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there was a time I liked San Diego
By Tara Zandra | August 3, 2014
So we headed out to a Weezer concert at the Del Mar Racetrack. We wanted to go last year but Daisy’s illness kept us home, so we were determined to do it this year. It’s a fantastic deal. If you arrive before the last race starts, you get in for just six bucks and parking is only ten. If you arrived after the last race the tix and parking go up to twenty each. So for $22 we were going to see one of Chris’s favorite bands.
Thinking this would happen was our first mistake.
The venue is 90 miles away, we left an amazing amount of time early and were in solid traffic after we had driven about 20-minutes from home. It was ridiculous. No construction, no accidents. Basically just Saturday afternoon rush hour except we had a really long way to go. It got to a point where Siri said we were 30-minutes but then we’d drive for 10 more minutes and she’d still say we were 30-minutes away.
Oh and you know that drought? Yeah, it started raining. Sure I want it to rain, but not in August when we’re headed to an outdoor concert!!
Friends, I won’t lie. Our spirits were low and things got testy.
After our 3+ hour tour of the 5, we made it to our off-ramp and pulled into a gas station to assess the situation. As we could see the lines to get into the parking lot piling up and it was still raining (not a lot, but enough to not make me want to stand in it for another 2 hours), we decided to cut our losses.
At this point there will be no more concerts for us in the San Diego area. Let me run down our list of bad luck there:
Pearl Jam (1995)- Arrive and find out the concert has been postponed.
Pearl Jam (1995)- Okay, this is the one exception. The rescheduled concert went just fine.
Weezer (2011?)- Actually had a person smoking cigars in the crowd and no matter where we moved, there he was.
Mumford and Sons (2013)- Surrounded by people so drunk they were throwing up in the pit area. At Mumford, for goodness sakes! This isn’t a hard core band! And this was multiple people who weren’t even together. I’ve never seen that many people lose there shit and clearly they all need to get out more. This one also had the added bonus of just one road to get in and the traffic on the road was so bad we actually missed 2 of the 3 openers.
After that experience we swore off concerts in the more southern region of the state. Apparently we forgot that yesterday and paid for that lapse in memory.
However, all was not lost. We had dinner, then started homeward on a less direct route along the ocean and found a craft beer store Chris heard about. He was giddy with all the choices and picked out a few for his fridge at home. Across the street was The Chocolate Bar -wine, coffee, and chocolate- oh my! I only cared about the chocolate but oh the choices!! I ended up with a chocolate covered orange peel, chocolate dipped Red Vine, chocolate covered graham cracker, sea salt caramel, chocolate covered cherry, and a 70% cocoa truffle. Plus they had a can of Diet Coke for sale so I was set!
By this time the freeway north had cleared, the Dodgers were on the radio, the sunset was a beautiful pink- it was a good drive. Got home and even put Daisy to bed.
But seriously, never going to SD for a concert again. Like really never.
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So this isn’t my favorite photo and you can’t even tell what they are holding, but I’ll share it anyway. Tabitha’s half birthday was Wednesday, Daisy’s half birthday is tomorrow. So yesterday, halfway between their half birthdays, we bought them a cupcake and gave them each half. Because I’m a dork and I like to do silly things like that.
Topics: Life, The Kiddies |
August 3rd, 2014 at 11:15 am
The Saturday traffic to SD is nuts. Gillian and I went a few weeks ago to see a play, and it took us 3 hours to get there from our house (but only 1.5 hours to get back the next morning). We’re going again to see a different later this month, and I got tickets for a Thursday because I just can’t take crawling through traffic for that long.
Also, cute picture of the girls! G’s half birthday was last weekend…on the downhill slope to 16 now.
August 18th, 2014 at 11:13 pm
Sorry it didn’t work out. I always kind of forget how bad CA traffic was from when we lived there. I remember most anything we did had to be planned way in advance and revolved around at least one meal in the day. LOL Our spirits were pretty low the day of the NIN/Soundgarden concert here at Red Rocks, no traffic getting there (it’s about a 40 minute drive) but the line for the parking lot took 30 minutes to get in, then another 10 or more to find a spot, then it’s a LONG hike up to the actual venue itself only to stand in line for another half hour to the checkpoint…even though we left way early (or so we thought) we still missed the first six of Soundgarden’s songs and I was super pissed off. It was so miserable getting in there we thought about never going down there again but the place is so beautiful I bet we will at some point. My favorite venue here is the 1stBank Event Center in Broomfield, it’s literally 5 minutes away, with free parking! LOL It’s small though but they get a lot of good stuff. Cute pic of the girls, btw.