Little Dragon or Bust

When my husband and I left on June 17th for our 11-hour drive down to North Carolina, we were oblivious to the amount of obstacles that were going to hit us head on. It is understood that road trips, well vacations in general, always have some type of mishap along the way; however, we got sideswiped more than once.

Just a little back story first.

The week before we left, we made an appointment to get our car looked at because we had been having some issues with it making an annoying whining noise while our blower was on. Along with that, our AC was acting up. We were pretty specific with the issues and had no inclination that they would fail miserably at their job.

When we got our car back, after paying for a deductible, we were told everything was good and that our AC was simply overcharged. We thought that was odd considering we have never gotten the car charged since we bought it from the Ford dealership. Unfortunately, the car was still making the same noise, and since it was the weekend, we couldn't do anything about it. So on Monday, the day before we left, I called and complained that they didn't do their job and the service advisor offered to listen.

After telling me it was probably the compressor, but there was nothing they could do for me without looking at it, I said, "Well, why didn't get this fixed last week when we brought it in for this specific problem?" The only answer I got was, "I don't know."

Cool.

So now our trip. Not even two hours into our drive we noticed the AC was crapping out on us. Had it  not been 90 degrees with 60% humidity, rolling down the windows may have been bearable. I was not a happy camper. My hair was a fuzz ball, I had massive amounts of boob sweat, and a splitting headache. Then we hit the traffic.

First it was a massive semi crash. One semi looked like a T-Rex took a bite out of it, and the other was smoking with crates of unknown material spilt all around it.

So no big deal, semi crashes happen, traffic backed up for a while happens. It is all good...

Until 10 minutes later you have to exit the highway because it is closed due to a chemical spill.

So here is the deal:

Greg and I got off the expressway, along with thousands of other confused drivers, and drove through this podunk town in Ohio. We knew that we had to follow everyone, but it was extremely congested. It took us about 2 hours to get two miles. When we finally reached the next entrance to the highway, there was a cop directing us to go north, the wrong direction. So I rolled down my window and asked him where to go if we wanted to go south.

"You have to go north, get off on the next exit, then come back south." 

You see, that exit he spoke of was EXACTLY THE SAME EXIT we got off on two miles, and TWO HOURS before that. So my response, in complete frustration was:

"Are you fucking kidding me?" to a cop. 

My husband had to point out to me a minute later I had just cursed, nonetheless the f-bomb, to a state trooper. I was so ticked, I had no idea.

Because of this unnecessary detour, we were almost three hours behind and didn't make it into North Carolina until 1:30 a.m. It gets better right? No.

The next morning, we took our car to the Ford dealership in Asheville and explained to them everything that was going on. It took three hours of us waiting around until they finally decided to set us up with a rental so we could enjoy what little time we had left on our trip. So that was fun.

BUT THEN!

We remembered, "Hey, Little Dragon...THAT is why we are here."

The entire afternoon we kept hearing from locals, "You drove all the way from Grand Rapids, Michigan to see a concert at the Orange Peel?"

Yes, yes we did.

At the concert, we were told to "Shut up," because they didn't believe we would drive that far to see Little Dragon.

But yes...yes we did.

Why?

Because they are AMAZING and deserve hardcore fans that drive 11+ hours to go see them.

All the crap we went through on the way down was totally worth it because we got to experience the most intimate, sensual, emotional, sweaty, dance-filled, show ever to exist at least within our life-span, and we thank Little Dragon for that.

I doubt Yukimi, or any of the others will read this, but if you do just know that your music means so much to my husband and I. Not only because it is injected with raw talent and originality, but also because it has pulled us through some rough moments. I for one was brought back to the appreciation of my own music just by listening to yours. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to enjoy your show live.

On a side note, the Asheville Ford service technicians aren't idiots and fixed our car. We only had to pay our deductible and weren't dying on our way back up to Michigan.

Lesson learned from all of this: Mindfulness doesn't always diminish anger and anxiety, but awesome music by Little Dragon does.