The Walking Legend

I know you've missed me . . . so I'm taking time out of my busy schedule to share with you.
Hi Everyone! It's Kikita!

Sometime in November I was trying to come up with a great Christmas song for the video and stumbled across a John Legend song. This reminded me of how much I liked him, so I jumped on ticketmaster and (Jesus must really love me!) HE. WAS. ON. TOUR. Without really stopping to think about it, I bought two tickets for his Friday night show in San Diego at the Rimac Arena . . .

I called Sheila (other than Cedric, who else would I have called?) and asked if she wanted to go with me, "Of Course!!"

So, the day of the concert we were running a bit late. Instead of leaving for San Diego at 4pm, we left at 5pm. No big deal. We didn't hit too much traffic . . . the concert started at 8pm, and we arrived in La Jolla just before 6pm. We had two hours before the show started, we were down the street, and we were starving.

Have you ever heard of Rock Bottom Brewery? Sheila had. She thought it would be fun to try it . . . I was eye-ing the El Torito across the parking lot, but thought, "Hey, why not? Let's try it."

We had to park in Timbuktu and walk for days before we made it to the restaurant, but we made it . . . just in time for a 30 minute wait. It was a fascinating 30 minutes with plenty of opportunities for the fashion police to give out citations. Now we were starting to get antsy. We hadn't been seated and only had about an hour if we wanted to have any kind of time to get to the concert and park. We asked and it was going to be another 20 minutes, bummed, hungry, and frustrated, we walked our way across the parking lot and into El Torito.

After being seated, we sat and sat and sat before someone noticed we didn't even have drinks yet. We opted for just an appetizer, because now all we had was 20 minutes left and that was pushing it. Worried about making it on time, we hurriedly swallowed a few mouthfuls and then walked the 90 miles back to where we had had to park.

Yes, we got confused exiting the giant parking lot, had to make a U-turn, but eventually we were back on track . . . and entering the UCSD campus? Yes, it turns out the Rimac Arena is located on campus. No problem, just follow the directions . . . What do you mean we're not on the campus anymore?

Another U-Turn.

Oh look! A Campus map! And that guy looks like he'd be going to a John Legend concert . . . and he's telling the other guy . . . so we followed those two cars. Up, and back down. U-turn. Down, then up. U-turn. It's 7:57pm and we can't breathe we're laughing so hard . . . the fools following the fool.

Thanks to the help of some nearby students, we were back on track . . . again. And it was another 10 minute drive around the campus until we finally found a parking lot with John Legend signs pointing to it.

We park and begin a quick-paced walk towards the nearest building . . . it looked like other people were heading that way, as we got close, they turned around and said it wasn't the right place.

Bummer, now what?

We found another line of people to follow . . . "Hey, didn't we see you waiting to be seated at Rock Bottom about an hour ago?" and "Hey, weren't you the ones following us?"

Yeah, check us out. We are mini-celebrities and these aren't even blog readers! ;-)

Up the hill we go . . . and around a corner . . . and . . . SERIOUSLY?!? We still have ALL THAT WAY to go? There was an audible groan from everyone we were walking with. And most of us women had the same thought:

"These are not the right shoes for this kind of walking"

But we pressed on . . . walking . . . walking . . . more walking . . . I can't even tell you how much we walked because it was never-ending.

But, because we are awesome, we made it. There was an opening act. Her name was Estelle. She sings that song with Kanye West about an American Boy . . . no, not one of my favorites, but I recognized it, so I was excited.

And then he came out. The brilliant and, apparently, humble musician.
He really is amazing. He started us with a HOLLA and ended with a GREENLIGHT and returned in a tux to tell us we are Ordinary People. He played all of my favorite songs and then some.
Despite all our walking, staying in our seats definitely didn't happen. But since the arena is small, it was worth it. I would happily do that walk in heels again for someone like John Legend.

The whole evening was only more memorable because of all the craziness that happened before hand. All the walking we had to do . . .  it really was "legendary."

For your enjoyment, here's the song that started the whole journey:

(Sheila and I would like to dedicate this post to Tamera. She had asked us to keep writing about our adventures and we are convinced that we wouldn't have had such a great adventure if she hadn't requested it first. =D)