I'm so addicted to VH1. I'm loving I Love the 90s if only for the fact that John Mayer is doing commentary. Mmm. It's good....not nearly as good as the 80s but still enjoyable.
Onto the second part of my Chicago story....
Getting to the concert was an adventure in and of itself.
Brett and I assumed we'd just take the train into Chicago and catch a cab from Union Station to the United Center. We found out the afternoon of the show that the only train that ran from the suburb where we left to Chi-town didn't leave until nearly 8 that night. The concert was slated for 8.
I had no choice but to take my beloved Rexy into the city. And I was scared shitless.
My car is a 1993 Pontiac Grand Am. It's had it's share of problems. It's rusting. It's loud, it doesn't speed up too fast. Rexy has issues. And we ventured out to the Madonna concert in it.
Stylin'.
I began driving at 6:15. Jacquie predicted that it'd take an hour and 45 minutes to get into the city because of rush hour and traffic jams and all that good shit. Normally it'd take less than an hour.
She turned out to be right.
I got my first taste of a real live traffic jam at 6:45 pm, Wednesday July 14, 2004.
It sucked. It was long, it was hot, we were sweaty, I was just wanting to get to the concert.
(I just realized how dirty that paragraph could sound. Hehe.)
I grew more frustrated by the minute. I'm not a patient person. Especially when it comes to driving. I have a newfound appreciation for UP driving. Because it's so damn easy.
The jam ended as soon as two expressways merged into one. I had smooth sailing for about 20 minutes. Then we had to find the right exit, the exit to Ogden Street, which presumedly would take us straight to the venue.
The directions we had from Jacquie had a footnote that said to just keep in the left lane. Brett told me to do that, so I just did. I probably would have beaten myself over the head with my shoes and slashed my tires if it would have meant that we'd get to the concert faster.
The hunt for exit 50A: Ogden Street continued. About half a minute before we approached it, Brett realized that the exit was going to be on the right instead of the left like we thought.
Me trying to cross over four lines of traffic in twenty seconds--not gonna happen. It almost did.
I missed the exit by 3.2 seconds. Then I began panicking. Where the fuck do I go since I'd just missed my exit?
We turned onto the next exit...Ohio Street I thought. Brett's theory was that that exit would lead to Ogden which would lead to the concert. He thought wrong.
Where it lead to was the middle of the downtown Chicago area.
When I saw the sky-scrapers getting closer to the car, I began hollering. And praying to the road gods. And hollering some more. "Fucking-A, we're going. TO. MISS. MADONNA."
It was 7:45 by this point.
Major props have to go to Brett. I was screaming my head off at him, he kept cool. He was calm. How, I have no idea, but he amazed me. He's my hero.
He also directed me what to do since I was practically hyperventilating at that point. I'm surprised I didn't crash my car into a curb--or skyscraper--by that time. I kept looking at the clock. I could feel my chest getting tighter...and tighter.
After driving around, kind of getting our barings, we found a public parking lot and just parked it, then flagged--ok, really I raced--and in heels!--a cab.
Turns out that Hubbard Street, where we'd parked, is a mere seven blocks from the fucking United Center. It took the cabbie two minutes to get there.
We were in line for Madonna by 7:55 pm. The concert didn't start until 8:30ish. (Brett had been saying all along that it wouldn't start on time. Sigh. He was right. But I'm paranoid. You cannot reason with me in a panicked paranoid state.)
Read my last entry for the concert entry. Such an amazing show...
After the show, we needed to flag a cab back. So did a couple thousand other people. We hiked about six or seven blocks and were somewhere downtown before we got a cab back to my beloved car.
I let Brett drive home. I had had enough of driving by that time. Plus it would have been detrimental to all of the other traffickers for me to have driving in my post-concert afterglow bliss.
We had to stop and get gas before heading out. We ended up at the most ghetto station where a guy begged me to pump my gas. I had the balls to say no, I could pump my own gas, thankyouverymuch. The guy was cool, though and told us how to get home. (Hindsight--I should have actually given him a few bucks. Hmm...well, karma will have something good happen to him I'm sure.) As I was pumping, a guy approached Brett to be in some video. He kept telling him to go over to the corner when "we're done." Yeah right. I kept giving Shady man mean looks. I don't think he appreciated that. It sounded like he either wanted to gang-rape Brett or slash my tires. No thanks.
Then Brett made friends with some gangsta rappers when I ran into the station to pay for the gas.
...
There are no words.
We finally figured out how to get home, and headed out.
Brett's a good driver. He's an...aggressive driver. He gets a mild case of road rage when there's traffic and other road annoyances. I was amused and entertained. (Sorry, Brett!) It was a good after-concert show.
As he was driving, his hand hit the horn...I think. It beeped. I told him that it was a sensitive horn, so exercise caution, please. It then honked three times in a row. I almost hollered at him. I was giving him a look when he said that it wasn't him it was my horn.
Uh. Huh.
The horn then beeped again. Five times. Brett didn't touch it.
I have such a classy car. The horn beeps on it's own.
I swear that's never happened before. But as we kept driving over bumps it'd beep. It was random.
Drive. Bump
Beep.
Bump. Bump.
Beep. Beeep.
BUMP.
BEEEEP.
You get the picture.
All I could do was laugh. I was concocting a plan to figure out how to pull the (fuse) plug on my horn when I looked over at Brett.
He was in the process of destroying my steering wheel. He completely pulled the middle section out of the wheel as he sped down the freeway.
If it wasn't my car I'd have been impressed.
Ok, so I still was impressed, but he was breaking my car.
But it did stop the beeping.
Bravisimo.
And he did fix it about ten seconds after dismantling it.
I laughed the whole way home.
I guess it's true--the journey really is half the fun.
Ciao dahling!
~*Krissy*~
Livin' Out My RockStar Fantasy To: I Love the 90s: 1999
Crush du Jour:
Happy Thought of the Moment: Chicago Vacay. Mmm.