TL;DR, an Epic on a Roadtrip and Concert

I'm in the mood to get a new post up, but I only really have a few vague ideas of what I want to cover. Plenty has happened in the last month, so I don't think either of us will be too disappointed.

I've also been updating my good 'ole journal again in the last few weeks, which in an odd way takes up the writing energy I'd usually spend here. I like to keep journals not as some hive of secrets, but more of a personal history for me to look back on, see what I've gone through, and to see where I've grown. I actually highly recommend keeping a journal to anyone, it really is interesting to look back through the sometimes daily but often sporadic entries I've written over the last decade, in different journals covering anywhere from six months to three years. (I've only ever actually filled out one... I get a little twitchy towards the end and end up starting a new journal.)

(Ok, I changed my mind. I might consider writing about other stuff later, but this post is all about this weekend from this point on)

I went on a pretty exciting road trip this weekend, and covered nearly 300 miles in just two days! Gotta love spring break! Daniel and I were invited down to a concert in Portland by our good friends the Riddle girls, who live in in Vancouver. I got up, packed light, and met with Daniel at his house around 8am. Then began the long drive down to Vancouver, filled with good conversation, good traffic, and plenty of British rock as provided by a special weekend event on 102.5 KZOK, "Seattle's only Classic Rock Station". Things went well, and within a few hours we arrived at their house. It was good to see the lovely Lisa Dawn and Katy again, as well as the rest of the family. In fact, two of the older girls and their childerkins were visiting home and I got to meet them for the first time. The kids were very much rather adorable, although a little harder to understand than I ever remember my own nieces and nephews being. We headed out to Portland with one of the older girls, Clair, driving and being our chaperon of sorts, and Kelly joining in for the fun. On the way down we had some Taco Bell, which I don't think I've had since our last road trip! I love that stuff, at least more than other fast food. Here we ran into some trouble when we couldn't figure out where the concert was and got lost for a bit, but we found our way there in the end.

Once we arrived at the concert we got a spot in line provided by several of the boys from the Riddle's youth group - pleasant sorts of gentlemen. There were a lot of people waiting outside due to the fact that there was no pre-sale of concert tickets, something Daniel and I couldn't quite grasp. Some of the girls went off to use the restroom, and unfortunately met a line worse than ours. By the time the doors opened to the concert well over an hour later, the girls made it back just in time for us to go in and get our tickets. And by "tickets" I mean everyone dropped $10 in a bucket on the way in, which felt a little skeevy. It is to be noted that this all was budgeted to reach local people that otherwise couldn't make it, which also goes back to my thoughts on why there was no pre-sale. After about another hour of walking around and talking, the music started up!

The Sidewalk Prophets were the first up. They weren't bad, but not many seemed to know the songs and the music wasn't something you could just rock to.



Next up was Remedy Drive. Although this rising band is supposedly pretty big, I don't know if any of us had heard of them before this event. The others seemed more impressed than I was.

After that was Fee, another new band. This is where the party started. Good beat, good music, and people started getting into it, Fee made it start to feel like a concert!


After that was the very out-of-place Francesca Battistelli. True, she has a good voice and talent, but none of us were terribly excited that she got 4-5 songs in the lineup.


As if to shift us as violently as possible, Family Force 5 was next up, crazy uniforms and all. Quite to the surprise of us all, Lisa Dawn really liked this band. (There's some Family Force 5 as the second song for this post.) The only disappointment here was in that they had the base mellowed out a bit, which is very odd for such a hard band.

Second to the end, the David Crowder Band came in and rocked the house. Probably my favorite of the night (despite the pleasant surprise of Fee and the mad beat of FF5), I was quite exhausted from worshiping by the time MercyMe came on.


Although we had been looking forward to MercyMe as one of the familiar bands, they only played one song they actually wrote. Finished pretty well anyway.


Rather tired, we headed back up to Vancouver with some McDonald's for dinner on the way. With a sudden realization of a lack of foresight on the fact that we'd be home after midnight, we were graciously offered a spot on the floor to spend the night and some cereal in the morning to do us on our way. A funny thing about being young is that an exciting day ending with sleeping on the floor actually creates a strange sense of vigor in the morning, not ache and drowsiness. With slightly sad farewells we wished the Riddles goodbye as they went off to morning church and we homeward. As the strange phenomena is with home trips, we made it back in the record time of two hours. In even stranger phenomena, we once again saw a rainbow, although this time on the way home... this has happened on all but one of the times I've visited. The rest of the day after we got home was, of course, normal Sunday drabble not to be bored with here.

So yes, very fun times. But DANG. Anyone who read all of that deserves a medal. send me your name and I'll engrave it in a brick or something. For those interested in the meaning of the title, TL;DR is netspeak for "Too Long; Didn't Read," a term used for people who don't know when to shut up, much like me. I told you there would be no disappointment. ;) Hopefully I'll get another post up soon with pictures from the trip, but I didn't take any myself and am waiting for Katy to send me some. (*wink*nudge*)


Two songs for today! First up is...
"One of Those Days" by Joshua Radin.
I got it as an iTunes pick from Starbucks a few months ago. A little mellow, but one of my official favorite songs of 2010, of which there are currently only 11.

And as promised,
"Earthquake" by Family Force 5.
You'd never guess they're a Christian band, but they're good. I suppose it's worth nothing this is also on my 2010 list. Perhaps I'll post up the lists of past years sometime.