i know it is a week or so late but here are my thoughts on those 2 shows....i remember we drove in the night from atlanta to greenville, south carolina and stayed at an amazing red roof inn. They are redesigning all red roof inns and let me tell ya, as some one who travels a lot I was pretty impressed with the design. Only problem is that they use t mobile for their wireless. I digress...We left greenville pretty early but decided we wouldn't get to charlotte early in the morning since neither of us had a pit ticket. We got to the venue maybe around noon and there were 3 people there. We spent the day there waiting at the box office and my friend prescot met up with us to listen to soundcheck. The soundchecked started around 4 and they must have done like 11 songs, especially Jigsaw, which they had yet to debut for the tour. The box office ended up having nothing but seats in the back, so i bought one of those.I had remembered that a girl in atlanta had got herself into the pit by using someone elses already used pit ticket. The tickets in atlanta had a big 'p' written on them in marker by the venue security when they gave us wristbands. So that girl was able to take as much of the marker off for them not to tell and they wrote on it again and gave her a wristband. SO I decided to use the method to get into the pit in charlotte. Matt was lucky, he got a pit ticket just from a fan that was waiting at the gate. When the gates opened I ran in using my shitty row U ticket to be scanned and then when it came time to get into the pit, I put my finger over the date and where the washed off 'p' was and just was very talkative with the security. He did not notice at all and just gave me a wristband and let me in. So easy. I got in just in time to get rain right between thom and jonny! The pit was also fairly small and no one really showed up to be there until the lairs went on, so we had room to move around and everyone was really respectful. The show in charlotte was my favorite of the first 5, the band was full of great energy and even thom said something along the lines of 'we're gonna need a rest after this one'.After the show we started our drive to maryland and stayed just north of charlotte in concord. The next morning we drove to maryland where we were staying with my friend John's parents. We made it in about 7 hours, but got stuck in horrific traffic in DC. That night we just hung with my friend's parents and rested. Little did we know what we would encounter at bristow.It wasn't really raining when we left maryland that morning. We got to bristow pretty fast and met 3 people who got there right after us. The venue told us we could not be in the property until 4pm, but that we could go in to check the box office at noon. When noon came we all went in and just stayed by the gates. We met a kid who has been there since 7am! Then as soon as we got there, it started to rain. I broke out my poncho and put on another set of layers. It wasn't terrible, but then around 3pm they let the cars in so people just started flooding in. The pit would be massive at this show, holding something like 1800 people. The rain just kept coming and we camped out at one gate hoping that we could out run kids to the front. The front being about 1/4 of a mile from the gate, all the way around to the other side of the venue. When they opened the gates it was raining so hard that huge puddles of muddy water were what we had to run through to get to the front. Once i finally made it there, i had to ask people to let me through since I had been there all day. Most people were fine with that, except for a few young girls that gave me some attitude. They made us wait at the entrance to the pit for about 30 min as it continued to rain really hard. Soaking wet at this point, I am trying to remember how much I love this band. Once they let us in, I got right between thom and jonny, second row behind the kid that had been there since 7am. The show was good, but there was a lot of negative energy around me. Between the girls who gave me tude, and this guy who had been reportedly touching girls innapropriatly, to just people who were bitching nonstop. I tried to ignore it all and get into the show, but I think being wet and cold made it even harder. The show was good, but not a favorite of mine.After the show we were completely and totally exhausted. We tried to drive back to maryland but it was pouring rain out so bad that it was hard to see. We were so afraid that the bad weather plus being tired would get us in an accident, so we just pulled over and stayed at a hotel. It was still raining the next morning but the drive back to marlyand and then onward to connecticut was not so bad.It was a great week filled with lotts of adventures. We met so many great people along the way. Thanks to everyone who helped us out.
Read more…
