The Adventures of Chrischi and Hjalli.

smá road trip saga sem ég skrifaði þegar chrischi vinur gifti sig fyrir nokkrum árum:

Is going on a road trip for five weeks down the west coast of the U.S. with two fifteen year old teenagers a good idea? Well it probably depends on whom you ask. It was the summer of 1986, and we were young, very young and driven by too many hormones and some naive self-assurance, we thought we were conquering the world. Didi and Tom tried their best to guide us through British Colombia, Washington, Oregon and California.

Like for so many fifteen year olds music was a passion for us. The previous summer Chrischi introduced me to the Cure, and on this trip it was almost the only thing we listened to. It didn´t take us long to find a record store. Somewhere on Vancouver Island we bought the then new Cure compilation (special cassette b-side edition … of course), and played it religiously for the coming weeks. Our chaperones hoped of course that we would eventually tire of the tape or the tape would self-destruct. That did not happen and it actually got worse.

Our eager teenage homing skills managed to make sure that did not happen. In Seattle we picked up a stack of newspapers, one of them was the LA Times. It didn´t take long for Chrischi and me to find the music section which we read eagerly. Then … oh my god … the sky opened up and shined on us: “The Cure were playing in San Diego”. After some breathing exercises we found out that we would be in L.A. around that time, so it was a possibility. But we still had some heavy convincing to do and therefore Chrischi went into heavy negotiating mode. It did not take too much dealing, because Tom´s music-buff side emerged and offered us a deal: they would come see the Cure with us if we came along with them to see Van Morrison in concert. We didn´t hesitate, and thanked our parental units for their kind gesture. Then Chrishi and me turned to each other and said “Van Morrison … who´s he ?”

There were only two weeks to go and we had some serious preparing to do. The Cure tape was put into heavy rotation and became the soundtrack for our beautiful trip. The day before the event we arrived in L.A. and a few hours before the show we drove our motor home onto the arena´s parking lot. It was still mostly empty and we parked not to close to the venue. An hour later we were sitting in the RV eating a delicious trout that Tom had fished in Oregon. At that time we noticed that more concertgoers were arriving and some of them looked curiously into our vehicle, probably wondering what we were doing here. For some reason we didn´t seem to fit in with the crowd.

The four of us stepped out of our home on wheels. Chrischi and me tried to be as cool as possible when going to a concert with your parents. I emptied the contents of my gel tube into my then existing flock of hair, Chrischi had on his best shirt, Didi her best smile and Tom his binoculars. Yes Tom brought along his binoculars. When on an adventure you never know what you will see. And what we saw; we were guests in the world of Goth. The day before we saw all kinds of fantasy figures from the world of Disney, but they were nothing compared to the creatures we ran into while waiting for their Cure. Chrischi and me were enthralled and Didi and Tom were amused. Our preparations served us well, because we danced, chanted and drooled. We were cured.

If the Cure cured us, then the following night John Lee hooker exorcised us and Van Morrison soothed us. Didi and Tom were enthralled, but the hormone driven teenagers were more than amused, we were amazed.