A good majority of the time when I travel for concerts, I enjoy the experience and find the effort to have been entirely worthwhile. There is one occasion, however, that I remember mostly as a dark blur, one in which I probably had a good time, but the problem is just that it was such an intense experience that I have almost no memory of it. I know this sounds bad, but realistically it’s a pretty funny story, and it makes me feel like I have bragging rights for some reason.
My roommate at the time, Jaelynn, really wanted to see Twenty One Pilots, but they were not, of course, coming anywhere near Cincinnati. The only tour date we were able to swing was a Saturday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Everything was on track to go well with this plan, but then there was a hitch. Jaelynn had to go to Chicago that weekend for a field trip with DAAP. She talked with her professor and was able to leave Chicago on her own after the planned activities for the day were done, but this meant I would be driving there alone to pick her up. I pride myself on my driving most of the time, but I will admit I get nervous dealing with big cities and heavy traffic on my own. I had no other options though, so I undertook the drive to Chicago alone and hoped for the best. Somewhere along the way, in rural Indiana, the temperature dropped nearly 20 degrees and it started snowing. It was mid-October. I didn’t love that.
My next hurdle ended up being a common enemy: the toll booths. I didn’t have enough cash to pay them all and nearly panicked on the spot. If I hadn’t had an emergency 10-dollar bill in my phone case I think I might have just been stuck in Chicago for the rest of my life. When I finally made it into heavy traffic my knuckles were white on the wheel. I was fortunate enough to land myself behind a slowly-moving Maserati at this point, so I followed it slowly for as long as I could. People could definitely get mad at me in my Nissan for holding up traffic, but no one can get mad at a Maserati.
When I finally reached Jaelynn, we switched off and she took us the rest of the way to Milwaukee. It seemed like everything had worked out, but there are a couple more loops to throw in this story. We made the somewhat foolish decision to drive through the night home to Cincinnati rather than try to find a place to stay for the night. We really wanted to be home and figured 6 hours would fly by. This was not the case. It was an agonizing ride home. I took over somewhere just outside of Chicago, and Jaelynn, despite her best efforts, passed out in the passenger seat not long into the drive. The only thing that kept me going was being able to play “Disturbia” by Rihanna on loop. We arrived back at our dorm around 8:30am. Due to the total lack of sleep I got, I remember almost none of the actually enjoyable parts of the experience. I’m sure the concert was great, but I have no idea which songs they played. I remember thinking that Milwaukee seemed like a nice, interesting city, but don’t really know why. There’s even a picture of Jaelynn and I together that we asked someone to take for us, but neither of us remembers taking it. I don’t even have videos to jog my memory because my phone was out of storage at the time.
It may seem like I’m complaining, but I promise I’m not. I think it’s a funny story and it’s a good precautionary tale about getting enough sleep. Besides, the experience was really about the journey here, not the destination, and I can appreciate that too.
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