I’ve been meaning to work out some of the salient facts and figures for the tour, so here’s a brief numerical guide to our adventures in Europe.
0.78 countries visited per day
1 song written in tour bus
1.3 drummers per gig (average)
4 countries played in
5 band members featured
6 most countries driven through in one day
7 countries visited
14 minutes – longest interval without Caleb’s snoring waking anyone
18.5 km/h average speed throughout tour
18.6 number of times Roo had to pee on the bus on a typical journey
119 gallons of diesel used
120 number of other people’s beers that Duke wandered off with
443 average km per day
4207 km travelled
Some of these are rough estimates. The one I find weirdest is that, on average, day or night, performing or eating, we were averaging 18.5km/h. We were told any slower and the bus would have had a bunch of illegal immigrants hanging off the back of it. We lost the last one when his near-side plimsoll blew out on the motorway just outside Bruges. There are lots of things that numbers don’t tell you. We can’t put a figure on the kindness we were shown. We can’t quantify just how much fun we had. Although we could probably estimate the number of amazing people that we’ve met, we can’t give you a number that tells you just how amazing they are.
There’s one other number; nebulous, waiting to be fixed. It’s the number of seconds until the next time we do this. And it’s ticking away…