Road Trip (by G)

When I was a freshman at BYU, I met Marc in the dorms, who became one of my best friends. Music, among other things, brought us together. I introduced him to bands like Pavement and he introduced me to other bands including the Pixies. We would hang out all the time and go to shows and other activities. We even married girls who were roommates.

Fast-forward 17 years. We've both graduated with graduated degrees, have kids, work in professional fields and are older and slower than we'd care to admit. Just before Father's Day, Marc's wife, Whitney, contacted me and asked if I would be interested in seeing the Pixies with Marc in Las Vegas. I thought it was one of the greatest ideas I'd ever heard and begged M to let me go. After M agreed, plane tickets and concert tickets were purchased, a hotel was booked, and plans were made for a road trip.

On September 24th, I flew into Salt Lake City and at 9:00am the next morning, Marc picked me up and we were on our way to Las Vegas. We had a lot of catching up to do. We stopped and had chicken fried steak at a little cafe in Beaver, UT on the way. We rolled in to Vegas in the afternoon, checked into the hotel and then took the shuttle to the strip. After walking around for a while and taking in the sights we had dinner at BLT Burger in the Mirage. BLT Burger is only in a few locations. When M and I were in NYC, we had to decide between BLT Burger and Stand and we chose Stand, so naturally I was really excited to eat at BLT Burger. The food was excellent and I even had a twinkie milkshake for desert (it sounds kinda gross, but it was awesome). After we went back to the hotel, changed, and headed over to the Hard Rock Hotel for the show.





The opening band was pretty lame, but when the Pixies went on, they rocked it. We were in the back for the beginning, but once the the Pixies went on, we had to move to the front. We were probably 5 rows from the front of the stage, so we had a really good view. The show totally rocked and the Pixies sounded great. After the show, we stood in line to get a CD of the live show we'd just seen.



After the show we headed back down to the strip for a while, stopped for a midnight snack and finally rolled back into the hotel around 2:00am. We slept in the next morning and headed back to Utah. It goes without saying that our road trip was a huge success and for a little while, we felt like we were back in college again. A big thanks to Whitney and M for letting us do it.