Today was a good day, but long! Michelle and I went to the Jimmy Buffet concert in Chula Vista, CA
The concert was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but was delayed because of rain.
I was at work until about 2pm, and then headed home. I met up with Michelle at the apartment, and we packed up and got ready.
Michelle did the driving down to San Diego, which was mostly uneventful. At one point, we thought we had passed our exit. Turns out, there are two roads named "Palm" within a 5 mile stretch. Good thinking, oh silly street-naming-people.
We made a pit stop at McDonalds and still made it to the Coors Ampitheater by around 7pm. ((It takes about 3-4 hours to drive to San Diego on a Thursday afternoon.))
The parking area was packed with cars - the 'general parking' area is an empty lot covered with the shredded wood/bark that is often used for landscaping. Since the Ford has pretty low clearance, it was a bumpy ride to the parking space. We feared we would be blocked in by people parking behind us, but the parking attendants allowed for plenty of room.
Let me say up front that I have been to very few concerts in my life - - let me count them up real quick... Hmn. I think 9 or 10, counting Jimmy Buffet. I've never seen such a laid back, excited and happy crowd. There must be something about Jimmy that puts people at ease. This was probably one of the best concerts I've ever been to!
Many people had dressed up, wearing tropical shirts, grass skirts, parrot hats, shark hats, blender hats, on and on. Everyone was getting their drink on and having a jolly old time.
Temperature was in the low 60's, and it was chilly! If we didn't have a 4 hour drive home waiting for us, I think we would have drank more. We got one marguerita and shared it, I think Michelle had more of it than I did, and we threw it away before we'd finished it. We're just not big drinkers. This isn't a bad thing.
We had good seats - the ampitheater is very nice, well designed, and the seats were comfy. The crowd was jubilant but well behaved, a bunch of silly people shaking their booties and cheering. It was as fun to watch the crowd as it was to watch the performers!
It was a chilly night - my hands and face got cold pretty quickly. But at least it wasn't raining! There was very little wind, too. We were pretty lucky. If we go again, I'll bring gloves. The footing was slanted (in keeping with the ampitheater, big curving bowl idea) and that was a little hard on the feet after a while standing.
Jimmy performed for over two hours, playing a generous mix of new songs, old songs, and covers. One of his backup singers did a great rendition of R-E-S-P-E-C-T during the intermission. Jimmy is all about crowd pleasing songs, and even the slower songs (like 'Come Monday') were well received by the crowd. There were lots of lighters lit for 'Come Monday'. Who knew?
Michelle and I took off running after the first encore, and it only took about 20 minutes to get out of the area and onto the road. The local police did a great job of keeping people moving and well directed. We got home at about 1:30, happy but tired.
It was a long, long drive and Michelle did it all by herself, both ways. She's a trooper!! We agreed that if we ever went down to the San Diego area for a concert again, we'd stay the night.
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