4/21/07 Hang On Parrotheads, We're Coming!

First thing this morning I logged on to the computer to check my email for the electronic tickets I had won on an EBAY auction the night before. No email from the seller. Oh no, don't tell me I got ripped off! I emailed him and wasn't getting any response. Oh no, this can't be happening. What seemed like hours passed (in actuality it was more like 20 minutes) when the email finally showed up. The seller had a T-ball game this morning and forgot to send them before he left. Whew! I went to the front office and had them printed from their computer. We got on the road around noon to head to Houston. We agreed we wouldn't think of or worry about the rig, we were going to enjoy this weekend. It took us about one and a half hours to get there and it was a nice drive.

As we got closer to downtown Houston we were glad we were on a straight shot into the city after seeing what their highway system looked like. This was a picture we took and thought it was a complicated maze of roadways and then a while later found an area with even more roads in the maze.

We quickly found a motel and made our way downtown. Since we hadn't eaten we grabbed a quick bite at McDonald's only to wish later we hadn't because there were so many sidewalk cafes close to the stadium where we would be attending the Buffett concert.

Posters were plastered everywhere about the concert.

The concert was held in the Minute Maid Park which (formerly Enron Field and Astros Field) is a baseball stadium that opened in 2000 to house the Houston Astros.
The ballpark was Houston's first retractable-roofed stadium, protecting fans and athletes from Houston's humid weather like its predecessor, the Astrodome, but allowing fans to also enjoy outdoor baseball, something they couldn't enjoy in the Astrodome. It also features a grass field, compared to the Astrodome's Astro Turf, which was generally disliked by professional baseball players. Its largest entrance is inside what was once Houston's Union Station, and the left-field side of the stadium features a train as homage to the site's history. The train moves along a track on top of the length of the exterior wall beyond left field whenever an Astros player hits a home run, or when the Astros win a game (the engine's tender, traditionally used to carry coal, is filled with giant oranges in tribute to Minute Maid's most famous product, orange juice).

Outside of the stadium there was lots of activities going on. There was your traditional tailgating but nowhere near the magnitude we've witnessed and participated in as there is in Camden, NJ, Tampa, FL or Philly. Considering this ballfield is right smack in the middle of downtown there just wasn't the room as the other venues have. These local Parrotheads just don't know what they are missing!

Here's a picture of a group performing right outside the stadium. They played a lot of Bob Marley. The guy, second from the left, I still don't know what he was about.

We watched the stadium go from this.....

to this.....

As there is at every concert you had the one's who went all out on their attire.

It was finally showtime and Jimmy put on a great show as usual.

Luckily, for those in the nosebleed sections they had big screens so that they could see too.

It was a great night and we're very glad we had the chance to attend this first date in the Bama Breeze 2007 concert tour.