I’m leaving Asheville in six hours for a massive west coast swing with the Beards of Comedy tour – twelve shows in twelve nights, in ten different cities. We are flying into Albuquerque, where we pile into a mini-van rental, and cover 3,000 miles before flying out of Seattle on the 31st.

My plan is to document the fun/anxiety/panic/exhaustion/claustrophobia/disasters with a daily blog. While I travel a lot, this trip involves more than usual. People have been asking if I’m excited. I wish that I could be excited, but right now I’m just worried about the layover in Denver. There are so many logistics to figure out – the driving, the shows, the parking, the hotels, the radio interviews…and all in markets where we’ve never been. We have at least two drives through the night, AFTER we just did a show, to get to radio/TV the next morning. I just mapped it out and fainted. I was then revived, and after three hours of research, figured out how to do a screen shot (on my new Macbook Pro!):

I think you can click on it to make it bigger, but if you can’t see the stops, they are: Albuquerque, Portales, Scottsdale, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Reno, Portland, Kennewick, Seattle.

Several folks have also been asking how the hell we put this trip together. Well, it was entirely our publicist – Julie Seabaugh, who is based out of L.A. She started with a few bookend gigs, and then filled in every single day, and even created good routing. Then our college agent was able to add the college gig at Eastern New Mexico State up front.

The only thing we have to do, is get there, and then hope that we get big enough crowds to cover the cost of airfare, van rental, hotels, gas, more gas, food, tolls, luggage fees, more food, more gas, speeding tickets, coffee, gambling, trivia prizes, dessert, parking, parking tickets, breakfast, snacks, gas, and things I’m not thinking of. The Beards are like Hobbits, in our five-six meal-a-day regiment.

Also, it won’t just be four Bearded dudes in a soccer mom van rental, it will be five. Joining us is Justin Heckert – a journalist from Atlanta Magazine who is writing a long form article on the journey. It will be awesome to have him along. It will also be a long-ass length of time for me to be on record. All sorts of embarrassing things could come out. So perhaps to quell my fear, I’ll say some embarrassing things right now:

-I listen to nothing but Hootie & the Blowfish
-I wet the bed regularly
-My favorite movie is every Ashton Kuchar movie
-I’m gay
-I’m super gay

Okay, so whatever I reveal to Justin, it can’t be worse than this right? Perhaps one of my daily blogs will be an interview with Justin, where I ask him what it’s like to be a journalist from Atlanta Magazine, traveling with the Beards of Comedy tour. It’d be like, an interview within an interview – pretty meta right? Right guys?

Eastern New Mexico State College tomorrow night. We’ll be at the airport at 4 am, and then have a three hour drive after we land at 9 am, so if you plan on attending, please bring energy drinks. Also, I’m not really gay.