Cool Hand Luke

When “Wake Up, O Sleeper” was released, the label got some CHL travel mugs with “Wake Up, O Sleeper” printed on the side as promotion. Wake up—get it? Yeah, pretty clever. We bought some to sell on the road. By the way, if you’re in a band and you’re looking for a new merch idea, don’t get travel mugs. Not only are they expensive, but they also take up a ton of room in your van. Plus, no one buys them and you lug them around for a year.

Anyway, our friend Kristen bought one (probably out of pity) at a festival, but she forgot to actually take it with her. She was going to be in Orlando a few weeks later, so we decided to leave the mug with a friend while we were touring down there. Brandon and I decided that we shouldn’t just leave the mug with a friend—we should bury it. But the more we talked about it, we couldn’t just bury it. We had to bury lots of things and include clues that led her to the mug.

The adventure started with directions to our friend Jeremiah’s apartment. Jeremiah then gave Kristen directions to the first burial location. When she found the spot, she had to dig where she discovered a “prize” and directions to the next location. She went from place to place digging up buried treasure until she got her travel mug. The prizes included a clock radio, a skateboard, a crow puppet, and of course, the mug.

The journey led Kristen to a cemetery, a parking lot on Full Sail’s campus (where Brandon and I got busted burying the skateboard), the base of a billboard that read, “Call before you dig—it’s the law”, and finally back to the apartment where she started. Cool, huh?

Months later when we were on tour in FL again, Kristen returned the favor with a scavenger hunt that started with us digging up pirate hats that we had to wear for the rest of the journey. It ended behind a Steak-N-Shake where we dug up coupons for free milkshakes. There was a note inside that read, “Gitchya some shakes.”