I’ve got Georgia on my mind.

I think I mentioned in my post about being sick, that I hoped I was well enough come Wednesday of last week to attend a concert I had tickets for.I worked 3/4’s of a day on Wednesday as I was allowed to leave at 2pm. I zipped across the street to Enterprise and picked up my rental car. Originally I had reserved an economy car, but they didn’t have anything available so they upgraded me. I ended up with a 2007 Chevy HHR:

Now, I must say that is not the most comfortable car I have ever driven, nor was it the simplest to figure out. I spent about 10 minutes in the parking lot of the rental agency making sure I knew where everything was. My biggest problem was that my every day car is a manual transmission, while the HHR was an automatic. I couldn’t keep my left foot from stomping on the invisible clutch for anything! It was especially bad when I would have to stop suddenly. I began my 3 hour tour south out of Knoxville heading to Duluth GA to see Maroon5.

I arrived at the junction of I-75 & I-285 without incident. It is after I merged on to I-285 that the problems began. You see, it was a very long drive and I was getting kind of lonely so I called a friend of mine to chat. I didn’t for one second think that perhaps I needed to concentrate on my directions, I figured it was a no-brainer and I would be fine. The minutes ticked by as I sped along I-285 an I was growing ever further from the elusive exit 33. I was desperately trying to keep up my end of the conversation while searching for some sign that I was still headed in the right direction. I finally had to call uncle and admit defeat. I was lost. I hung up with my girlfriend and reasoned that at some point I-285 would intersect I-85 and I would be able to get back on track. Thankfully I saw signs stating that the junction for 85 was 2 miles ahead. North or South, I mused to myself. Which would I need? Thankfully the sign said 85N Chattanooga & Greenville. Well Greenville was listed on my mapquest directions, so North it was!

To my dismay, I merged onto I-85N only to find that I had travelled 30 miles in the wrong direction. CRAP! I believe it was around 6:30 and the concert didn’t start for an hour, so I reasoned that I had plenty of time. Wrong! Welcome to Atlanta, Webmiss. The point of taking I-285 was to bypass downtown Atlanta. Unfortunately, I had ended up at the wrong end and needed to travel back through downtown Atlanta to get back on track. Traffic was horrific. I had never seen anything like it in my life. Much, much larger than Knoxville. There were cars everywhere. People merging without signalling. But worst of all, we were just barely crawling along.

I did take a moment to enjoy the scenery, as I had never been to Atlanta before. I travelled past the stadium where the Atlanta Braves play. I whizzed along next to the TBS broadcasting building. I saw a sign for Zoo Atlanta and Underground Atlanta. Honestly, getting lost wasn’t as bad as it seemed because I got to see a lot of neat things, and really I would like to go back to Atlanta for a weekend and explore. Eventually, as the minutes ticked down to 7:30 I managed to find my way to the exit I needed for the Gwinett arena in Duluth. I parked my car, and walked down to the building in the cool night air. I was surprised that they did not have a security area set up where they were checking peoples purses and jackets for weapons and other prohibited goods. I flashed my ticket and was escorted to my seat. Because I’m lame and was attending the concert alone, I needed to only purchase one ticket. That fact enabled me to score floor seats, baby! I was so excited, I was shaking.

I was quite squished between two couples but the view was awesome. Promptly at 7:30 this interesting band came on. The lead singer had this great mop of afro’d hair, and they were singing some kind of rap/hip-hop music that had such a hard bass beat, the words he was singing were unintelligible. They played for about 15-20 minutes and then cleared the stage. At that point, I thought Maroon5 would be coming on, but no! We were in for a surprise appearance from The Hives an interesting little rock band from Sweden. Finally just before 9PM the curtain rose and Maroon5 stormed on the stage.

The concert was fantastic. Adam Levine really isn’t much to look at, but get the boy singing and gyrating around on stage and he’s pretty darned sexy. There were hundreds of screaming teenage girls, and everyone was on their feet from the word go. Unfortunately there was a very tall man in the row in front of me, and I was having trouble seeing. I decided that it was time to get something to drink and purchased a very over priced soda. I wandered back to the arena floor and stood on the side lines trying to decide if I wanted to wade my way through the sea of people to go back to my seat when an member of the event staff told me I couldn’t block the exit like that. I asked her if there was somewhere I could stand and she directed me to the area in the middle of the floor in front of the cameras there were filming the concert. It was awesome! Everyone was dancing around, screaming, and having a great time. I was a little more sedate than that, but spent some time grooving to the music.

I got a few minutes of video, the sound is practically worthless that I’ll try and get posted on YouTube. The concert ended and I booked it out of there as fast as I could. I did manage to find the strange car in the parking lot, and began creeping my way home. I think by the time I made it back to the interstate and on my way to Tennessee it was just after 11pm. I had planned to drive straight through all the way home, but promised everyone that if I got too tired I would pull over and find a safe place to rest. I managed not to get lost on my way home but sadly there was a casualty. A raccoon decided to play chicken with my car. I regret to report that the score is HHR-1 Raccoon-0. I had exited the freeway and was driving along a quiet backroad heading home. I saw plenty of deer just hanging out on the double yellow, and I was terrified that one of them would run in front of the car. I was very glad that I had rented a car, for those ‘just-in-case’ moments.

I arrived back at home safe and sound around 2am Thursday morning. That is the latest I have been awake in years. Seriously, I am not a night owl.

I had a fantastic time, enjoyed laying around on Thursday (I had taken the day off from work) and have great memories of my trip to Atlanta.

I would love for someone else to post their memories of their favorite concert!