Not Sure It Was Worth It...

I don't go to a lot of concerts any more, but when my favorite band Iron Maiden comes around I try to make it. It also helps that Rachael loves them as well. There current tour only came as close as New York or DC. New York was sold out so DC it was. The event was at the old Merriwether Post Pavilion, which is now Jiffy Lube Live. The plan was simple, roll out early, miss DC traffic, check into our room, grab a bite to eat, and enjoy the show, stay in hotel, get up grab breakfast ands come home. As you all know plans seldom seem to work out.

I left here, picked up Rachael from work and we were on the road plenty early to avoid traffic. Things were going well until we hit traffic about 6 miles from White Marsh. There was an accident that had 3 lanes closed. We got off the next exit and and our way to the belt way. It is out of the way but we were moving. Unfortunately it was too late. We hit DC traffic at it worst. Now we had no time to stop at the hotel. We didn't even have time to stop and eat. We finally parked at 7:20, the concert started at 7:30. We ran out of the car and headed for the venue. We forgot one thing, our rain jackets. There was a storm coming, it looked like it might miss us, Murphy's law said otherwise. While waiting in line it started to rain, then it started to down pour. Needless to say we were drenched. Rachael was even wearing a white tank top, great. We finally found our seats then decided to get some extremely over priced food and some shirts.

We were missing Dream Theater, which kind upset me, but we had plenty of time before Maiden. After choking down our over priced food we go back to our seats. Now we have another problem. I printed our tickets out at home, so now they were soaked and hard to read. Lucky for us the usher in our area was very thorough, and took his sweet time trying to read the tickets, despite me pointing out the seat info.

We finally settle in. The show was great, as always Iron Maiden puts on a great stage show, even though this was like the eighth or ninth time I have seen them.
When it was over we high tailed it out of there only to sit in not moving traffic for 25 minutes. We made it to our room, checked in, showered, and collapsed. Got up the next day, got breakfast, and had a very uneventful drive home.

Was it worth it? Not sure, it was there last US date on this tour, it was a good show, but it was hell getting there. I will go see Maiden again, but not at the Jiffy Lube Live.

Cheers,
Buddy