Stupid Adventures
One of my favorite past-times happens to be roadtrips. Personally, I think one of the greatest adventures would be to travel across Canada with 1 or 2 really good friends in a car packed up with camping gear. I would love to be able to take a month or more during summer and make a trip like that actually happen, with no particular goals or time frames... just taking it day by day and flying by the seat of our pants.
In the meantime, I quench my road trip cravings with some pretty crazy trips that usually revolve around a concert or a show of some sort. I have done a couple of quick trips to Regina, which is about 2.5 hours from Saskatoon, watched a few bands play and then bombed back home in order to make it to work the next morning. These Regina trips are pretty much standard fare and don't seem that crazy anymore. I have flown to Vancouver to see some bands play, and then flew home 36 hours later. That was a pretty memorable trip for many reasons.
Yesterday I added another quick turnaround road trip to my list. This involved a drive to Edmonton and a fantastic concert which included The Mars Volta and was headlined by System Of A Down. There were a number of hic-ups prior to this trip, some of which included one friend dropping out of her ticket the day that I bought them, and another friend who could not make it due to a promotion at work. Luckily, I was able to sell the 2 extra tickets I had, but it did cause some stress prior to the trip. Edmonton is a little more than 500 kms from Saskatoon, and unfortunately Suze and I were a little late in our departure. We were finally exiting Saskatoon around 12:15 Tuesday afternoon and were hoping to hit up The Olive Garden for supper prior to the show. As luck would have it, the highway was clear and cruising at 130 kms/hr put us in Edmonton just a hair after 4pm and gave us plenty of time to make it to the restaurant before the mad supper rush. We just come across an RCMP officer radar-ing as we came over a hill just outside of Edmonton, but luckily he just wasn't paying attention as I blew past him somewhat over the speed limit. I guess luck was on my side yesterday.
We had a great meal at The Olive Garden, but I think we both ate way too much. I tend to always overdo it when I'm eating there and had a little trouble being weighted down by the food during the show, but it was worth it. I think Suze had the same problem, but didn't eat anywhere near as much as I did. mmmmmmm... I love that place.
From there we made our way to fill up with gas and drove to the coliseum for the show. I have an out-of-the-way spot that I usually park at, but kind of forgot how to get there. We ended up caught up in a lot of traffic around the coliseum and a couple of illegal maneuvers allowed me to get a great parking spot in a business' parking lot. It cost $5, but it was absolutely worth it once the show was over.
We tossed everything in the trunk and headed off to the show. Our floor tickets allowed us special entrance so that we didn't even have to wait in line like everyone else. Downstairs, we ran into Gordo, which was just pure luck because I couldn't track him down when we got into town and his roommates had no idea where he was or if he was even going to the show. I haven't seen G since I was in Edmonton last August... and he actually hasn't even cut his hair since that visit. Talk about hockey hair, but it was great to catch up and have a beer, even if it was only for 15 minutes.
The opening band, Hella (I think) just couldn't hold my interest at all. That seemed to be the general opinion from everyone. The second band was The Mars Volta, which put on a pretty good show, but reminded me that I had left my earplugs in my car. Sometimes I really have to wonder about my memory. Suze was bitching about wanting earplugs as well, so we went on a hunt for some. All security guards we talked to pointed us to the First Aid room, but they were fresh out. As we were walking around I stopped an asked a very wonderful older lady at the information desk if she had any ideas where I might be able to find some earplugs. She asked me to wait for a minute while she helped a couple of other people, and then slid me 2 pairs of plugs on the "downlow"... picture a 70 year old lady passing me these earplugs like they were drugs mentioning they were for security staff and employees but she would make a small exception for me. She was wonderful, and I got a laugh at how quietly she tried to pass them to me.
With protection in place we ventured back to the floor and caught the end of The Mars Volta set and pushed our way to the front before System took the stage. Now things started to get interesting. As we were standing to the right side of the stage, a couple right next to us were having a fight. The girl didn't want to be up front in the mosh pit, while her boyfriend had absolutely no intention of leaving the front. This arguing continued for a while, and it ended up that she even started crying right in the mosh pit. That's the first time I've seen anything like that. We moved more towards the center of the stage and were caught smack dab in the middle of a group of 'roided up, testosterone heads that were scrapping. The show hadn't even started and they were already fighting. This pretty much set the tone for the pit, which was one of the worst ones I've been in. Nobody cared at all about pit ethic, and there were too many dickheads running around plowing everyone over. I got hit pretty hard by a couple of guys and took a good punch to the side of my head knocking out my ear plug and my piercing jewelry. That kind of pissed me off because it was during the second song, so I went the rest of the show without ear protection in 1 ear.
System Of A Down were fantastic in a live setting, and did such a good job of recreating their extremely fast music and varied vocals. All in all, I was extremely impressed with their performance. Definitely one of the better ones I've seen. I think they could have offered up a little more stage show, but the music is what matters, and it was all very good.
There was no encore and we were able to get out of the building around 11:15pm, but not before getting caught in the middle of another fight on the mezzanine level. Stupid assholes. We got back to the car in my fantastic parking spot and were able to get on to the freeway within minutes of leaving. In fact, it worked out so well that we were on the highway after stopping for some water and iced tea and it wasn't even 11:30 yet. Gordo gave me a call around midnight when he got home and was extremely surprised to find out that we were already 100 kms outside of Edmonton. That $5 for parking was extremely worth it.
Suze crawled into the back seat pretty quickly and curled up to sleep since she had to be at work by 6:30am. I felt pretty good until about 20 minutes outside of Lloydminster when I started to get extremely tired. I decided I would set the alarm on my phone for 2am and was going to pull over once we got through Lloyd and have a little nap at the weigh station in order to refresh myself. However, once I got past Lloyd I got my second wind and woke right up. Suze woke up just as we were driving through the battlefords around 2:15ish. She was kind of surprised that we were only an hour from Saskatoon. At this time I checked the gas situation and was very surprised to find that after 400 kms, we still had half a tank left. That car is wonderful on the highway. I dropped Suze off around 3:20am and was home and in bed before 4am. Kind of still wired, but I did eventually fall asleep.
All in all, I will definitely do another trip like that again, even if I had to work the next day. I always thought that Edmonton was a little too far to go for a turnaround trip, but this was definitely not a problem at all. I wonder what other trips we can do in that kind of timeframe.
In the meantime, I quench my road trip cravings with some pretty crazy trips that usually revolve around a concert or a show of some sort. I have done a couple of quick trips to Regina, which is about 2.5 hours from Saskatoon, watched a few bands play and then bombed back home in order to make it to work the next morning. These Regina trips are pretty much standard fare and don't seem that crazy anymore. I have flown to Vancouver to see some bands play, and then flew home 36 hours later. That was a pretty memorable trip for many reasons.
Yesterday I added another quick turnaround road trip to my list. This involved a drive to Edmonton and a fantastic concert which included The Mars Volta and was headlined by System Of A Down. There were a number of hic-ups prior to this trip, some of which included one friend dropping out of her ticket the day that I bought them, and another friend who could not make it due to a promotion at work. Luckily, I was able to sell the 2 extra tickets I had, but it did cause some stress prior to the trip. Edmonton is a little more than 500 kms from Saskatoon, and unfortunately Suze and I were a little late in our departure. We were finally exiting Saskatoon around 12:15 Tuesday afternoon and were hoping to hit up The Olive Garden for supper prior to the show. As luck would have it, the highway was clear and cruising at 130 kms/hr put us in Edmonton just a hair after 4pm and gave us plenty of time to make it to the restaurant before the mad supper rush. We just come across an RCMP officer radar-ing as we came over a hill just outside of Edmonton, but luckily he just wasn't paying attention as I blew past him somewhat over the speed limit. I guess luck was on my side yesterday.
We had a great meal at The Olive Garden, but I think we both ate way too much. I tend to always overdo it when I'm eating there and had a little trouble being weighted down by the food during the show, but it was worth it. I think Suze had the same problem, but didn't eat anywhere near as much as I did. mmmmmmm... I love that place.
From there we made our way to fill up with gas and drove to the coliseum for the show. I have an out-of-the-way spot that I usually park at, but kind of forgot how to get there. We ended up caught up in a lot of traffic around the coliseum and a couple of illegal maneuvers allowed me to get a great parking spot in a business' parking lot. It cost $5, but it was absolutely worth it once the show was over.
We tossed everything in the trunk and headed off to the show. Our floor tickets allowed us special entrance so that we didn't even have to wait in line like everyone else. Downstairs, we ran into Gordo, which was just pure luck because I couldn't track him down when we got into town and his roommates had no idea where he was or if he was even going to the show. I haven't seen G since I was in Edmonton last August... and he actually hasn't even cut his hair since that visit. Talk about hockey hair, but it was great to catch up and have a beer, even if it was only for 15 minutes.
The opening band, Hella (I think) just couldn't hold my interest at all. That seemed to be the general opinion from everyone. The second band was The Mars Volta, which put on a pretty good show, but reminded me that I had left my earplugs in my car. Sometimes I really have to wonder about my memory. Suze was bitching about wanting earplugs as well, so we went on a hunt for some. All security guards we talked to pointed us to the First Aid room, but they were fresh out. As we were walking around I stopped an asked a very wonderful older lady at the information desk if she had any ideas where I might be able to find some earplugs. She asked me to wait for a minute while she helped a couple of other people, and then slid me 2 pairs of plugs on the "downlow"... picture a 70 year old lady passing me these earplugs like they were drugs mentioning they were for security staff and employees but she would make a small exception for me. She was wonderful, and I got a laugh at how quietly she tried to pass them to me.
With protection in place we ventured back to the floor and caught the end of The Mars Volta set and pushed our way to the front before System took the stage. Now things started to get interesting. As we were standing to the right side of the stage, a couple right next to us were having a fight. The girl didn't want to be up front in the mosh pit, while her boyfriend had absolutely no intention of leaving the front. This arguing continued for a while, and it ended up that she even started crying right in the mosh pit. That's the first time I've seen anything like that. We moved more towards the center of the stage and were caught smack dab in the middle of a group of 'roided up, testosterone heads that were scrapping. The show hadn't even started and they were already fighting. This pretty much set the tone for the pit, which was one of the worst ones I've been in. Nobody cared at all about pit ethic, and there were too many dickheads running around plowing everyone over. I got hit pretty hard by a couple of guys and took a good punch to the side of my head knocking out my ear plug and my piercing jewelry. That kind of pissed me off because it was during the second song, so I went the rest of the show without ear protection in 1 ear.
System Of A Down were fantastic in a live setting, and did such a good job of recreating their extremely fast music and varied vocals. All in all, I was extremely impressed with their performance. Definitely one of the better ones I've seen. I think they could have offered up a little more stage show, but the music is what matters, and it was all very good.
There was no encore and we were able to get out of the building around 11:15pm, but not before getting caught in the middle of another fight on the mezzanine level. Stupid assholes. We got back to the car in my fantastic parking spot and were able to get on to the freeway within minutes of leaving. In fact, it worked out so well that we were on the highway after stopping for some water and iced tea and it wasn't even 11:30 yet. Gordo gave me a call around midnight when he got home and was extremely surprised to find out that we were already 100 kms outside of Edmonton. That $5 for parking was extremely worth it.
Suze crawled into the back seat pretty quickly and curled up to sleep since she had to be at work by 6:30am. I felt pretty good until about 20 minutes outside of Lloydminster when I started to get extremely tired. I decided I would set the alarm on my phone for 2am and was going to pull over once we got through Lloyd and have a little nap at the weigh station in order to refresh myself. However, once I got past Lloyd I got my second wind and woke right up. Suze woke up just as we were driving through the battlefords around 2:15ish. She was kind of surprised that we were only an hour from Saskatoon. At this time I checked the gas situation and was very surprised to find that after 400 kms, we still had half a tank left. That car is wonderful on the highway. I dropped Suze off around 3:20am and was home and in bed before 4am. Kind of still wired, but I did eventually fall asleep.
All in all, I will definitely do another trip like that again, even if I had to work the next day. I always thought that Edmonton was a little too far to go for a turnaround trip, but this was definitely not a problem at all. I wonder what other trips we can do in that kind of timeframe.
posted by Kelly at 4:47 PM
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