First of all, the day we were going to leave I still had to go to one class that morning, which really sucked. It was Senior Seminar, and the entire past semester had absolutely drained me of life because I had been doing double time on my Senior Thesis AND the LSAT/law school applications. So I was pretty much (absolutely) drained...I had pulled an all nighter to finalize said thesis. But I showed up for my last class that morning and soon went home to pack and get ready to see Lorin Hayes! Neither of us had absolutely ANY clue what this trip was going to hold - this was our first truck out to Oklahoma and it was almost maddening not really knowing what to expect.
As per what would become tradition, we take two days to drive out to Okie, stopping in Nashville. It was freezing cold (December, duh) and all of the mountains around the roads up in Western NC/Eastern TN were frozen over even though the roads were fine. It was beautiful. Nothing too terribly exciting until we hit Nashville, besides seeing random things along the way we did stop at Love's for our first time ever (as told to do by Lacie). Once we were in Nashville, we put our stuff up in our room and went downstairs to ask the desk about good places for dinner. One of the bellhops suggested Demos, and I instantly fell in love with their brown butter sauce. Every time we go to Nashville now, it's a requirement we stop in at Demos. Even though it was only a few blocks away from our hotel, I can't tell you how many times Lorin and I almost bust our asses because the roads and sidewalks were iced over. The city was beautiful though, even though our sights were set somewhat higher expecting to break into the Tulsa city limits the following day.
The entire next day in the car was completely drab in terms of weather. It was overcast, it rained at certain points, and I think it finally donned on me just HOW far out the two of us were adventuring for this little band called Hanson. One of the funniest things that happened was that it was around lunchtime, and we were trying to find a place to eat. We try to stop in bigger cities for that kind of thing, so I looked at where we were going and thought Little Rock sounded like it could be big, because it is one of the better known cities in Arkansas. So we approached the Little Rock exits, blinked, and then soon realized that even what is the biggest city in Arkansas was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Cue a few more hours of starving and trying to find a place to eat. It was terrible and hilarious at the same time, and when we stopped for gas we used the GPS to find someplace, ended up going to two different restaurants but not eating there at all because they closed after lunch and didn't open again until dinner. We randomly found our way off the beaten path into Conway, Arkansas at this place called Pasta House. We were the only people in there and it was kind of awkward, but I gotta say for randomly stumbling upon the place the food was fantastic (who knew?). Soon we were back on the road, the rain had gone away, and before we even knew what to do with ourselves we hit the Oklahoma border and the sun broke through all the clouds. We took it as to mean we were in the right place.
We were headed to OK City first, but before that we decided to make our first trip to Pops, and I'm so glad we did! We were amazed that after driving 5-10 miles off of the highway onto Route 66 into the middle of nowhere that out of that nowhere we saw a gigantic lit up soda bottle and a little piece of heaven waiting around the corner. This is where I fell in love with pumpkin pie soda. Our waitress was wearing TOMS shoes and Lorin asked her if she knew who Hanson was, she shrugged and laughed and said "Uh, -everyone- around here knows who Hanson is." Silly us. We stayed there until they almost closed up, reluctantly making our way back to OK City to find our hotel. We had the plan to show up early in the morning in order to get our place in the number nazi war, but for now we needed decent sleep.
After a few GPS mishaps, we found the Diamond Ballroom and pulled up decently early (probably around 8/9am local time) and we were utterly...speechless. We looked around and saw a few cars, but there was absolutely no mob of people like we were so used to seeing at every other Hanson concert...ever. We sat for a bit before I got out of the car to go talk to the girls parked adjacent to us, and little did I know they were awesome people that I would end up befriending. Then the impossible happened. I asked them for numbers and somehow, by the grace of Hanson gods, we got single digit numbers. I was #8 and Lorin was #9. I couldn't possibly tell you how thrilling that was to hear...its impossible to get numbers that low and it was the perfect welcome into Oklahoma. I went back to the car, looked over to the girl in the car next to us and remember saying "Oh look, her name is Heidi and she works at Wal Mart." Hahahaha. Heidi had her nametag hanging from her rearview mirror, and little did we know at that moment that we were going to become such good friends with her too! So we waited outside of the Diamond Ballroom all day long, it was freezing to the point we took turns going to defrost in the car, we grinned like only crazy obsessed Hanson fans could grin when we saw the boys pull up in their Land Rovers (VERY IMPORTANT FACT FOR LATER), and after all of the waiting and freezing and getting molested by the security guards, "bitches and hoes we got front row!".
Sure, I had gotten front row at Asheville the summer before, but that was off to the side and was completely different from being almost dead center and closer to them than you ever have been before. It was hilarious, because one of the opening bands was on IDJ Records, so the radio hosts announced "We have so and so coming at ya from IDJ Records....!" and the entire crowd just erupted into a fit of booing and screaming. I was just laughing...all we kept thinking was damn, I really hope someone went and told them we were all booing his record label and NOT him...ha. And of course, when Taylor came out on the side and went to the bar, -nobody- was paying attention to anything that was happening on that stage. FINALLY they graced us with their presence, and a little something different they did was play Christmas songs, which not a ton of people have gotten to hear live. It was such a fantastic concert, especially being front row and getting to rock out after a few long days prior.
We went out to the
Okay, so, a little disclaimer before I get into the car chase story. If you, a crazy Hanson fan, are in Oklahoma City about to go to Tulsa for a concert the next night, and you could help it, would you not totally choose to try and keep up with Hanson's Land Rovers if you could? The second they got in the car we sprinted back to the Hansonmobile (Lorin's car that we so affectionately named) and gunned the gas, trailing them 'discreetly' out of the venue. In our defense, our GPS (later affectionately named Jordan Taylor Hanson II because usually it has problems shutting up) was messing up, and in that moment nothing sounded better than being able to drive on the same road Hanson was driving on as we followed back to the motherland. It was soon obvious that they knew what we were doing, and all of a sudden they gunned it, so we gunned it too. We didn't know the way back to Tulsa, and obviously they did, so what was the harm, right? I realize that a lot of creepy stalkerish people have probably tried this stunt in the past so they have reason to be apprehensive about it, but we weren't expecting anything to come of it.
But oh Hanson, they decided to have some fun with us. Suddenly they threw on the breaks and we went soaring past them, and after that happened they were soon following -us-. We stopped speeding momentarily, and once we did they gunned it again past us and tried to trick us into taking an exit, which we didn't fall for. By this time, the GPS was finally getting a signal, and it turns out that the exit they were trying to trick us to get off on was the right exit. But we started following our GPS which took us on this super long, deserted, and awkward detour in order to get back to the exit we missed...and who ends up right behind us after they followed us through the entire detour? Yes. Right behind us was Taylor/Ike's Land Rover staring at this Nissan Xterra from South Carolina (we had talked to them and mentioned where we were from) with Lorin's gigantic 'HANSON' sticker on the back of the car. It was a stop sign in the middle of nowhere, so we sat there frozen for a while as we waited for the light to turn green to get back on the highway. I couldn't even look back to see what they were doing. My hand was over my mouth, I was crouched down in the seat...and on top of everything it was just hilarious.
Eventually we got back on the highway, with Hanson following us now, and they did actually follow us almost the entire way back to Tulsa. This is where our jokes about going to Kickapoo with Hanson come into play. If you haven't driven in Oklahoma, every few minutes you usually pass into a new Indian tribe's territory, and the one we remember the most from that night was crossing through Kickapoo country, where Hanson just so happened to be with us at the time. So, we went to Kickapoo with Hanson. When we got closer they let off some just in case we were crazy people trying to follow them back to their house or something (which, I will say upfront and honestly, I would never do anything like that. That really is pushing the envelope) and before we knew it, we were in mecca! Got to the hotel, went to sleep, and we were super excited to explore Tulsa the next day.
We stayed at the Hilton right across the street from the Mabee Center (where the Tulsa concert was), and later we found out that all of the other artists performing at Mabee were staying there too (Natasha Benningfield, Far East Movement, etc. We did all of our Tulsa tourist things that day (too many to list! and they're all listed in the other Tulsa trip post, ha.) and ended up going to Wal Mart to buy Santa hats which Lorin puff painted 'I love Hanson' on them. The concert was chill, it was seated so it wasn't fighting to get up front or anything.
The next morning we went to Blue Dome for breakfast, and out to the River Parks to go in search of the Go bridge which we didn't find, but we found it this past Tulsa trip so woot woot. This is also when the cop pulled us over because she was mean and not paying attention, and eventually we hopped in the car and made our way back to Nashville. On the way, we stopped in Memphis to visit Kappa Delta's HQ (Lorin's sorority) and to eat some Olive Garden. We stayed at Hotel Indigo which was pretty sweet, and we were Charlotte bound the next morning to go home.
So there it is. This was the trip that I could officially say "Well I've never been to heaven, but I've been to Oklahoma"! and I totally understand that song now. It's almost surreal that we're not going to Tulsa for the Musical Ride tour this month! But I know I'll be back sometime soon.
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