Nov28

4:30am. 4:30am. What the hell am I doing at 4:30am on Wednesday November 28th? Well what else should I be doing? Setting up a tent in the middle of an ice storm in the heart of downtown St. Louis, that is what I was doing.
Molly, Meghan and myself had driven straight through from Kansas City to St. Louis. Let me tell you just trying to get away from the God foresaken Kemper Arena was a battle and a half. We finally arrived in St. Louis around 4:30 and found that a shanty town outside the savvis center. There were literally 30 tents set up and about. Most were under an awning all doubled up. We got out and started to set up our tent in just as miserable conditions as the day before, although we were without the hurricane force winds that kept knocking our tent down in KC. So we set up the tent, I hooked up with our people in line, John, Angie, Euan, Lissi and Erin, headed off to the tent and caught four hours of sleep.
I awoke the next morning to the shout of "U2 MIDWEST" deciding that inside my sleeping bag was a much more happy place to be then the outside to see who was yelling, I just laid in there. Next thing I know Meghan is talking to the people outside the tent "I'm Meghan, this is Molly and over in that sleeping bag is Tim." I stuck my arm out to wave, and quickly drew it back into the warmth of my coccon. Then I hear "HI, I'm John and this is Angie...." That's how I woke up.
Thank God that the Savvis center was located incredibly near to normal civilization. The Union Station mall was an incredible place to go, warm up, eat, drink, shop, waste time and well, use the facilities. Thats exactly what we did. Ate breakfast at the McDonalds checked out the flag store, we already had an American flag (which will be featured quite promentinely later on) and John bought a Rattle and Hum t-shirt at a Beatles store.
We all (8 of us now) decided to go in on a hotel room or a series of Hotel Rooms at at sheraton right down the street. They were featuring a U2 concert special where you could get any single or double room for like 79 bucks, so we got two rooms. That was good for a shower and a brief rest before we all had to run back to the line.
Me and Euan went along and started trying to get the line into single file and get everyone in proper order. The only problem was that everyone was bitching that they had to stand out in the rain. The most common complaint I got was "well you don't care cause you don't have to stand out in the rain." To which my response was, "you do realize that my number is 60 and I am standing out in the rain right now, for no reason what-so-ever it's merely an attempt to help you, I could be under an awning right now staying warm and dry but I'm out here trying to make your concert experience more pleasant." So people started to cooperate and such.
I was number 60 and the girls were 61 and 62 whereas the rest of the group was in the low 30's. Everyone wanted to go for inside the heart except John, who insisted on the tip, so we made John promise to hold us a spot at the tip. So we sat in line, singing songs and such, or rather I sat in line listening to others sing songs. I just shivered. Evidently my coat was a little damp from standing in the rain for an hour trying to organize people. Finally the doors started to open and the people were being let in.
When we finally got into the Savvis center we immediately headed for the floor, as I was running down the stairs I saw the heart with about 40 something people in it, 20 people on their way to the heart and one lone John, at the very tip with his American Flag drapped across the entire tip holding a spot for me, Meghan and Molly. Casey and Danno eventually joined us. So there we are all sprawled out at the very tip. Waiting for a good show, everyone else in the group got front of stage right by Adam so they were happy.
It was right about before Garbage came on stage when it suddenly hit me that this was very well going to be my last Elevation. I was entirely dissapointed about that to the point that I was not into Garbage at all. Dissappointing thing about Garbage was that Androgeny was scratched off from the set-list. I would have enjoyed hearing that again as I had at the Notre Dame show.