Roll With It (Again)

Mackinac Island, MI

I feel a little bit guilty sitting in a Starbucks while I'm on Mackinac Island... but the bike rental place was closed, I already got fudge, and this might be the only chance I have to write a blog post for the next few days.  I'm doing it for you guys.

So while I was in Jackson, MI, I had yet another example of how my "go with it" philosophy has worked out pretty darn well.

I was visiting a friend - actually, the youth leader from my old church back home.  She lives in Jackson now and teaches at a college.  So once I got there, I asked if she wanted to go on a motorcycle ride, and she said sure.  She asked where I wanted to go, and I told her to choose - and gave her my usual line about how I just go along with things, because that's worked out pretty well so far.

Well we ended up going to get some ice cream, and then headed over to do a tour of the campus that she teaches at.  We were riding through campus on the motorcycle and she was pointing out buildings to me, and then mentioned that there was a concert going on that night for the end of the freshman orientation week - "some band called Sea... bird? Or something like that."

"Seabird?" I said.  "That's one of my favorite bands."  So we parked, and sat and watched the concert from the back while chatting and catching up on things.

I think I first found out about Seabird a few years ago, when they were opening for... Fiction Family, perhaps?  Stephanie can probably fill in the details.  I didn't know who they were, but ended up loving their stuff and buying their album.  Since then, I've listened the album a ton.  It's one of those albums that if I'm scanning through my library for something to listen to and see them, I pretty much always stop.  I like them a lot, but they're not the kind of band I make a special effort to go see live, so I hadn't seen them since that first time.

I think that's also the first official concert I've been to on the trip - the only other shows I've gotten to see are the backyard concert in Kansas City and various other small bars where there's been someone playing, like the two bars in Las Cruces that I went to.  So it was cool to not only get to see a concert, but one of my favorite bands, and one I might not otherwise see.

I feel like I should point out too that while this whole "let things happen to me" philosophy works some of the time, the flip side of the coin is that sometimes I end up sitting around doing nothing - like in Sioux Falls or Knoxville - instead of going out and doing something on my own, or prodding my host to go out and do something interesting.

But the few times it has worked, it's been working out pretty damn well, as I've pointed out before.