Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Warped Tour Boise, 2007 - The Journey Commences


Warped Tour Boise, 2007 is officially history, and I was very happy to be a small part in the making of that history. As usual, I did let the timing of everything stress me just a little, and I prayed lots that God would work everything out in his time, which he gratefully did.
We were to leave Thursday evening right after my daughter got off work. The three of us, Bethany, Nick and I were going to the Hampton Inn across the street from the venue to sleep a few hours before getting up and enjoying too much sun and lots of good music. We finally decided to take Nick's car, and he drove both directions, which was kind of nice for us. :) I had hoped we would leave by 8 or 8:30 p.m. and be in Boise by 2 a.m. But, as they say, the best laid plans.... As it turned out, we arrived closer to 3 a.m., maybe a little later, and checked into our hotel room. We had a bit of a disagreement about who got the plush king bed over the pull out sofa sleeper, but being as I was paying the bill, I won. When I checked into the room the first thing I noticed was that it smelled a bit of cigarette smoke. I went downstairs to ask if it was a smoking room. The guy at the desk assured me it was not, but said sometimes people will smoke in them anyway. I was concerned about allergies. They didn't have Claritin, but he did offer to pay for some for me if I went across the street to Wal Mart. Nice offer, but I needed sleep! So, I took my chances. It wasn't bad, so I think it was just someone smoked in there only one time. Anyway, I asked the desk to give me a wake up call at 8 a.m. I woke up at 6:30, then went back to sleep until 7:15. I lay awake a few minutes and just decided that by the time I went back to sleep it would be time to wake up again, so I got up. I went downstairs and checked out the breakfast which was really a pretty good layout... some nice big biscuits, scrambled eggs, oatmeal, cereal, fruit (cantaloupe, honeydew, grapes and mandarin oranges), some really nice gooey, tasty-looking doughnuts, and muffins. I really wished I could have handled a real breakfast at that point, but it all seemed to heavy. I opted for a banana muffin and fruit - and then some more fruit. I walked about outside and checked out the venue. I saw buses starting to arrive in the venue lots - buses, vans with trailers and motor homes. I saw a couple of guys walking towards the hotel from the venue and I asked if people were lining up already, and they answered in the affirmative. I figured I'd better get ready. I really wanted to see The Fold, and I thought they might be playing first, so getting there and getting in the gate early seemed a good idea. I quickly went up to my room, did a quick shower, gathered up my belongings, filled Nick in and left for the venue. They planned to sleep in until later. The trip to the venue from the hotel was really rather short, and the hotel assured me that we could park there until Warped Tour was over. So, I was there in no time. There were probably about 30 or so people waiting already with about the same number of people waiting in the will call lines. I chatted lots, as I am prone to do, and started asking about delivering cookies to Dan, camera policies, etc. Finally, the guy at security agreed to allow me to leave the cookies at the inside of the gate in case I saw Dan with the agreement that he could not be responsible for them. That worked for me. Then I found out from him that I could take my high zoom point and shoot in. I also ran into Justin, who I see in Salt Lake at a lot of concerts. He was doing street team stuff for Kaddisfly. Small world. A few years back Kaddisfly lost their trailer/equipment, so I sent them a small donation. I was finally going to get to see them. Shortly after that, I saw Dan. I said "hello" and told him about the cookies. He was looking for his street teamers and a little preoccupied. As it turned out, there was one street team person there, and she wanted some help, so I offered to help. I believe she was also from Northern UT. Dan gave me a vendor wristband, and I went about hanging up posters announcing the stage and time for their show.
At one point we hung a few up near and on the latrines... and I forgot to see if one of them was occupied first. As I was hanging the poster up, this guy pushed open the door. It was kind of funny. We finished up with the posters and waited a bit for something else to do. There really wasn't much. The funniest thing is that I never went through security, I never had my ticket scanned, even though I had one, and I never thought about that much until it was all over with. Then it made me chuckle. It was a pretty good start, I'd say.
--Melanie
Oh, I forgot to mention, the last time I was at that hotel and venue, there was a field between the hotel and parking lot. This time there were pathways, roads and parking slots. Last time there was nothing much around except a Chevron station, this time there was a huge Super Walmart, a Taco Del Mar, and a few other businesses. It really has changed. :)

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