No problem!!!
And so began the last leg of NKOTB tour 2008. California here we come!!!
I woke up at 4:30 on Tuesday morning and the first thing I did was check my email. There was a note from Alexis saying "I think you must have reserved the hotel room because I can't find it anywhere in my email."
Hm.
I scoured my in-boxes on both of my email accounts (AGAIN), and resolved that we had just forgotten to reserve a room altogether. Awesome. Luckily the Holiday Inn Express where we *thought* we had made a reservation still had a room available.
Jason graciously offered to drive us to the airport on his way to work. I arrived at Alexis's house to find Peggy still there from the night before... Nice! We got to the airport just before 7:00 AM. We were hoping to be able to fly standby on the 9:05 AM flight, because our original flight didn't leave until 9:30 PM, and that was going to be way too late to make it to the San Diego show.
With some very friendly assistance from a Northwest employee, we found two open seats on our desired flight, and for a grand total of only $50 for both of us! Thank goddess we didn't pay the $200 to change the flights the previous week.
With tickets in hand, we set off into the airport mall/gate/concourse/whatever you call it area. We did a bit of window shopping, and then Alexis decided to audition for a part in New Moon .
We checked in on our friends at the claw machine. Miss Kitty must have found a home, because she was no longer singing her torch songs in that particular arcade.
By that point we were hungry, and we still had an hour until our flight began boarding, so we stopped at Rock Bottom for breakfast.
Yeah, we look pretty tired, don't we?
We already wrote about the good omen that we found in our aisle as we were boarding. Pink smily faces are a good thing, right?
We landed in Sunny Los Angeles right on time. We were ridiculed by the car rental ladies for stripping down to tank tops, but hey - it was like 60 degrees! And sunny! It was 11 degrees when we left Minnesota that morning!
Rather than drive around aimlessly, we decided to start making our way towards San Diego. My friend Karen grew up in San Clemente, and she recommended that we stop there for lunch and a look at the ocean. We had a lovely lunch at Sonny's Pizza, where Alexis's friend from high school, also named Alexis, met up with us.
We still had some time to kill, so we headed down to the San Clemente Pier.
Alexis won the jackpot in the parking meter machine:
Alexis would like to point out that if you needed quarters for laundry, these parking meter machines would be a good place to get them.
I love how there is accidentally a public health warning in this photo of us.
Love this photo of the little boys chasing seagulls
Alexis having a moment in the ocean...
Do you think that shoes say something about a person's personality?
It was beginning to get dark by that point, so we decided to head onwards towards San Diego.
We went to the arena to see if there were any tickets available... No scalpers lurking around (which was good, I don't know if my psyche could have handled buying tickets from a scalper outside of an arena), so we tried the obvious and headed to the box office. We ended up with Section R, approximately 5 rows up, and on the aisle closest to the stage. Nice seats! Especially for last-minute! And we even got a cash discount!!!
So, in one day, we found a hotel room, we made it onto a flight for which we didn't have tickets, and we got great seats legally! I was pretty proud of us.
We still had a couple of hours to kill until the show started so we went to find some dinner.
We went back to the arena, and met some folks. Holla if you see yourself!
We went into the show, and started to ponder the question of whether or not we had become jaded to shows... We didn't have the same anxious, nervous energy that we've had at previous shows, and we just sort of felt "off" a little bit. We came to the conclusion that we're not jaded. We were just tired.
The show was great. They were kind of crazy that night, and they kept referring to that show as "the last stop." We kept checking ourselves to make sure that yes, there was indeed a show the following night in Los Angeles...
A few photos... the rest can be found here
Note the saran wrap on Joe's wrist
A little bit... Twixted
It was the night of the Jon crotch grab!
And a "Shout" ending!
We hung out for a few minutes after the show ended, but we realized that a) nothing cool was happening, b) we were really, REALLY tired, and c) it was starting to rain pretty hard.
So you know those (false) internet rumors about Donnie nearly dying on the highway on his drive between San Diego and Los Angeles? I was believing it, because that was one of the scariest drives I’ve ever made. It sucked. It was beyond sucking. Imagine the scariest drive you’ve ever done, whether it was a rainstorm, or a blizzard, or an ice storm, or whatever. And then imagine it’s the middle of the night, you’ve been awake for more than 24 hours, and you’re on an unfamiliar, poorly-lit highway. Then multiply the suckiness of that by about 35 million, and you might be close to understanding how much it sucked.
The rain was coming down in sheets, there was standing water on the roads, cars were spun out all over the place, and you couldn’t see them until it was almost too late. The SUV that we had rented didn’t have four wheel drive. WTF? That’s not standard?
Alexis likes to say that she had her eyes closed because she was scared. I caught her snoring more than once though. For the last 30 miles I made her stay awake and talk to me. By that point, the adrenaline from hydroplaning every five minutes wasn’t even doing it anymore. We discussed such important topics as “what was your favorite outfit that they wore during the tour?” and “let’s count the times when we made eye contact with them from the stage” and “of those moments, which ones do you think were the most meaningful?”
Yeah. We were getting desperate.
We finally made it to our hotel after about three hours. I think we said about five words to each other from the time we entered the room to the time that we turned out the lights. I’m pretty sure we both fell asleep immediately.
Stay Tuned for Part II of our California Adventure… Los Angeles!
XOXO, Kim and Alexis
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment