Peak of Summer

Its definetly the peak of summer when I see two outdoor shows on both sides of this continent in one week. Last night Stiners and I went over to Berkeley to see Widespread Panic at the Greek. Its probably my favorite outdoor venue in the world. I've seen some absolutely incredible shows there. The last time we were there was to see the 6 hour "Here comes a time" Jerry Garcia tribute show. That was pretty special.

Stina headed over early in the car to get her replacement bike and I took the BART in. This means I got to meander a bit through downtown Berkeley to get to the show. There's nothing like Berkeley in the summertime. Everyone's looking real good. By everyone, I mean the ladies. Oh man. Hard to be a bad mood walking through Berkeley in the summer time.

The show started at 7ish. The greek (capacity about 8000) was maybe a third full. The band came out, the sun was still shining, and every single person fired up a bowl. Which was a pleasant contrast to the east coast show we saw earlier this week. A nice, mellow first set. The brought the heat during the second set. Stina needed to take off in the middle of the second set, since she had to get up in like 8 hours and do some sort of torturous exercise in the early morning. I was having a good time - said goodbye and continued to rock for another 2 minutes. Then I swiftly burst into action, and caught up to Stina for a nice ride home.

This whole episode made me realize how I always justify my actions to myself. When Stina left I was thinking - oh, I'm having a great time, I will definetly stay. This is why I come to these shows. The vibe was great. Then I started thinking about the long journey home. About the fact that the train I normally take home was not running since some sort of construction was going on. I thought how tired I was, and the fact that I hadn't yet adjusted to west coast time. So I figured it would be nice to get a lift home. As soon as I did that, I start coming up with more reasons why it was a good idea.

Stiners and I are used to spending lots of time together. Now thats she's training for the tri, we don't see each other so much. A ride home would give us more time together.

If I got a ride home, I would have some time to work on music while freshly inspired from the concert. And so on.

I started thinking about how I always am able to justify my decisions. If I hadn't gone home, I could have easily justified why I stayed, and most certainly would have. It would've be a fun adventure getting home. Etc, etc. I found it interesting that I always justify my actions. Why its ok for me to buy this software, eat at this restaurant, indulge in whatever I'm what to do. I can generally come up with a couple reasons. I don't really think of any counter arguments to what it is that I want to do. Not that I'm going anywhere with this train of thought - just found it interesting to catch myself in one of my behavioral patterns.

The other thing I was thinking about was how lucky I am that Stina enjoys live music as much as she does. She didn't used to. Years and years of dragging to her Phish shows has payed off in dividends. Now we can go to shows and really enjoy them together. It makes me so happy to be able to share that kind of joy with my life partner. When we were at the Phil and Friends show ealier this week, it was an absolutely amazing moment in musical enjoyment. I'm so grateful that we were able to share that and be overwhelmed with joy together.