind, space exploration is worth more than wars; i can’t understand Obama pulling the plug on Ares, it seems at odds with what his administration is about. For the first time in fifty years the US will not have a vehicle to get us out of the atmosphere… In the Apollo-era Mission Control there’s a small mirror taken from the lunar module ‘Aquarius’ that was presented to Mission Control by the Apollo 13 astronauts as a thank you; the idea being that the staff could look into it and see who saved the lives of the Apollo 13 crew. Wow, moving stuff.

We’re out of time, soaked by the rain and so we have to leave this inspiring place and head back to downtown Houston for soundcheck, further ‘band-guac’ and the Uruguay/Ghana game. Houston is flooding! I mean this rain is crazy. If you’re in it for 10 seconds you’re soaked through. I wonder about attendance at tonight’s show and about our flights home tomorrow. Ghana crashes out in penalties – i was behind them – perhaps i’m the jinx. Maybe i’ll try supporting Germany.

The venue is large and warehousey – its called Warehouse Live. I kick an inflatable football around with Paul for a bit and pull a few muscles just to maintain the tradition of injury on the last day. Soundcheck is strangely unsettling but i think the show will be good. More waiting… confined to bus or dressing room. Internet. A chat with Adam from SWR. He gives me a CD of pics he took of us – quite the photographer he is. They play a wall of noise Love My Way tonight in souncheck.. Tour prank! Time to suit up again and don the shoes… I watch most of the SWR set tonight – sound is actually surprisingly together for such a room. They are a great bunch of guys and they’ve been an absolute pleasure to tour with – never a cross word between camps. They are heading back tomorrow to finish their third record – good luck chaps.

We take the stage at 9.50 and do our thing. It’s almost clockwork now but that just makes it more fun for the most part… strange lighting tonight and a weird delay on the drums for me – perhaps a monitor vs wall-echo thing. Regardless the Houston people are loud and happy. Our last encore of No Easy Street, Pyjamarama and Forever Now and we’re off and finished. A lot of compliments on the sound out front so cheers to Tricia for making a tough room work – she does us proud every time or so I (don’t) hear. Za is packing up my guitars and pedals and the whole production is moving out. Its a very hectic last night of meeting fans, taking pictures, meeting James’ friends, getting a few more minutes (not enough) with our Nasa friends, missing the SWR goodbyes and then getting back to the hotel to make some sort of sense of all the crap we’ve acquired over the last seven weeks. More goodbyes to the entire band, crew and our bus driver Jerry. My headspace is entirely messed up and exhausted but I can’t sleep… until about 5 when i give in and set two alarms to wake me at 6.

The abrubt end to touring is always a bit of an odd transition – or lack of transistion; suddenly its all over and the strange routine you’ve come to live by is gone along with your comrades. Now we’re on our own, heading back to the other routines of existence. Thanks to every single person who came and supported us this tour – I for one, loved every minute of it (even the nasty bits where you feel a complete xxxx in front of thousands people).