coldplay

Yesterday, 3:00 pm, my dad, my friend and I took off for Mountain View, in the south bay. We were going to see Coldplay, my favorite band play at the Shoreline Amphitheatre. It was a great show, the best part seeing the band members themselves onstage. However seeing them was not easy.
We got there and parked in a huge parking lot. Lot E5. Then we got into line and waited maybe twenty minutes until they let us into the actual place. It reminded me of the fair, with food stands and radio stations trying to blast their music the loudest to sell their products... While we were in line, two spots ahead of us was this guy wearing a Pixar shirt. I thought, "Wow, what a coincidence, being so close in line with this guy." I didn't say anything to him though, and when we went through the door I thought I'd never see him again because there would be like, a THOUSAND people there that night.
We went up to the lawn area (after waiting in another line) and found a spot we thought was good. We settled down, then went and got some food.
When we came back, I realized that the guy I saw in line was sitting in front of us and to the right, just a couple of blankets away. Cool! Another coincidence! I mean, if you've ever seen how BIG this place is, you would be surprised too.
Then we wait another 45 minutes, the start-up band plays three or four songs, then they go off. I glance over at the Pixar guy, who is young and sports a lower-lip stud, rocking to the recorded music that was playing. He looks over to the people sitting directly in front of us and they look at him. Then they wave and go over to talk with each other. As the couple came back, I saw the man's hat and it said "CARS" on it. I thought his shirt was an Incredibles shirt too.
I pluck up my courage, wait for them to stop talking, then tap him on the shoulder.
" 'Scuse me, but do you work at Pixar?"
"Yeah, I do. So does she," he gestures to his partner sitting next to him, then said, "How did you know?"
I said, "I saw your hat and shirt,"
But I found out later that his shirt had some other round orange logo, not the Incredibles. But he didn't say anything about that and just asked, "You know Cars?" I was like, yeah, yeah...I really like Pixar... And his wife asked, kind of tentatively, "Do you work there?" I WISH! But no. Then I said I saw them talk to the other guy with a Pixar shirt. I say, "Well, enjoy the show," and go back to my blanket. COOL.
Anyway, the concert started about an hour after the first band ended and it must have been nine o'clock or something. When they started, everyone stood up and we realized we were in a blind spot. We couldn't see them at all! So somewhat chaotically we packed up our stuff and wandered up a little more. My friend is about a head shorter than me, so if I couldn't see, then she could see nothing at all. We folded up the blanket really tightly and put it on the ground for her to stand on. I was standing on my tip-toes most of the concert, holding up the binoculars to see the band. At the end of the night my back hurt from standing like that for two hours. But it did not seem like two hours at all. It felt like twenty minutes.
Everyone was waving their heads back and forth to the music, so when I tried looking through the binoculars I would see the singer for a moment, then woosh! This head would come into view. I learned to just hold it in the same place and the head would go back again. But it sure was a thrill to see these guys in person.
The trip to the car was almost a whole different expedition on its own. The problem started when the "Shoreline authorities," or whoever, closed off the way we came from E5. So we followed the herd of people and found ourselves in the wrong parking lot. We ran into another lost group of people who were looking for E5 too. They said, "This isn't the same parking lot! This one is gravel-paved, and ours was all dusty!" I find it rather sad that we could only distinguish parking lots by material on the ground. We thought, well there's that big hill...maybe it's on the other side of that hill! So we CLIMBED this huge hill, then found only darkness on the other side. Eventually we found a road, followed that and THAT lead us to E5. But to get to E5 we had to cross another road, climb down a ditch, then up another slope, climb over a fence and only then were we in the right parking lot.
Ahh, now we can go home. NOT. The car battery was dead.
Thankfully some people next to us gave us a start and finally we were on the road back home.

Hahh. Feels good to vent that. Well, I'm going to go on a bike ride with my mom now. Burn off some of that hot dog.