The Road Trip

I am behind in writing about my road trip all the way to Salt Lake. It was a great weekend. So I shall share about it now.

Friday morning I went in to work for my hour. Afterwards I ran an errand or two and then came home and cleaned out my car. I got all the trash out, all the extra papers and directions to various locations that had been stashed in various places. Then I pulled out my vacuum and vacuumed the whole interior, got all the crumbs and dust and small leaves and sand and bugs that died on the dash out of my car. Then I sprayed all the hard surfaces and cleaned them off. The inside of my car was clean. I don’t know why, but I like to clean the inside of my car before a road trip. I also tried to find a gas station that hadn’t raised their prices by at least ten cents that morning, but no luck.

After cleaning the car I went in and turned on the two Rascal Flatts CDs I have real loud and showered and packed and got ready to go. Just after 3:00, Melissa and Tanya came over, we loaded everything in the car, and were off. It’s a quick drive to Salt Lake, so we were there before long. The woman at the hotel asked if we were there for business and pleasure. I half laughed when I told her it was pleasure since we live in Orem.

The suite was nice. I love how it was decorated, blues and yellows. We decided to go to the Gateway and get something to eat. We had a little trouble getting out of the parking garage once we’d parked, but we are from out of town, so it’s natural to get lost.

Back at the suite we got ready for the concert, which included using Tanya’s new cell phone to send photos to Sally. Later we kind of scared the guy in line in front of us to get into the concert when we were talking about the photos.

The opening act wasn’t bad. I recognized one or two of the songs. The show was sold out, but a lot of people didn’t get there till after he was done. You know country music has changed when the singer is wearing a Guns-N-Roses shirt. He went on a bit about himself and how good they are and how many awards they’d won. I think a better tactic would’ve been to just play real well and let us decide for ourselves how good they were.

Rascal Flatts was amazing. They were so full of energy, worked the stage and crowd well, and they had talent as well. They aren’t good just because of the magic they can do in the studio, they really can play and they really can sing. One of the guys played a drum set that was phenomenal, he also played the piano, and so many different guitars I lost track. And they harmonized so well too. It was a great concert.

There were three women who appeared to be in their late 30s sitting right in front of us. Melissa commented that would be the four of us in ten years. That got Tanya a bit misty eyed. So we made plans to all go to a spa together for my 30th birthday next year. One of the guys in Rascal Flatts was talking about how there are always more women then men at their concerts. He said it’s because one woman will hear they are coming and will call her girl friends and they’ll all make plans to come and tell the guys they are going out and the guys won’t know what hit them and so they’ll say okay. He said when they talk to the women after the concert, they always say their guy had to work, but in reality the guy is at home watching CSI on the TiVo and thinking it’s already 3am and they said they’d be home. It was funny because that’s just about what happened with us. Melissa heard they were coming, told the rest of us, Tanya told Daniel she was going (she didn’t ask, she told), and we didn’t get back till Saturday afternoon.

When we got back to the hotel we did mud masks and ate chocolate covered things – strawberries, rice crispy treats, potato chips. Saturday morning we took advantage of the breakfast at the hotel and then went and enjoyed the jacuzzi for about half an hour. Melissa and I tried out the exercise room. We went to Trolley Square and did a bit of shopping before driving back. We dropped Tanya off at home and Melissa and I went to the Provo mall and tried on prom dresses and then went to a book club meeting with some people I know before finally getting home about 5 in the evening.

My house was still dirty. There was still laundry to do. The dishes were still in the sink. I still had homework to work on. But it was definitely worth it get out like that. There’s just something about a road trip.