John & Adam Rock

Yesterday Kecia and I headed over to Indiana to see John &#091Mayer&#093 and Adam &#091Duritz, of the Counting Crows&#093 play a little music. It was a great time, but the trip over and back were not without their difficulties. Noblesville, Indiana, home of the Verizon Wireless Music Center (which, might I add, is a wonderful venue)is a bit northeast of Indianapolis, which means that it should’ve been a drive of under three hours. The trip to Indianapolis was about 2 and a half hours, which is normal, but the 15-mile trip from Indy to the Music Center took 90 minutes. It took that long because a) Everyone and their brother was going to the show and b) an accident closed down a small length of the left-hand lane of I-69 Northbound. This caused a 7-mile traffic backup which resulted in a whole lot of moving VERY slowly.

Let’s rewind to yesterday morning — I started it out with a nice tall glass of OJ. I had a couple of big glasses of water at work, a coke with lunch, and then a pepsi when I got home from work getting ready for the show. On our way out of town, Kecia and I stopped at McDonalds for an early dinner, where I got another drink. Did I mention that I neglected to use the bathroom before we left? I didn’t need to THEN… by the time we got to Indy I had to go. Of course, once we hit the traffic jam, there was NO getting off of the interstate. To make a long story short, the first thing I did once inside the gates was visit one of the lovely portable restrooms. I felt much MUCH better after that.

I had expected to get to the show half-an-hour early — which, after the delay, waiting in line (to get in, and to use the bathroom), means that we were all set to go 90 minutes after the show was scheduled to start. There was nobody on stage, which didn’t seem strange, because it could’ve easily been in-between sets. The Counting Crows’ stuff was on-stage, which lead me to believe that we had missed John Mayer, but were going to get to see the whole Counting Crows set which was good, if a bit disappointing. As it turns out, they delayed the start of BOTH acts to allow more people to get in the gates on account of the massive traffic backups. This was a very good thing.

The Counting Crows were great, as I expected. I still think I liked their show in Starkville a few years back better, but it was a good show and they played a nice variety of music from their albums. Now, as much as I wanted to see the Counting Crows, John Mayer was the one I was there to see, as I’d never been to a show of his before. He was really great, and the two of them together were worth every penny paid for the show. I could go on here, but I’m no music critic… so I won’t.

I also discovered that John Mayer has the ability to draw every attractive girl from within 100 miles to the show. Now don’t get me wrong, Indiana’s a great place and everything, but I’d never seen that many extremely hot Indianans before. Absolutely crazy. Makes me wonder what a John Mayer show in the South is like. Kecia and I found that we would’ve been well served to have made T-Shirts announcing the fact that we’re siblings and not dating. But I digress… I’m going to make it a point to go to as many John Mayer shows as possible… great music and hot women? Does it get any better than that?

There were several incidents of drunk people providing entertainment and annoyance for those around them, but I don’t think they’d translate well into print, so just imagine some drunk people did some funny stuff and laugh. There, wasn’t that great?

Now, as we all know, if something starts late and lasts the same amount of time that it should, it’s going to end late. The concert ended just shy of Midnight. We were out of the parking lot by 1:00am. Traffic being what it was, and the fact that the Music Center is a few miles off the interstate (backroads all the way) means that we got gassed up and ready to leave Noblesville by roughly 2:00am. We stopped just before the Illinois border so that I could take a quick nap at 3:00am. Back on the road by 4:00 put us home two hours later… 6:00am. I was one tired Pete.

So I slept for a few hours and just resigned myself to being tired and grumpy all day, which is what I’ve been — though not quite as grumpy as I thought I’d be. So the moral of the story is that it was an AWESOME show, and if it’s coming to a town near you, GO SEE IT.


In other news, I saw this Calvin and Hobbes comic today that I just love.