| Well, it was finally time to head to the concert. Unfortunately, we didn’t take the same road back to Warshington. OMG I-26 East from Oregon headed towards Warshington. Way too many hills, mountains, and curves. To make it worse, it was just one lane for each direction. Those poor souls who got stuck behind me. I was never so scared. This little island girl driving the PVB through some Oregon mountain roads, yikes. After about ten hours of that, Carol told me to pull over, unfortunately, for the next hour, there was no place to pull over. Eventually, there it was a place to pullover. Before I even had that thing completely stopped I was yelling at Nae to get me some shello jots. I really didn’t drive that road for ten hours nor did it take an hour to find a pullover place, but dang it, sure felt that way. I was literally shaking when I got out of that driver seat. I have one thing to say, “what took you so long Carol?â€� Let’s see what happened next? When we finally arrived at the Ridgefield venue, we couldn’t get the luggage compartment open. This is when the first real crisis came upon us. For some stupid reason, I had the tickets for the evening’s show inside my suitcase, which was inside the luggage compartment. Yeah, I know, I’m an idiot. Well it’s a good thing we were parked in the RV only spot. There were plenty of other RV’s right there by us. We were the only rental, go figure. After about 20 minutes and a phone call to the rental place, which is supposed to have someone help you 24 hours, the nice gentlemen got that compartment opened. Good thing too, since after 15 minutes of being on hold with the rental place, I had yet to speak to a live, breathing human. We all got split up since I wanted to head in early to try yet again for a meet and greet with Kenny. It had been 11 months since my last meet and greet. Apparently, I‘ve lost my touch with the GM people. Oh well, their lost and Kenny’s too. Although we were split up, it was easy to find each other, since we were wearing the matching shirts that I had made from a drawing I did. Naturally we caused some trouble inside the venue since we like to stand for concerts, and I guess some people behind us preferred to sit. At least no one got kicked out. The show itself was excellent. I love it when Deana performs “LIARâ€�. Her and her band do a great job with it. Keith and his band were very entertaining and what a talented bunch of guys they are. Especially that fiddle, mandolin, banjo, and guitar player. Now for Kenny’s set. What can I say that hasn’t already been said? You really would think that hearing the same songs would get a bit old, but it had been almost two months since the last show. It was great to see the show again. For the end of the show, I was able to get up to the front of the stage. Actually, I met a few of the girls up there, Donna, Sylvia, and Jen. Jen was eventually able to evade security and join us there, right by Tim. Sylvia had just met Tim last week when she won that Superfan contest, and he seemed to recognize her right away. He came right to the front of the stage, right by all of us and gave us a little show. He is so talented. As I’m still struggling to change from chord to chord, I’m amazed at how easy he makes it look. With the show being over, and no campsite to be at, we just decided to hang out in the parking lot until we got kicked out. The buses and trucks had to pass by us to get out of the parking lot, and we made sure to wave goodbye to each and everyone. We were just having fun, chatting, drinking, dancing with cones, you know whatever. Rumor had it that we could stay in the lot until 10 am without being asked to leave. When morning arrived, we headed to Nae’s to take showers. Plus, Kelly had to go take care of something with her daughter. We eventually headed towards the Gorge for the next show sometime around noon. I got to drive again. Until Carol and I did a quick switch at a traffic light while stopped in traffic. It seemed like it took forever to get to the Gorge. In actuality, it didn’t take all day. We still had some time to tailgate before the show. We missed all of Deana’s set for this show, but we got there in time for Keith. The seats that Jen and I had were excellent. We were to the left of KC’s microphone stand and in the second row. The first row was shorter than our row, so there was no one in front of us. This meant that we would be able to get good pictures. Plus the fact that Kenny took the stage before sunset meant that the pictures wouldn’t be dark. Yeehaw. The pictures that Jen and I took came out great. This show was one of the best of the year. While Keith was on stage, he said that this was his last show with Kenny. At that point I knew things would be a bit wild, and they most definitely were. During one of Keith’s songs, Deana and her band came out on stage. Her bandmembers were dressed a bit strangely. The guys were wearing long shirts that made it look like they were wearing lingerie or bikinis. Pretty funky looking stuff and real looking too. The guys in Keithâ €™s band couldn’t help but laugh and the crazy antics of Deana’s band. You can tell when Kenny took the stage that he was pumped for this show. At this point, it had been a long tour, January was so long ago and the only week he took off was Easter week. The guys all seemed to be having a good time, despite the heat. Kenny finished the show just before the sun set. They put a picture of the sun getting ready to set as Kenny left the stage. It was such a nice touch. Before he left the stage, Deana came out with a water gun and was trying to soak Kenny with it. Someone in Kenny’s crew gave him a huge water gun and he soaked Deana instead. He got her so good, that she kept her hands folded across her chest the rest of the time she was on the stage. I don’t know why, she wasn’t wearing white. Maybe her lights came on and she was embarrassed. On to our post tailgate party. Before we moved over to the campsite, we had some fun in the parking lot. Kelly broke out her sharpie and did some signing. Jen got really close with the blow-up palm trees and monkey that Donna brought with her from Alabama. The monkey, Spanky, as he became known, seemed to enjoy his time with Jen. She took really good care of him. She even found some skivvies for him to wear. Shortly after I blew out my flip-flop, we decided that we should move over to the campsite right next to the venue. Well, itâ €™s not so much that we decided we were told we had to leave, they were locking the gates. Well, actually, some of us got separated from the PVB. Three or four of us wound up getting driven over to the campsite. We were in Sherri’s car. The PVB had gotten told to leave. Since Sherri was with us, she didn’t actually get kicked out, but we knew they were locking the gates momentarily. Once we got to the campsite, we needed to check in. While waiting to check in, some dude on a minibike (or whatever it was) pulled up to the car and was looking for some chick named Ally. Apparently he was there to escort me and my friends to our campsite. That’s right I got my own personal escort. Never had one of those before. Once at the campsite, omg, you would have thought the KC concert was still going on. Every campsite seemed to blasting some KC music. It was pretty weird. I never experienced anything like that before. The concert was over hours ago, and we move over to this place, and the music was going just as loud and strong as it was during the concert. I know Kenny was still at the Gorge. I wonder if he could hear all the different music playing, all of it being his music. Eventually we made some friends with some of our neighbors. Some younger guys, they seemed to be quite intrigued by our group. At this point, I had already kidnapped a road cone (for Jen) at Sylvia’s insistence. This is when the party really started to get going. None of the West Coast girls had seen the conegirl do her dance yet. They saw her get cut off at Dundee’s but no conedance. Somehow we got these young guys to do their own version of the conedance. As Nae told them, they had to make up their own dance and give it a name when they were done. They all did it, eventually. |