Five Feet from Gavin DeGraw
filed on Friday, July 01, 2005 at 11:59:59 PM CST

Note to self...  From now on, when going to a concert in another state, make sure to account for time zone changes.  Ohio, as much as you would like to believe otherwise, does not exist in the Central time zone, and, in fact, is part of the Eastern time zone.  Keeping this in mind will save road-bound heart-attacks.

Jill and I headed down to Kettering, Ohio for a concert with Howie Day and Gavin DeGraw.  I should have known the day was going to be a bit off, because I was about an hour-and-a-half late getting to Jill's house because I had to assist my grandma with various grandpa-related things.  No complaints about the need to do so, it just sort of set the day off into an awkward motion.  However, I still maintain that had we actually made it out of the state of Illinois in under a hour (instead of the 2-2.5 hours it took), that we'd have been much better off.  Though, since it wasn't until we were about an hour away from the concert that I remembered that Ohio was in a different time zone (and most of Indiana that we were driving through as well), I'm not sure how much so.

All was okay though.  Jill's always a lot of fun to talk to, and we probably spent the first few hours just sitting there talking as we drove along, touching on whatever available topics were at hand.  I think we stopped at two rest areas along the way for drink and, well, you know, relief.  Jill took a picture on her camera phone of me standing next to the Lebannon rest stop sign (yep, Lebannon) because we thought it was pretty funny.

Jill's mom had told Jill that we should stay the night in Ohio (which we didn't), prophecizing our doom at the hands of traffic.  There was no loss of irony as a semi-truck almost rolled right over us, switching lanes without a turn signal, and forcing me over onto the middle median for just a moment.  Thankfully, I was quite alert and paying attention... it could have been a very ugly end.  Still, irony wasn't done with us, as we decided to drop in Howie Day's Stop all the World Now, and listened to the first few songs which had such interesting lyrics as, "Brace yourself..." "Close your eyes and take your last breath..." "I somehow find you and I collide..." and "It's not that bad, we could have died..."

Well, you have to know that as soon as we realized the time zone difference, a little bit of panic and disappointment set in.  No anger, because we're both sort of like, you know, this stuff happens, and besides, the adventure is more than half the fun on a road trip anyway.  So as we're rushing into Kettering, we figure we'll at least get a couple of pictures of where the concert was held.  See, we were about an hour and a half late to the concert in our time zone, and we weren't sure if there were any other opening acts.  In fact, we were quite worried that Howie was the opening act, and that Gavin would already be done or just finishing up by the time we arrived.

We finally found the concert, got parked, and started walking toward the entrance, praying that we'd at least get to buy a t-shirt or something.  We get to the ticket takers, and lo-and-behold, we find that Gavin has just literally taken the stage, and so we're at least going to get to see part of the show we came for.  Of course, we were really there for Howie, but the fact that the trip wasn't an entire failure as far as the concert went was a good thing.

The environment in Kettering is much different than in Chicago.  Jill explained to the woman ticket-taker that we were here from Chicago and forgot about the time change, and the woman was like, "You came all the way from Chicago just for this?  That's cool!  Welcome!"  And as I was walking in, the guy ticket-taker patted me on the back and said, "Enjoy the show."  I almost turned around and asked him for his number, but thought better of mistaking polite patting of the back for interest.

Jill also commented about the loose ropes that surrounded the venue.  Anyone could, almost literally, have jumped the rope and walked into the concert without any fear of being caught whatsoever.  Of course the largest display of "not a chance in hell in Chicago" was as Gavin DeGraw was singing.  He actually came out into the crowd, walked all the way up one side of the pavillion, across, and back down.  At one point, I was standing about five feet from Gavin DeGraw, and I took a step back into my folded up seat because I didn't want to die from being trampled by dozens of screamy girls.  I was pretty sure Gavin was taking his life into his own hands, but, ironically everyone was pretty well behaved, aside from the eardrum-shattering wails.

We did manage to see Howie for a brief few moments though as he, Michael Tolchner, and whatever other opening act was there all rushed out onto stage to help during a part of a song whose chorus was, "Sometimes it takes a few drinks to fall in love..."  That song had to have been one of the funniest damned songs I've ever heard in my life.  As you might guess, it was all about a guy sitting at a bar, and how the longer the night goes, the better off an evening chance of romance might become.

There was one small bad experience.  We stopped to buy t-shirts, and Jill asked the girl behind the table if they had any girl-style Howie Day shirts other than the one she could see.  The girl told her that they were all out of them, but that they had some Michael Tolchner shirts in her size.  Same with me.  When I asked if they had any Howie Day shirts in XL, she said the Michael Tolchner did.  I was thinking to myself, Yes... clearly I want Michael Tolchner instead of Howie Day...

Of course, Jill and I will be seated six rows back, center of the stage on July 14 in downtown Chicago for Howie Day and Gavin DeGraw again, and we've decided we'll go early enough to get t-shirts so that they won't sell out (not to mention so that we don't miss Howie again).

All in all, it was a great road-trip, and regardless of missing most of the show, I had a ton of fun hanging out with Jill.  We even stopped at Lonestar for dinner afterward, and drank from goblets of fire.

This entry was placed on the site on Tuesday, July 5, 2005.