This time, the concert was going to be 5 hours away from where we live so we decided to make a trip out of it. With my parents watching the younger two kids and my sister watching our oldest, we were ready to have some much needed time to ourselves.
Papa Bear had gotten home from work around 6:45 and we were on the road around 7:30. We had agreed to each drive half way and he took the first few hours o that he would be able to sleep the rest of the way. This was a great idea until (while driving), I realized that I was driving through tunnel after tunnel (my own personal form of Hell). I may
Since we were going to be seeing them at Stage AE, we decided to stay at The Hyatt Place which is within walking distance to it. When we drove to the hotel, we passed the place where the concert would be and noticed that there were only two people waiting in line (this was about 6 hours before the doors were scheduled to open) so we decided to go to the hotel first and put our stuff in our room before going to wait in line. When we got to the hotel, we were told that the rooms weren't ready yet and that it was basically a first come first serve once they were so we would have to keep checking back for an open room ( Papa Bear was less than pleased...). So, we went for a quick walk and came back to the hotel about a half hour later and were given a room. Once we dropped all of our stuff off and changed, we walked back to the concert place which at this point only had 4 people in line.
Agreeing that we wanted to eat and weren't too worried about getting good spots based on the line, we ran across the street to Jerome Bettis' Grille. Holy Moly. The portion sizes on the food there are ridiculous! I ordered a buffalo chicken sandwich and when I took it apart to take off a tomato (my fault for not asking for it without), I realized that there were TWO chicken breasts in the one sandwich. Needless to say, we weren't able to finish all of our food. It was delicious though.Once we were done, we decided to go to the bathrooms and then head across the street to wait in line (which had been starting to grow). Apparently, the men's bathroom here has a two way mirror at the urinals so Papa Bear thought that was funny.
After that, we ran across the street and sat in line. For the next 4 1/2 hours. Surrounded by overly dramatic teenagers, ticket scalpers, and what I can only assume was a happily drunk woman. One of the in-line highlights happened as we were all standing and getting ready to be patted down before entering. A pizza delivery car pulled up and apparently some guy who was in line had ordered himself a personal pan pizza. After having been waiting in line for the last 4-5 hours some of the people around us were really hungry and started offering him money for a slice, which he happily took. Then we were quickly patted down and claiming our spots. We were able to be right in the front although Papa Bear chose to stand behind me.
The openers were Half Moon Run who I had never heard of but ended up really liking.
In the time in between shows, someone got sick behind Papa Bear which was awful and everyone started cramming forward to get away from it which pushed us into different spots although we were still in the front. Someone had the wise? idea to cover it with a poncho (starting a "poncho!poncho!" chant). Finally, Of Monsters and Men came on. Although they were awesome again, Papa Bear and I both agreed that the first show (without General admission and with higher ticket prices) was much better than this one (filled with teenagers who were bragging that they had gotten the tickets for free and being obnoxious throughout the entire thing) because the whole atmosphere was more fun being surrounded by people who honestly wanted to see Of Monsters and Men and weren't there just because they could be. That said, we'll definitely go to another one if they come back to the area again.
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