Mike's Grand World

Wow… on the way to Alabama this past weekend, we found ourselves at a “checkpoint.”  There were a couple of Alabama State Trooper cars and a couple of Valley Head, AL police cars blocking AL 117 coming out of Valley Head… I don’t know if they were looking for somebody or a sobriety check (though, he never asked if I had been drinking…) or maybe “click it or ticket.”

Well, of course he asked for my license and my proof of insurance.

License – Check.
Proof of Insurance – Whoops.

He checked my ID and then went and looked at my Tag (presumably to run it to make sure I have insurance, which, of course, I do.)  He came back chuckling… he found it amusing that I had “University of Alabama” on my Georgia tag.  And just for that, he let me go.  Never did I dream that my tag would get me though an Alabama checkpoint without a ticket for not having proof of insurance or anything.

But, you know… it did and I found that amusing. 🙂

Dana and I got there a little later than planned due to me and my navigational skills.  well, in my defense, the sign off of the exit that said which way to go was partially hidden by a tree limb.  I took the wrong direction and after a bit, I realized that we should have been there already… so, by the time we got there, we missed Charm City Devils (which we had planned to miss) and all but 2 songs from Drowning Pool’s set (which we wanted to see)… that sets the stage for the rest of the review.

Dana and I after getting seated on the lawn

Drowning Pool: Entertaining.  They did do that song that most everybody knows, “Bodies.”  You know… let the bodies hit the floor… but I am still not a fan.  I probably wont’ be buying any DP music soon.  [I did like the ode to Metallica they did at the very end with a snippit of “Creeping Death.”  Nice touch.]

Drowning Pool

Theory of a Deadman: Good, but they sound similar to Drowning Pool.  The final two songs they played, “Hate My Life” and “Bad Girlfriend” were the best 2 of the set.  Dana seemed to like them, but I was, “meh.”

Theory of a Deadman

Godsmack: I will start off by saying, I don’t get why they are so popular.  Even their music was sort of similar to the 2 bands that preceeded them.   The crowd seemed to be really into them except me, of course.  The songs were ok.

Godsmack

The best part of the set was the “drumming duet” towards the end of the set with a nice medley of covers including Black Sabbath, Rush, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin.  Funny how the best of their set, to me, was the covers…

Dueling Drummers

I will say that they were very entertaining.  Much more than when I saw them on Ozzfest 2000 (where after the lead singer told us to “get up or get the fuck out”.  I made sure I sat right there and stare.  How dare they say some bs like that… and by the way, when Pantera took the stage afterwards, everybody stood up.  Nice!).

Motley Crue: Ah, the reason I was there.  It makred the return of Tommy on the skins due to a hand injury.  The Crue was pretty tight and Vince was decent.  He is not the same singer he was in the 80’s.

Motley Crue ... Dr. Feelgood

He did miss some lyrics here and there, but Motley would not be the same band without him (they tried that…) and you kind of have to accept Vince as he is.  They did “Dr. Feelgood” from beginning to end and then about 5 more songs.  “Wild Side” “Saints of Los Angeles” “Shout of the Devil” and then encore with “Home Sweet Home” and “Girls Girls Girls.”

The Stage

The only real dissappointment is Motley only played like 90 minutes.  I realize it’s a festival, but they could have still played 2 hours…

Pyrotechnics

Tommy addresses the crowd...

The end of the show...

Overall, the experience was good.  Lakewood was better than I had remembered.  Got in and out pretty well.  Accoustics were much improved over Ozzfest 2000.  The three bands prior to Motley, I would rank about a 3/5.  Motley, I give 3.5/5.  Good Set but very short.

More pictures on my MobileMe Gallery… Enjoy.

That’s what I am.  I have no trouble waking up in the morning and feel fine physically, but I can’t get my mind going.  It takes it so long to remember evertyhing that I need to do.   Today was kind of a breaking point… I spent 20 minutes looking for my glasses.  I had  them on and took them off (because I don’t need them to read or use the computer when the monitor is up close…).  I was ready to go to work and … “Where are my glasses?”  I looked and looked and I finally found them on the ottoman next to the computer desk… If they had been a snake, they’d bit me as I had been by there several times already.

After a rough May, June, and half of July… the past month has been pretty calm.  There was the trip to Ohio earlier this month and the McCartney show… those were somewhat tiring in themselves…

My vacation is just 2 weeks away but it feels like it is a year away.  I don’t believe I have ever needed a vacation more than I do now.  I am not even going anywhere… it’s a “staycation” at least for the first 6 days (There are 9 days off including the weekend days…) and then to Huntsville for a 3 day weekend with Dana.  Hoping that we will get to drive around the town and show her some of the town that I haven’t had time to show her thus far.

I really feel like I may try to go home early today even after coming in an hour late.  I feel like I might need it.

We got up after sleeping in a bit… Dana’s Anut Jill was making breakfast for us and the rest of the long guest list: Dana’s brother and family, along with Jill’s children: Toby and Kristin.  That was a minor house-full of family (and me) for breakfast… we all got to visit for a while before leaving just after 10AM… and what a journey home it was…

Well, the drive down to Dayton was pretty uneventful… but as we got closer, we had no idea how the traffic would be (it was Sunday, after all… could it be that bad?).  Well, it was a rough ride on the roads through Dayton, but there were no real delays.  Whew.

Rough I-75 in Dayton

We got through Cincy pretty well and into Kentucky… and it again was a very pretty drive.  We stopped just outside Lexington in Georgetown to eat at a KFC… imagine that… Kentucky Fried Chicken in Kentucky… haha!  We enjoyed our lunch and took off towards Tennessee… but came upon major delay… we had no idea what it was at first… just knew that the southbound side of I-75 was coming to a holt… it wasn’t for a while that we noticed that the northbound side was pretty scarce, too…

We got closer and closer and realized that there had been some sort of accident.  (Anybody that knows me… well, I was snapping pictures… and got several of the wreckage.)  The wreckage looked like some sort of trailer that was carrying a trike… (I hope all knows what that is…).  There was wood and assortated materials spread across part of the northbound lanes and all in the median..

The backup begins...

What is that?

Looks rough...especially for the trike

It took us about a half-hour to clear the accident.  But then we noticed the backup on the northbound side.  [it was like Energizer]  It kept going…and going…and going…and going for about 6 miles with more cars headed towards the backup.  People were getting out of their cars and probably stretching their legs and maybe even talking to their neighbor cars.

Northbound backup begins...

This is what we saw for six miles...

Yes, six miles...

We had a very nice ride through Tennessee and Georgia… in fact, the rest of the trip was uneventful and that was just fine by us.

Tennessee Mountains

More Tennessee Mountains

Both the trip up and back their share of issues.  Neither was smooth, but we made it there and back safe and had a good time.  It has been a bit of a struggle for me to get back to normal since I has to go right back to work on Monday.  Most assuredly, by the time next Monday comes around, all will be right again…

All pictures come from my MobileMe Gallery…

Thanks for reading my blogs on the trip to Ohio… I am pretty sure the next one will be about seeing Sir Paul McCartney in concert at Piedmont Park on Saturday… so psyched for this one!