What a weekend has it been!
We had a spectacular time at the Breakout West Fest in Kelowna followed by an insanely dangerous, yet lucky turn of events for the band on the Coquihalla highway on our way back.
Breakout West and WCMA surely threw a party in Kelowna! There were so many fun events happening, we played two great showscases in town on friday and saturday and then had a blast prepping for and playing at the WCMAs and doing a great collaboration set with Shawn and Ariene. Meeting musicians, the staff, what a great team of people.
Although we didn’t win the nomination, we are looking forward to releasing and submitting “Adsum” next year, as that will represent the band as it sounds, rather than having a collection of electronica mixes. Many thanks for all the staff involved in the organizing of all this, seriously, musicians and artists play a very small part in something this big. It takes a solid team of industry people.
That evening, before heading out, I had to call in BCAA to jump-start our van Vekna. John jokingly started writing a song for Vekna as if her days were numbered out.. of course, the new tune would be “Oh! Vekna”, in the rhythm of 13.. 
Around 2 am, Michael, John, Trevor and I got hit by a serious snow storm, which had just started on the way up right in between Kelowna and Merit. And when the van started sliding, there were merely a few seconds before it went sideways and loudly tipped and slammed on the highway, dragging itself for about 30 meters before it stopped. John and Trevor were literally watching the highway road passing next to their heads, glass shattered away.. John was watching stuff fly in front of him and out the window, including his iphone and newly purchased records, which later he found on the road all intact! Go figure.. Props to wearing seat belts guys, it surely saved our lives. Considering how this could have gone, we were extremely lucky to stop sliding right by the road, as if we just pulled over, a foot away from the deep ditch.
As I came out of my shock, I called out if everyone was ok and to our relief, we were all safe and sound, highly momentarily traumatized and enjoying life a bit more than 20 seconds before that. Sitting sideways in a tipped van was kind of odd.. As I pushed the door upward to let everyone out (pretty heavy door, felt like I was coming out of a huge manhole) I was already talking to 911 to send help. We were freezing in the middle of the mountain for a few hours, chatting to stopping truck drivers every once in a while and still being careful not to get hit by any random sliding vehicles, until the police and the tow truck came. From there on, we were safe.
After two days, we are pretty sore and bruised, getting physio treatment, talking to icbc, still quite shocked, very reflective and happy to have been part of the festival during the weekend and enjoying and appreciating this precious thing called life!
