36 Hours, 168 Hours Ago

So, it took about a week to fully recover from last weekend, but now I’m pretty well rested and able to summarize the tale. It was a heck of a 32 hours, starting at about 5pm Saturday and going on through to about 1am Monday morning.

It started with a really long drive to Irvine to go see Coldplay with my cousin, Louis (right). Actually, it turns out it was about 62 round trip miles too long. It seems we both got distracted by a Best Buy and missed the only clear indication we were in Irvine. We sped past and by the time we realized it, we were beyond San Juan Capistrano and 53 miles from San Diego. We were finally able to turn around, and by the time we got to the venue, Black Mountain was halfway through their opening set. As it turns out, I didn’t consider it a big loss. We found our seats and Coldplay was on stage about an hour or so later.

What can I say about Coldplay? Most of the time, I find that they’re pretty much a light rock band. As Chris Martin said that night, they’re pretty much “feather rock.” But there are times where the guitars go off, the drums hit their stride, and the music hits a place worthy of quite a few hard rock bands I’m into at the moment. The Strokes. Bloc Party. Interpol. Coldplay pretty much runs the gamut musically, killing you with ballads, bringing you up with catchy little pop songs, and then smashing down the doors with a bit of an edge. And live, they’re awesome. The crowd gets into it, they feed off the crowd, and it’s off to the races. Plus, Chris Martin has such a great stage presence. He made the entire amphitheater feel pretty small, and like I tell my cousin, he’s just plain funny.

So the concert ends about 11:30, and we manage to avoid any navigational mishaps on the way home. In bed by 1am or so, and up again at 6 ‘cause the family’s headin’ to Disneyland! It had been a while since I’d been there. The biggest draw for me is always SpaceMountain, but it’s been closed for a coupla years for renovation. But, it was re-opened in May for the 50^th Anniversary and it was about time to check it out .

The weather wasn’t too bad, and as it was a Sunday, the lines weren’t too bad. In fact, I think the longest wait we had most of the day was 35 minutes! Thank you, FastPass. They’ve added these pretty cool murals around the park that are made up of smaller pictures of people’s kids. They also added a new ride in the form of Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters – a take off on my Small World idea where you have light guns and the point is to shoot at targets placed throughout the ride. Pretty fun stuff.

But again, the point of the day for me was Space Mountain. They’ve changed the video that plays on the monitors scattered throughout the line, and slightly re-did the loading area, adding a new big screen and the making some changes to the large hanging engine. Then there’s the ride itself.

My first trip, I got to sit in the first row. You head up the big hill and there’s a change in the “start-up sequence” and you’re slightly thrown off balance visually, whicha sets up the best part of the ride. Before, you pretty much orbited this large “sun” in the middle of the room – a large dimly lit orange ball. It was pretty dark, but there was some tiny bit of light. Now, that ball is gone and it’s replaced by pitch black and constantly moving stars. Even in the fron row, where I used to sometimes see the track, I had no idea where this thing was gonna go. And then there’s the speed! I thought that maybe it was just ‘cause it had been while since I had been on it, but the second time was felt just as fast. So there’s still a very good reason to go to Disneyland, and my only regret was not being able to go on again.