Friday Night Adventures

I really wish that I could think of a better title for this post. I'm kind of saddened by that. Anyway...I kicked off the month of September (I realize that it is actually August 31st...) with a concert because this month will be the month of concerts. This next Friday I have tickets to go see Incubus at the Verizon Amphitheater. The following weekend I'll be doing the Run Hit Remix and that night I'm going to attempt to hit up the Rise Against, Lagwagon, Strung Out concert, and the next weekend is Muse...and the weekend after...nothing yet, but I'll be working on it.

Back to the lecture at hand...Friday nights at the Del Mar racetrack they have been doing a free concert series where for the price of admission to the racetrack you get to see a free concert. This time around it was Angels and Airwaves. I'm not a huge fan, but I do like those few songs that they play on the radio, and I thought it would be fun to go down to the racetrack. But I was lacking in friends who wanted, or were available to go. Then I caught wind of Kent going down. I texted him and asked him if I could cruise and that was it.

Kent pawned me off to a couple of his buddies. I thought that was funny. Unbeknownst to me, I would be traveling with Dave Axelgard and another friend. That night I learned about Adventure Mode, which is simply the conscious decision to enjoy the course of the evening, regardless of how the events themselves turn out. Apparently, Kent comes up with some cockamamie schemes and Dave finds it necessary to enter into adventure mode to the save the evening sometimes, and spare himself from being annoyed with things not going to plan.

For starters, I LOVE adventure mode. Sometimes we get so pissy about traffic, or changes in plans that we fail to realize that if we wouldn't have gone ahead and gone out, that we wouldn't have been doing anything in the first place. I did realize that it was going to take a long time to get to the track, that the band was probably going to suck (which they did), but had I not gone, I probably would have just went to the gym or just sat around and fell asleep early. Adventure mode saved me from another Friday night of holding my...lower case j. Random.

One of my favorite parts was the horse races. Every half hour they run, and for about 2 minutes you just sit and hope that your bets come through. I would post a pic of a kid that I took, but I can't seem to figure out how to get the picture from my phone to the computer. The horses start and people are somewhat excited, but as they start to round the turn and come down the final stretch, it is so crazy how amplified the screams and gestures get as the horses approach the finish line. People rise to their feet and raising their arms and getting out of their seats. It's awesome. I can only imagine what it would have been like to actually have money riding on the steeds. So fun.

Angels and Airwaves played and the stunk. I forget what his name is, but it's the guy with the whiny voice. He talked way too much, and had nothing worth listening to. Their songs really did sound all the same. And it looked like he had no idea how to handle himself. It really blew. But I guess I've always heard that about the guys from Blink-182.

*Update - I just took a peak over at Kent's blog and I concur 100%, so I'll let his review do the talking.

Afterwards we went to a party down in San Diego. It was just a really good group that we were with. Nobody was trying to impress anyone, and everyone seemed to be switched onto adventure mode. I had been staying away from the party scene for a while because mostly there is just the Huntington scene, which I kind of loathe. You have a bunch of d-bags who just sit there and stare at you, and girls who are disingeneous at best. And there was one girl who knew the entire dance to Thriller, not just the chorus, but the whole freakin' thing. I don't know what it is about a girl that can not only dance, but will just let herself go that I think is so cool and is so alluring to me. It's just really cool. But there were several girls there who were like that and the guys too, they were all really cool. It was a really fun evening.

Even the drive home was fun. I heard some really funny stories about girls just going nuts in clubs, and Dave and Karl were just so funny to me. Such funny banter. Slightly irreverent at times, but really well thought out and just smart. I have been hanging out with so many random people it seems the last few months, but it's just been so cool to get exposed to so many different people who have so much to offer. I've been loving it. We were kind of sifting through Karl's Ipod and he mentioned that you just can't go wrong with gay 80s music - Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, and the like. Then he said, "in fact, it shall be hereafter referred to as gay-tees music". Loved it.

I don't know what it was about this evening, but it was so dang fun. Adventure mode put me in the right frame of mind, but the combination of people and events really made things work. I totally forgot what it was like to go to a party and hang out with different people and being in totally unfamiliar territory, but really soaking things up and just enjoying the ride. I feel kind of lame posting about all this, but it really was just a good time.