eLIFELIST.com Bike Trip

July 5th: The Smashing Pumpkins.  

It's taken me a bit to write about the Smashing Pumpkins show because I'm still recovering from it.  After an Earth shattering ride to Asheville, seriously we almost died ending the day on the Kopac's hill "Rose Hill", seeing the Smashing Pumpkins in concert was awesome.  Asheville is such a great city and the venue "The Orange Peel" was perfect.  It was the last show of their 9 show residency stay in Asheville and they played a pretty wide range of songs for about 3 hours.  Standing on our feet for about 4 hours after the day's ride was tough, we were walking like Frankensteins after the show.  Fortunately there wasn't a lot of motion from the crowd, but every time someone bumped into you there was a risk of falling on your face because our legs were no exaggeration "stiff as boards".    

The Pumpkins put on a good show, they played some of the classics off "Siamese Dream" and some new ones off their new album Zeitgeist.  I wished they had played a couple off of their first album "Gish."  The venue only held a little under a 1,000 people which made the show really intimate and very loud.  Billy Corgan was great in all his weird glory and Jimmy Chamberlain (the drummer) was excellent.  Seeing the two of them play together is pretty special, their chemistry is easy and fun to watch, they both need each other as performers.  There were three other "whippersnappers" as Billy called them, playing with them.  I bought a T-shirt for $35 while the tickets were $20 each.    

I enjoyed hearing a few of their new tracks off "Zeitgeist", some I liked, others I didn't.  Now that I own the album I have a feeling it will grow on me.  

Billy Corgan has definitely started to get on autopilot in his song writing and even then his songs are very well composed.  I guess what I mean is that he doesn't really have anything to fight for anymore in his writing and hasn't since "Siamese Dream."  He's rich, successful, and has great sales so his music has lost a bit of the passion and pain of his earlier albums.  I know that tends to happen with all great musicians once they "make it" but I'm glad to see he's at least back in the saddle with the Pumpkins and wants to keep writing and performing, that is a good sign.  

The show was great and I'm glad to check "see the Smashing Pumpkins" in concert off my list.  There are some photos below, I will be posting videos from the show soon. 

Video of our ride from Asheville to the Great Smokies

July 6th Day 7 –

The first rest day and massages!?!

After six pretty intense days of biking, we were extremely ready for a rest day. Not just any rest day, but a rest day in real luxury. First off, the Kopacs could not be any nicer to us. Two, their log cabin in Asheville is beautiful. Three, they fed us like Kings. And Lastly, Mary is a licensed masseuse. After she gave each of us an hour long Swedish muscle massage, we seriously considered buying ourselves a message table to attach to another trailer to pull. It may be worth it, but the only problem is that Lee and I would have to massage each other so that was the end of that idea…

Seriously, we wanted to thank the Kopacs for all of their hospitality and the help they gave us our first day back on the as we headed towards the Smokies, they were amazing.

Another exciting tidbit from our day off was being interviewed by the Channel 13 News crew. We made the 5:00 and 6:30 news as the ‘two stupid guys biking across the country’. Ok, I added the ‘stupid’part, that could have just been how I heard it. The video of the segment should be up shortly.

The rest day was just what we needed and were able to spend some quality time with the Kopacs, which is all that we asked for…