Roger Waters and the Trucker Fight

Enter the wayback machine to June 15th, 2007. "School's Out for Summer." Except that Frank is supposed to be in Concert Band for graduation day. Sorry school, we are going on a "family trip." Generally, our quote unquote family trips are to concerts 2-4 hours away.

Frank is a big fan of Pink Floyd.

So this trip was to see Roger Waters, at the Verizon Wireless Ampitheater (why do I read that as Anteater?) So much easier and locatable to think of it as Irvine Meadows.

Remembering that the drive to and from Irvine sucks, we got motel rooms just south in Laguna Hills. Lots of traffic, checked in, went straight to the concert, ate yuckyburgers, and settled in for...wait for it... a REALLY GREAT SHOW! Totally worth the long (3.5 hour) drive. First half, Pink Floyd and RW hits, lots of The Wall. They launched a giant pig balloon (Animals). We heard rumors that the pig balloon launched at the previous night's Hollywood Bowl show landed on a freeway somewhere. Loved the pig. Watched it fly away, far far away. Second half...the complete Dark Side of the Moon. Yes, many smelly cigarettes surrounded us. But we don't do things like that. Anymore.

Then, there was the one hour wait to get out of the parking lot. We backed out of our space, then sat there for one solid hour before traffic began to move. This is the worst parking lot of any concert venue I've ever been to. Consistently.

So after we were out of the parking lot we were glad to drive only 5 minutes to the motel. The next morning, we ate breakfast and went home. The three hour drive stretched to FIVE F---ING HOURS due to multiple traffic accidents.

Just south of Summerland, in another accident backup, a small semi truck apparently got fed up and passed us and others on the right hand shoulder. He cut, slowly, across traffic into the left lane and tried to drive on the left shoulder too. Another bigger truck got pissed and cut him off, totally blocking the left lane traffic. The driver of the bigger truck got out, hauled the small truck driver out of his cab, and totally started whaling on him. Pow, pow, fists were flying. We saw all of this while stuck in traffic. Two other cars stopped behind the two trucks; the drivers got out to join the fracas. We were close to a freeway exit and I begged, just get out of here...