A Fiery Red Summer (Jenna Mcdougall and Hayley Williams)

On the Road Again

Jenna:

It was good to be back with the band, plus we were touring with our good friends Hands Like Houses. Even though they were a native Australian band like us we hadn't met them before Warped 2012, but we have been very close ever since.

I tried my best not to think too much about being away from Hayley, it was pretty hard to find time to talk to her with our busy schedule, we had no internet on the bus so I had to find an internet cafe to be able to talk to her, it would have been pretty easy otherwise since there was little or no time zone difference between her and I. We managed to be able to talk at least twice a week, but it wasn't enough for me, I felt so far away from her.

Staying in touch with Tay was a lot harder, with a minimum time zone difference of 12 hours it was difficult to find a time when she wouldn't doing a show or sleeping. The few times I talked to her everything seemed fine, she said she was having a good time and had become friends with Sierra from Versa. I was glad to hear it; the last thing she needed was to feel alone.

The tour around Australia was short and it seemed like no time at all before we were on our way to Sweden for the beginning of our tour of Europe. We met up with Her Bright Skies in Jönköping, their home town and the first city where we were going to play. We hadn't played many shows out of the UK in Europe. It was strange to here all the different languages and accents that people had when they tried to speak English with us.

We went from Sweden to Germany, then Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Croatia and finally we flew to England. I was looking forward to getting back to Hayley. I was missing her terribly, two and a half months was way too long. She had finished her tour of Asia almost a month ago and had been calling everyday to tell me how much she missed me. The good thing about my absence was she was taking care of getting all our stuff unpacked; I wasn't much of a home decorator.

We were joined by the little local british band The Dirty Youth, the lead singers bright hair only made me think of Hayley more, but They were big party animals and our nightly after show beer pong games made me forget how much I missed my love enough for me to fall asleep afterwards.

I counted down the days of our last week. It seemed like an eternity, but eventually we were packing all our stuff up to head to the airport. I had everything packed, but I couldn't find my passport anywhere. The boys and I emptied out our suitcases and looked everywhere on the bus, but it was useless; it was gone. I didn't know what to do, without it I couldn't leave.

The next day my band mates insisted on staying in England with me, but I knew as well as them that the cost of getting all of our tickets changed was too much for us. The Dirty Youth offered to drive me to the Australian embassy so I could get a temporary passport. I gratefully accepted. I said goodbye to Whakaio, Jake, Cam and Matt.

Things only got worse once I got to the embassy, they told me I'd have to wait 3 days for the temporary passport and once I had it I'd have to go back to Australia until I had a new one, which would take at least two weeks.

Danny, the lead singer, let me crash at her place while I waited. She shared an apartment with her best friend from High school and two cute little tabby cats, Tiger and Buster. Time crawled by, torturing me and testing my patience.

Finally I went back to the embassy and they gave me the necessary documents to be able to fly back to Sydney. I left the day after. I went to order my passport the day I landed, but I still had to wait 2 weeks before I would be able to fly back to New York.