Kellie Pickler Meet and Greet

The day started slowly with Becca needing to sleep in because she was having a reaction to the meds. So we didn't leave the hotel until around 2:30. It felt good to get in the car and on our way to someplace special. I mentioned to Becca that this trip was good for me in many ways. The biggest way was to show me I was completely capable of doing things like this on my own. Neal always does the driving when we travel, and sometimes I forget that I am perfectly able to do that kind of stuff on my own. Those thoughts and statements will now live in infamy in family legend....

I brought my own GPS because I wasn't sure that we would be getting a car with one, and I was already familiar with mine. I plug in the address, and it asks me if I would like to simulate this route. I have never seen this screen before and selected no. Then the darn thing wouldn't do anything. The screen popped up again so I selected yes and away we went. It told me to turn left, and we were off to the Suwanee Music Festival deep in the woods of Live Oak, FL! Along the way I was delighted to see the building shaped like an orange that was on my "oddities" list as well as the Gator Motel featuring a large gator eating a car. We stopped at both for pictures. I just want to say that Florida is beautiful. Becca slept as we drove for several hours past heavily forested areas and then wide open grazing land with cows and very odd, long birds that at first I took for geese, but later decided they were too tall and skinny to be geese, but not short and squatty enough to be seagulls. Don't know what they were, but it was a pretty sight, and kind of an unusual one, as the only place I saw the birds was where there were cows along our journey. I couldn't figure out why the GPS didn't ever put me on a freeway, but I knew that the festival was in the backwoods somewhere, so maybe that explained it. It also said I was going 68 miles an hour, which wasn't even close on that two way road with constant stoplights. But, it was when we came to a dead end directly in front of a body of water, which I assumed was the ocean, and my GPS was telling me that I had to drive straight for 4 more miles that I knew I had a problem. Oh my gosh, what was going on. Becca was awake by now, and started messing with the GPS and couldn't figure it out. So she plugged in the address on the other GPS and up popped the information that put my heart in the pit of my stomach. We were now 259 miles in the opposite direction of our destination.... Um... What was that bit I was saying about being perfectly capable of getting us around unfamiliar places? We had left quite early to factor in any unforseen problems like traffic, accidents on the road or whatever. But I didn't factor in stupidity.

You see, this trip had already been taken once. Becca and Rachel went to CA to meet Kellie and it was so messed up on their end that she never got to meet her and the company offered her a "re-do" trip. This was that trip. And here I was, nearly three hundred miles from the festival with the meet and greet scheduled in two hours. I felt so sick. So stupid. Obviously I had been following a "simulation" of a trip the whole way that wasn't actually connected to satellites. The weird thing was, that it would say turn left or turn right at perfectly logical places to do so, so it didn't send up any red flags. But who designs a machine that will run a simulation of a several hour trip, IN REAL TIME, and who are the people who want to sit and watch it? So, I had to make the phone call to the person they specifically flew out to help "handle" our meet and greet. "Hello, you know how you were flown to Florida to help us with this awesome opportunity? Well, we are nearly three hundred miles away in the wrong direction." I felt so stupid. She was so nice. I was determined to make it to the festival before she had to leave just to apologize in person. So we turned the car around (as opposed to going the suggested 4 mile route into the ocean) and followed the OTHER GPS's instructions. She kept saying that Kellie didn't go onstage until 8:30, and maybe we could make it, so I believed we could. After several hours on the road, stops for gas, and gut wrenching self loathing, I was turning off onto a dirt road, bumping along to the festival grounds close to ten pm. We stopped at the gate to get our wristbands and parking pass and could hear Kellie say that this would be her last song. Her voice sounded clear and beautiful as it floated through the air, deep in the woods of Florida. Well, at least we could hear her, even if we couldn't watch. We parked and found that our phone did not work in the depths of the woods. Luckily Jacyln had given us instructions on how to find her in the sea of drunken cowboys. After several failed attempts, we connected so I could grovel and beg for forgiveness. She smiled at us and said, "It will just be a few minutes." Whaaaaaat? And indeed, in a few minutes a gentleman who was absolutely adorable, came and escorted Becca and I back to Kellie Picklers TOUR BUS! I had never dreamed that they would still be willing to do a meet and greet with us, let alone at her personal tour bus. She popped her petite blonde head out of the bus and greeted us with a warm "well hi y'all, glad to see you finally made it!" She posed for a couple of pictures and gave Becca a personally autographed picture. It was awesome. She was so sweet and genuine, and her kindness so unexpected from a star, that I was very touched. As we stumbled over the rocky trail back to the drunken cowboys, Jacyln also showed us a video that Kellie had made for Becca when she thought we weren't going to make it. Can you believe that? It will be up on facebook. What a sweet, sweet girl. I hope she has a hugely successful career.

After that excitement we realized how exhausted we were. There were more music acts scheduled in the festival, but with hours to drive, and our mission accomplished we were suddenly anxious to get away from the smokey haze and the boozed up bronco riders. We especially shuddered at the thought of being on the roads at the same time as that crowd. So we stumbled through the woods to the parking lot where our little red car really seemed out of place in a sea of pick up trucks. What a day. As Becca said, it was better than it could have been had I not made my disastrous mistake. We got to go back to her tour bus. We missed the heat and the bugs that were prevalent a few hours earlier. We even got a video from her. And we didn't have to spend all night with a bunch of cowboys whose comments were getting more inappropriate with each beer they drank. Yes. It was a perfect day.

We headed home and about two am we realized that we really hadn't eaten so we stopped at Denny's for an appetizer and some pie and ice cream. I haven't been anywhere but bed at two in the morning for years so this was a real rare experience for me and one that Becca documented by photographs and texts to her siblings. "you will never believe where I am with mom at this hour!" Ok, it's true, it was DAYS past my bedtime. And I was never more happy to see a hotel room in my life.

Let the Fun Begin

Well, obviously all went OK on the plane, because we are here and ready to have some fun. We had an issue when we first got on the plane. Becca had taken her newly prescribed medication without food and maybe a little too early and had quite a reaction. She had already had some issues with a side effect of "shaking" but once we got on the plane she started trembling so badly that it really scared me. Her hands and shoulders were shaking but her chin was vibrating so badly that I thought it would break. She looked like she was violently freezing to death. The airline attendant grabbed a blanket from first class and other passengers were offering their jackets. It was crazy. But it passed in about ten minutes, but it was a little scary. The think is, I don't think she was cold.

Our rental car is a hot red Toyota Corolla with a gps. I am delighted because I think it will get good gas mileage and we have a lot of driving today.

Today we are heading to DisneyWorld for a few hours and then to the Kellie Pickler concert at the Shaunee Music Festival in Live Oak, FL. We have a meet and greet and concert tickets so we will likely see quite a few artists there tonight. Hope it doesn't go too late because it's a three hour drive back, and hey, it's already past my bedtime... I'll write more tonight if I can still function, but more than likely, it will be tomorrow.

Tomorrow is Harry Potter Day! Can't wait!

The Airport

Well, we are at the airport. We went to the check in desk only for them to tell us that they "couldn't" assign us seats, we had to wait until the gate personnel arrived and THEY could do it. I find it amazing that there are so many American Airline employees who don't have authority to perform simple customer service. And although I don't mind outsourcing to India as much as some people, I think if your business name is AMERICAN airlines, you shouldn't have people answering your phones with such thick accents that they can't be understood. Literally, when I called to work out this seat assignment issue, I had to call back twice because I could not understand the people who answered the phone. But anyway, we got our boarding passes, waited for the gate guy to get here and approached him. He complained that he had to do this simple task because he "wasn't even working that flight", but he did get us seats together, so I'll shut up and be grateful for that.

Departure Day

Well, it's 2:30 am and I am up getting ready for the trip. American Airlines told me that if wanted to ensure that Becca and I sit together that I need to be there at 4:00 am when the ticket counter opened or pay 25 - 35 bucks a seat at a kiosk to make that happen. I find this so absurd that I have no words to describe it. So we are up and packed and getting ready to leave at 3:30 for our 8:40 flight just to make sure that the seats that were booked and paid for are together. Of course, when the people who arranged our flight talked to me, I told them it was the only thing that was important to me as I am quite a mess if I'm not seated next to my travel companion. They assured me that they would make that happen. And yet, here I am, up at 2:30 am, having to attempt to make it happen for myself. I will never, ever fly American Airlines if I am in control of my travel arrangements myself! When you win trips, it isn't entirely under your control, but I'll certainly tell them my preferences. However, once we are past this, we have a lot of great things to look forward to!

Preparations

I'm working today to get Becca and I ready for our trip to Orlando on Thursday. This should be so exciting, but I'm apprehensive about the plane ride as usual. We don't have guaranteed seats together so I'm freaking out a little bit.

This is a trip win for Becca from Alloy Magazine. We will be getting to meet Kellie Pickler from American Idol as well as going to DisneyWorld and the New Harry Potter Theme Park! Once we get there it should be VERY amazing. It is just the "getting there" and back that I have problems with. They are renting us a car, so we can do some drive by's of some of the touristy stuff as well as get to and from the Meet and Greet and concert.

Going to the Harry Potter theme park is on both of our bucket lists, so it will be fun to cross that off our lists! My friend Robyn gave us her leftover tickets and meal vouchers to DisneyWorld (thanks Robyn) which is absolutely thrilling. They are park hopper passes which means that we can go to the animal park that I have always wanted to see. Going on a wild animal safari is also on my bucket list so I can check that off too after this trip!

I am also a fan of roadside oddities, you know, the biggest ball of string, etc. Well, there are plenty of those to see while we are there as well, so it will be a fun filled trip. I am hoping to see the three story McDonalds Restaurant with the giant box of fries on the front, the upside down building, the store shaped like a giant orange, and the amazing jaws that are the entrance to Gatorland. Don't really need to tour those places, I just want pictures.

So, back to laundry and packing. More on Thursday when we land. We have free wi-fi in our room which gives me a chance to blog about the trip in the evenings.