Being "Warped" in Boise

I originally posted this on a private family site on Aug. 11, but thought why reinvent the wheel. LOL I will add notes and photos, too. I neglected to mention that when Lauralee and I arrived at the hotel at 5 mins. to 6 one of the first things we did was figure out our World Wide Moment photos. We took a pic of each other, simultaneously. It seemed appropriate. Here is my pic of Lauralee:

On with the show...




"Thursday night, I left for Warped Tour in Boise. Initially, I had a room at the Hampton Inn in Nampa, ID booked. IT sits practically in the venue parking lot - at least they are adjacent. I found out Brittany and Ann were going to the Boise Warped tour and asked if they had a room yet. Ann said, "no", so I offered to share mine. Then a friend I meet here at concerts a lot said she was planning to go, so there were four of us. When Ann and Brittany got to the hotel around 9:15 p.m., Ann tells me they are picking Kara up at 11:16 at the airport, and that she is staying in the room with us. Needless to say, we didn't sleep a whole lot. We also terrorized Wal Mart at least three times. LOL Mostly just with silliness. Lauralee (the friend I went with from UT) and I had gone to Wal Mart earlier, and the gal at the front couldn't seem to figure out that Lauralee's Glaceau vitamin water, and the smart water were both on the receipt and from the same company. Yea.. now we're water thieves. Sigh...

SO, we did finally sleep a little. In the morning we ran into John Warne in the hotel lobby. He went to do his laundry and we "accosted" him later in the laundry room. Brittany was too chicken, and I wasn't going to bother him, so Ann did. LOL We all followed, of course. He said it was o.k. I left my Smart Water and he caught me later to make sure I had it. Lauralee was working at the show for ecogreen (which got her in free, basically) and Kara was working for RK's merch table and she took the road manager a cup of coffee with messages from Relient K boardies written all over the cup. I was trying to figure out how she would get a cup of hot coffee into the venue, but apparently one of the crew she knew arranged it. She also was able to be on the side of the stage when RK played. I was front and center, but left because I had a photo pass. The stage was extremely tall, so photos were difficult. Then instead of the usual 3 songs to shoot, I was only told I could shoot for 2 songs. But I was able to take pics from the side of the stage. I really didn't think I had much, but I ended up with some decent photos after all. When RK was done, Matty came over to where I was and gave me a big hug. Then he was mobbed by 50 other people all wanting hugs. It was kinda silly. Afterwards, I went to the Kia tent for a Relient K signing, and I had some things for them. I found a really adorable Spiderman pj set - 12 mos, and Jon is a big marvel comics fan who has a 6 month old son. He loved it. We were able to hang around a little after the signing, and Matty showed me his iPhone and scrabble game. The graphics are really amazing.
Really bad pic at the Kia tent, but it was fun:


Then I met Fred of The Color Fred really briefly, hung out at the RK merch tent, watched a few other bands, and left a little early after hearing about a song and a half of Reel Big Fish. They weren't bad, but I was beat. Ann and Brittany were back at the hotel since Ann wasn't feeling well. So, I left early so as to be able to say goodbye to them. The hotel was booked, but Ann managed to get one due to a cancellation so we stayed at the Hampton again. I was lucky enough to get Motel 6 in Twin Falls to cancel my reservation at 8 p.m. at no charge. I think it ended up cheaper in the long run. The only downside was that it was a smoking room, so I just bought some claritin to be safe. WE all went to get food. They all ended up at Taco Del Mar, except Brittany who went to Walmart to get something to eat. I went to a sandwich shop. Two of the guys from All Time Low came in and we chatted a bit.

Ann, Brittany & Kara left really early (like 4:30 a.m.) since they were headed for Warped Tour at the Gorge in WA. Lauralee and I slept in a little bit longer, had breakfast in the lobby, then headed for home. We stopped at Jack in the Box at Twin Falls for lunch, and I took her to Perrine bridge to see the Gorge and to Centennial Park to see the snake river a little closer, and the waterfall there.



Then we made it home around 6:10 p.m. It may take me a bit to recover. IT was fun, though. The only downside is that my 50 mm lens came apart. Those things are great low light lenses, but they are too darned fragile!

I think my "mini tour" is over for now. I saw The Fold on the 21st of July and the 22nd, then on 23-26 I was at the Gorge in WA for Creation NW, on the 30th to see Switchfoot in Rock Springs, WY (not really as far away as it might sound), to USANA in West Valley to see James Taylor on the 2nd, and Warped Tour on the 8th. Jerome of Switchfoot said I had my own "mini tour" and I said, "Yea, I don't know how you guys do it!"

Anyway, it's kept me pretty busy and in trouble of late. I'm tired though. LOL "

Now for my addendums:

I don't mention the "Pizza Party". Not sure how I left that one out. LOL Kara and Brittany bought frozen pizza at Wal Mart, and I bought the Dreyer's fruit popsicles. Almost all of the popsicles had multiple sticks. It was really odd. The other thing I didn't mention was that I got into a conversation with a guy from a band called "Allura" in the elevator, and when he got off on the second floor, I started to follow him out. I was on the 4th floor. Pretty embarassing. hahaha
And, I knew All Time Low's merch guy. He's a good guy, even if I keep wanting to call him Alex instead of Andrew, which is pretty funny since the lead singer of All Time Low is Alex.

Anyway, Ann put together a video here for our pizza party:


It's what happens when you put a bunch of silly RK fans in a hotel on the same night.
Did we really sleep at all?

Girls just wanna have fun:


Yes, I did see other bands besides Relient K:

The hurrieder I go the behinder I get?

I've been going like crazy lately and I have so much that has happened that has just been amazing. I am really far behind trying to get all the photos gone through, edited and posted and I was trying to wait on blogging until they were up. Instead I decided just to go ahead and finish my own "minitour" blogs and add pics later.

So, this picks up after my trip to Twin Falls to see the Fold.

The trip to Boise went rather well. I listened to A Current Affair's cd and Ever Stays Red's ep on the drive up. I arrived at the venue fairly early and only a few people were there. I don't really recall who arrived when exactly. I just looked around and tried to figure out where the venue entrance would be and parked my car. Eventually I did figure it out. Then I just set about to kill an enormous amount of time. I really didn't have anywhere else I wanted to go. The venue wasn't in a part of town I was familiar with, so I wasn't too keen on the idea of getting lost. LOL I had plenty of snacks and drinks in the car, so I snacked, had a drink here and there, read, did crossword puzzles (I picked up a cw book at Barnes & Nobles in Twin Falls) and talked with anyone who would chat back to me. Eventually a lot of the volunteers began to arrive and I tried as best I could to help them gain entry. Sometimes I'm a good traffic director. I've gotten rather used to it since I oft times show up so early. LOL

I was able to Dan a little before the show. He said he would make sure I could get my camera in and didn't think it would be a problem. (I didn't expect it to be.) A little before the doors opened, I was let into the show, which was nice since I could use the bathroom that way ahead of time. ;) I talked to Zach for a little bit from Ever Stays Red, and just waited some more. Of course, the details are a little fuzzy since I waited so long to jot all of this down.

At any rate, the show finally did start and everyone played well. The Fold played, Hey Rebekah again, and Beside You Now and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Afterwards, I just hung about a bit and waited to get a pic with everyone. Dan was trying to get pics of me and a couple of other gals with the whole band, but it just didn't end up happening. Sometimes trying to get band guys together all at the same time can be rather like coralling children. LOL I waited around after the show quite a while to get a pic with Ever Stays Red, and watched everyone loading up. I offered to help, but I think they were just focused on what they were doing so I tried to stay out of the way. At one point, Ever Stays Red and The Fold started competing to see who could load out the fastest. It was pretty funny, actually. I'm still not sure who technically won. I think the Fold might have won by a hair, but does it count if they had to go back and redo a couple of things? LOL It was nearly a photo finish. ;) Anyway, afterwards, I asked about the pic, and they decided to do a group photo. Dan and Keith were already in the van, so they weren't with the group. Mike (the Fold's drummer) offered to take the photo so Aaron was the only one from The Fold in the pic. Mike had us all laughing. He would start to take the photo only to turn the camera on himself to take a silly close up of his face. He did this about 5 times. Then he finally took the photo and the result is posted in the "short version" of this trip below.

Then I got into my car and headed out to Ontario, OR to the Motel 6 there. It's a great hotel, really. It has wonderful service, a pool, and is clean and Motel 6 really reasonable prices. I would stay there again anytime. Anyway, I got there rather late, showered and went to sleep as quickly as I could as I had to head out really early for Creation NW. But that's another story. ...

Peace out,
Melanie