For Ben’s birthday a few months back I decided that my gift to him would be concert tickets to one of his favorite musicians, Kenny Chesney, at the Staples Center in LA. Unfortunately, at the time of his birthday, they had not yet announced a sale date for the concert, so I had to print out fake tickets for him to let him know what his gift would be when it arrived…..at the end of May.

Last night the concert date finally arrived, so Ben and I headed down in the morning so that we would be nearby when the time came. The concert didn’t start until 7:30pm, but what with LA traffic and the fact that we live about 90 miles away, there was no way we’d make it down in time if we left after work in rush hour traffic. As it was, it took a bit longer than expected to navigate through the traffic, even at 10:30am! Where are all these people going at that time of day?!

I had to drop Ben off at a meeting and then I headed over to the local library for some free wifi and a nice quiet place to get some work done. The nice thing about this library was that they had a coffee shop downstairs, so I was able to walk away real quick to buy some food without having to give up my valuable table real estate over by a power outlet!

At the end of the work day I picked Ben up and we then headed over to the Staples Center for the concert, which was located about 9 miles away. It probably took us almost 75 minutes to go those 9 miles with all the after-work traffic. In that time, we could've practically driven from SB to LA during a non-rush hour time! That's just insanity. We got slightly turned around when we exited the freeway, but it worked out because it scored us $5 parking 2 blocks away, when everywhere else was charging $20 or $25.

We chilled in the car for a bit since we had some time to kill and then stopped for a bite to eat at a place nearby. We entered the concert just as Leann Rimes, the opening act, was finishing her last song. We got a few drinks at the intermission and then kicked some interlopers out of our seats so we could sit. Our seats were high up and off to the side, so the people on stage looked small, but it was still cool. I don't know most of Kenny Chesney's songs, but I sang along to the few I did know, and also to the cover songs that he did when Kid Rock and Uncle Kracker came out.

Overall it was a fun concert--it was amusing to watch these giant beach balls be hit by the crowd and come dangerously close to hitting Kenny--although he did purposely kick one that was sitting on stage. There were also A LOT of cowboy hats and mullets to be found last night. Everywhere you looked while walking near the venue, and of course inside--a sea of cowboy hats. I'm sure most of these people never wear those hats any other time, except for maybe dressing up as a cowboy on Halloween. At the end of the concert, Kenny signed his guitar and gave it to some chick in the audience, and then proceeded to sign a few miscellaneous articles that people near the stage held out to him.

After the concert let out, we headed back to the car and made a slow progression to the freeway and headed back to SB. Once we actually got on the freeway, it was smooth sailing luckily, so we got home in about an hour and a half, although that still put our arrival at a little after 1:30am!

So, it was a long day and a lot of driving, but it was fun and Ben said he enjoyed it as well. YEEEHAAAAW!

Posted at 12:29 PM |