Avir...back in the States

I'm home. So odd being back. For example, it's 8am and I'm wide awake and I'm about to go to a Zumba class at my gym because I don't know what else to do. Ahmed, Ankur and I flew back together, Karl and Shiv have stayed on in India for a bit. The flight was more or less unremarkable. We watched Almost Famous. Arriving in Newark was an adventure though. We had discussed on the flight that we might get split apart by security so whatever. As Ahmed says, he has 5 names, and they're all on the terrorist watchlist. Sure enough, when we landed, Ahmed was pulled aside by security right from the get go, and taken to an undisclosed location. Ankur and I pointed and laughed. As expected. This was right at customs. So me and Ankur are still left. We were waiting in the customs line, Ankur was behind a guy who looked dumb high. He had a little micro ponytail and he straight up walked into customs with nothing but a bag of chips. He was just carrying this bag of chips everywhere, getting it scanned, carefully handing it to customs, and he was just very mellow about it. He was hilarious. Ankur and I got through, got to baggage claim, got our bags and Ahmed was still nowhere to be seen. I thought gitmo was closed? Usually I get harrassed at airports so I was thinking maybe Ahmed was a nice decoy for me.

So finally we started walking out but Ankur and I get routed to one last security check where they scanned our bags because we had a bunch of gear that looked suspicious. Ankur is first and he's describing his equipment, what an MPC does, how midi works, he's in a band signed to Epic records, we just toured India... basically kicking his game to the security guard. That works well, and I have less gear, so I step up figuring I'll do the same. I don't even get to open my mouth. I get escorted through automatic glass doors, down a long empty hallway and into another area. Asked to sit down and wait. And there was Ahmed. And bag of chips. So now us three are sitting there looking at each other. Security goes through our bags, opens my shaving cream, goes through my clothes, looks through my camera. Asks me why I packed so little for a 3 week trip, grilling me about my guitar pedals, etc etc. Backstory - our ride to the Delhi airport was literally in a duststorm, so as a result I was sneezing and blowing my nose nonstop. I had dust in my hair and on my clothes and anytime I'd shake my head I'd start sneezing on the plane. So my bag was full of used tissues and this dude is meticulously going through them one by one. I asked him how us three got back here and he said it was totally random (righhtt).

Anyway, now that I'm home with my trusty computer we're going to be getting more pics and video up soon. There's a few clips up already. Keep checking back for more. Also more articles from India will be surfacing and we'll be sure to get them to you.