At Thanksgiving we thought it might be a good idea to try to get a hotel room so I started to call around. To my dismay, all the hotels close to Heinz Field were already sold out. It was eight months away, who would think that the hotels would already be gone? We were lucky enough to get three rooms at the Hampton Inn where, on the map, it looked like a delightful summer's night stroll away from the venue.
Fast forward to a week before the concert when Mary Beth called to tell me that she would not be able to go. I was really disappointed, but both MB and John have very demanding jobs with somewhat unpredictable schedules. Who knew that accountant's schedules would be that way. We had to go With or Without them. That put us on the hunt for two people that would take the tickets that we actually wanted to sit with. This proved harder than I would have thought. In fact, small wars have been waged with less calls back and forth between myself and Ann. To make a very long story short (you are going to have to take my word for it) we ended up with Lauren's boyfriend Mike, and my friend/neighbor, Lisa.
We packed our bags, figured out who was riding with whom, (I told Dave we needed the third seat. Now maybe he will believe me next time!) and headed east to Pittsburgh!
We got to our hotel and immediately discovered we had a problem. Instead of 2 double beds we had one king. If we would have had our original group this would have been preferred. With the group we ended up with it was not as desirable. We ended up having the girls plus Will (my 16 year old nephew) on a cot, and the boys plus Mike in the other room. After we got that all sorted out, we decided to walk to the restaurant to eat dinner and then head over to Heinz Field. Remember when I said that it looked like a nice evening stroll? Guess what? It was more like a hilly marathon. On our way to the concert our leader was thinking that we were going to miss the opening band. It felt like we were doing a 5k in sandals. My feet were killing me!
Let me tell you, if I would have had to walk 5 times as far to get there, it would have been totally worth it! There are certain bands growing up that I have dreamt of seeing live. The Eagles, The Who, Queen, and U2 to name a few. I have been to The Eagles, The Who, and now U2. You would think that after being on tour for that long they would sound worn out, but they sounded way better than their recordings. There is really no good way for me to describe the show. It was lights, special effects, a great stage, and even better music. Holy Cow, Bono oozes charisma, and The Edge is no slouch either. They played for almost three hours and had about 4 encores. They played every song I like but one, and some that I have never heard before. In short, it will be the concert that all other concerts will be compared to. I mean really, check this out:
Once the concert was over, of course there were no cabs to take us back to our hotel. We took the trek back and were all in good spirits after such an amazing concert. All told, our delightful summer's night stroll was a 6.1 mile hike. It took about 3 days for my feet to recover.
The next morning we went down to breakfast and one of my favorite parts of the whole trip was when Lauren saw William texting. It was around 10:00 and Lauren said, "William, who are you texting, nobody is awake at this hour." I said that the way she said that you would think it was the middle of the night. Will replied, "you would have a better chance of getting a reply in the middle of the night." Perhaps this is why vampires have become such a big cultural phenomenon.
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