occurred: august 2009
so i've been growing increasingly depressed that i'm not going abroad next semester, and at the same time have been reading the detestable tales of tucker max. therefore, i have decided to re-start blogging. granted, i am no longer having really exciting adventures in australia, but sometimes wisconsin is just as good. or not.
i've decided to get out of ripon as much as humanly possible this semester since i would rather be absolutely anywhere else at times (which may/may not be all the time). the first venture i made was a week or two into the first semester of my senior year. michelle propositioned me to make a trip down to milwaukee with her and some of her friends (who, turns out, i wound up lovinggg) to a lil wayne concert.
now, i love live music, especially outside which is where this was held, but i am probably not the first girl to be in line for lil wayne tickets. regardless, it was a wednesday night, i have no classes on thursday, and two weeks into school i was already getting antsy in my pantsy.
welll, michelle decides that she knows her way around milwaukee pretty well, so we forgo map questing directions, put on our sluttiest of ensembles (what does a girl wear to her first weezy concert?) and jump in the cruiser with a box of wine and some red bull.
milwaukee is only about an hour away so we get about 3/4 of the wine and 3 cans of red bull down by the time we reach the city limits. it is then that things begin to get tricky. we reach the vicinity of the lake front, which is close enough to the concert grounds, and michelle has to pee. like, real bad. we try to find a gas station. no dice. we pull over in a residential neighborhood. michelle pees in someone's front yard. we speed off. we are lost. we spend an extra hour driving around milwaukee, and end up missing all of the opening acts.
unnerved, we eventually make it to the fair grounds, where casey's bf and his friend are waiting for the tickets i bought for them. oh yeah. so the four of us make our way into the concert when we overhear a group of kids talking about some man who has recently entered the concert grounds, and looks remarkably like lil wayne. there is momentary gesticulation, when we realize that it is, in fact, lil wayne himself! by god, we met lil wayne! i take a picture of them together on her phone. even with the picture, no one believes that we met the one and only weezy. i swear on your mother's life it happened. trust me, there is photographic proof. we head off to find the rest of the group we are meeting.
it comes up in conversation that i am (the only) 21 year old. this makes me a creep, but also a hero. i buy beers for everyone. i make this trip multiple times. my new bff roberta comes with me for a beer run. while we're waiting for someone else to get out of the bathroom, she comes across an unlit marlb lite sitting on a picnic table. we consult and decide that it is safe to smoke. we are both still living, so i assume this was a valid decision.
when roberta and i arrive back to the concert, the crowd has pushed forward and all of our friends who were on the grass waiting for us have disappeared. we have two choices: either we waste our buzz and spend the rest of the concert looking for our group, or we take all the beer i had purchased, find ourselves a nice little knoll of grass, and jam out like our lives depend upon it. of course, we chose the latter.
then concert ends and michelle and i pile into the cruiser with casey's bf's roommate. none of us should be operating a motor vehicle, however, our options are limited. we arrive at uw milwaukee, where we go through a rigorous security check in order for us to be allowed to sleep there. i had no idea i would be spending the night in a freshman boy's dorm. this hasn't happened to me in year. again, i feel like a creep. and a hero. michelle is too drunk to type her own name into the system. she tells the security guard she is just not going to do it. he makes her any way.
by some miracle of god we finally make it up to the boys' room. i pass out still in my concert-going gear, covered by a skateboard comforter. the next morning i wake up to an alarm clock. at 6 a.m. hillary has to get back to ripon for class at 9. silvia is brushing her hair. roberta is dressed is a disco onesie. michelle is only half-wearing her tights, as she apparently made some half-assed attempt to undress herself in the night. it is at that very moment that i realize i love them.
the other girls leave to get hillary back for class, and michelle and i walk for what seems like hours trying to find where i parked the cruiser the night before. we find it, at long last, with a parking ticket firmly attached to windshield. minor detail. we grab breakfast, and make it back to ripon in time for brunch.
