The Beards' Tour Diary Part Three

On tour Wednesday 10 - Sunday 14 October

Up until this point in my life, I have always maintained a strong belief that the only thing that matters is beards, and that everything else is completely superfluous. Whilst I still maintain this to be true, I have now discovered that having full use of your right arm is quite good too. Obviously having a beard as good as mine gives me a certain feeling of invulnerability, and this was on full display early in the week when I opened the door of the tour van and attempted to dive-roll out of a moving vehicle. Five hours in the emergency department later (it would have only been three hours but I insisted on being treated only by bearded doctors, so they had to fly one down from Toowoomba), my fractured right arm was in a sling and we were off to Bundaberg for the gig that night. I immediately began to notice problems with my predicament – first off, I was now unable to stroke my beard at all with my right hand, limiting my beard-stroking capacity by a full 50%. Everyday tasks started becoming more difficult too, such as driving the tour van and sound-checking.

As we hit the stage in Bundaberg, yet more problems began to arise: My signature “double beard-stroke” move, wherein I stroke two different audience member's beards at once, was forced to be downgraded to the much less impressive “single beard-stroke” move. However, the shows must go on and we ventured north to Rockhampton. By this point my fractured arm was even worse; at the show in Bundaberg, I'd met an over-enthusiastic Beards fan whom I had spent a good half-an-hour continuously high five-ing until the fracture in my arm became “displaced”, whatever that means. And the injury was about to get worse again. On stage in Rockhampton, I spotted a guy in the crowd with a REALLY good beard, and I leapt off the stage to hug him. Whilst in mid-air I realised his beard was actually fake, so I bailed out of the hug and went crashing down on my fractured arm. In amongst all this punishment, my beard had remained intact, so I was still in good spirits as we ventured further up the coast to Airlie Beach and Townsville. Upon arrival in Townsville we immediately spotted a guy with a huge red beard, and I couldn't resist the urge to give him a huge high-five. The high-five was great but unfortunately my arm was further fractured in the impact and it was back to the hospital for me, which left us running late for our final gig of this leg of the tour, up in Cairns. Once again we were happy with the amount of beards we could see, but there were still a few beardless folk who had the audacity to rock up to our gig. I though the best way to intimidate them was the walk around the room challenging any beardless man I saw to an arm wrestle. While I won almost half of the arm wrestles I was in, the pain in my broken arm was so extreme I could barely remain conscious. Nonetheless, I would still definitely prefer having a broken arm than not having a beard. Man, I really like beards. You know what I'm talking about? BEARDS.