I like plans. I plan my weekly schedule on Sundays. I make to do lists and I write them from utmost urgency to the least urgent. Plans are my "niche." But I do understand that things go wrong and I tend to laugh at these bumps in the road. This past weekend my best friend, Rachel, and I embarked on our latest adventure: attending a music festival, and did anything not go wrong?
The festival was a smaller one. It was a two-day festival called The Rites of Spring at Vanderbilt University. We told everyone about how we were going to see Porter Robinson and Future (the headliners), but we honestly were not attending the festival for them. Who were we excited to see? David Burd a.k.a. Lil Dicky. One of my new favorite artists at the moment whose "niche" is "being a little bitch." I could not contain my excitement. The entire way to the festival when we should have been listening to the headliners, my Spotify kept accidentally playing Lil Dicky.
After we had gotten on the road, we noticed that we had forgotten a phone charger. This was only the beginning of many unfortunate events of the day. As we got to Nashville, a phone charger became our first priority. We stopped for food thinking there would be an outlet inside to charge our phones. There were none. Once we ate, we drove to a CVS down the road which would hopefully have a phone charger. We finally found a dual charger and purchased it. It barely charged our phones.
After purchasing this turtle of a charger, we decided to go find parking. The festival's website directed us to a parking garage, but as we finally found it the FULL sign was illuminated. Of course. We then proceeded to drive all around downtown Nashville looking for parking. We turned around in the same CVS parking lot about 10 times. I finally convinced my friend to pull into the "full" garage so I could maybe find a security guard to ask where else we could park near the campus. We pulled into the garage and lo and behold, this full garage was actually pretty empty. Empty enough that we got a space on the first level, right next to the entrance...
After a nice 30-minute rest, we decided it was time to head over to the festival. My phone had charged the most so of course I offered to GPS our route to where we needed to walk to because neither of us had any idea where we were going. My "smart" phone decided to take us in the opposite direction and lead us down some not so nice alleyways. We (I mean my friend, I had full confidence in my phone) saw the error of our ways and typed it into her phone. Now that we were headed in the right direction, we made the 10-mile (probably more like 0.2 mile) walk to the venue.
The show was perfect. I cannot even put into words how amazing the performers were. When the show was over, we began the long trek back to the car and then the 20-minute drive to the hotel. Now, my best friend and I are both struggling college students so we weren't staying in the swankiest of hotels. But this one didn't do itself any favors by being located down a scary little driveway, right passed an abandoned building. Great. We pulled into the parking lot and right as my friend pulled out her phone to check her bank account for the money to check into this hotel, her phone died. Thank you tiny charger. My phone was also dead at this point. I had the brilliant idea to drive to the IHOP down the road and see if we could be placed at a table near an outlet. As we pulled into the sketchiest IHOP I've ever visited, her phone magically came to life, all thanks to the tiny blue charger.
We finally made it into the hotel and got everything checked in. We entered the room and my friend said to me, "This is not the room I booked."
We had been given a huge room with a king-size bed and in the middle of the living room was a giant hot tub. That's right, folks, we were in the honeymoon suite. These things tend to happen to Rachel and I. There are at least three Outback waiters that think we've been on a date because she always has gift cards. Why not let her use them?
We decided to make the best of an awkward situation and soak our feet in the hot tub. The bed was also super comfy and there was so much room, we built a wall of pillows so it honestly felt like separate beds (we're both weird about sleeping with people).
The next day we attended the festival and to quote my friend: "When Future preformed, I saw the future."
The moral of the story is this: Go on an adventure with your best friend. No matter what goes wrong (and a lot will), you'll have the time of your life.
