Joke Pedaling Europe

So first week is complete. Trip has been a whirl wind so far starting with someone at the airport letting me take my bike to Scotland for free (savings of 180$). Strong start.

Flight was smooth to Barcelona where I met my friend David who was on the same flight. Someone was kind enough to swap seats so we could sit together. We watched The Talented Mr Ripley on the flight which was a quality film, I attempted to liberate two small feather travel pillows from the flight but to the air host dismay they grabbed them when I was exciting the plane.

Then I flew to Edinburgh where this poor city of 400,000 is invaded by almost a million tourists tripling its usual population. The customs/immigrations agents were very overwhelmed and when I arrived at the air port I managed to spot my friends Wassim and Jon way ahead in the line up. After a 2-3 hour wait customs let me into the country and I took my bike box into a cab and headed to the flat I was staying.

We crammed 5 comics into a 1 bedroom apt. With 2 on the bed 2 on the pull out couch and one on the floor. Its a bit chaotic but the crew is great and shows have been going well so far. We have on 11:30pm show at a tiny venue called the Wee Room in the Thee Sisters. The bar is bonkers and the room has filled itself each night. Our other show is a 2pm show outside the festival grounds. Its a great space but hard to fill.

I’m loving the festival so far but have already done 13 sets and cause our apt is quite far from the festival grounds its been a lot of walking and biking. One of the highlights is a super kind fellow named Martyn through a cycle hosting group called Warmshowers lent us 3 extra bikes to help the other comics get around. So thats been a huge help.

There are an astounding amount of people and shows happening, I have been told there are about 350 different venues churning out 3000 shows a day, so it’s boggling how much is going on. We’ve already made a few friends with other shows. I am a 1/5th through the festivals but things are just getting started. This is just a short update but I’ll try and get future blogs a little more detailed, but i only have 1 hour to nap before I head back to do shows at 10pm, 11:30pm, 12am and 12:30am.