It was around April of last year(2005). Every week on CNBC I watch the Suze Orman Show. Its a show all about finance advise. During the show on one of the commericals they ran a 120 second commerical which caught my eye. It turned out that it was an advertisement for the Celtic Woman DVD/CD. I thought to myself "that looks pretty cool.Id like to get that to check it out". I reconized some of the songs. Anyway I didnt order it because iI didnt write down the address or phone number and forgot about it.
Over the next couple of months I kept seeing the same commerical every week during the Suze Orman show. But still I never got around to ordering the DVD or CD. But everytime the commerical came on I just told myself that Im going to have to order that DVD.
Then in June of last year I was on R&R in Washington State visiting my best friend and her kids. We went out to dinner one night to my favorite place. I had my usual, a 24 ounce porterhouse steak. After dinner we went back to the house where I turned on the TV. I started flipping channels and as I flipped I reconized the stage setup form the commerical Id been seeing. I decided to write down the address to order the DVD because I had pen and paper right there on the table next to me. But to my surprise it wast the commerical at all. It was the PBS show itself. Untill that moment I had no idea that it was a PBS show. And as a result I was able to catch about the last quarter of the show along with a couple of interviews. I decided then then I would order the DVD once I got back home to Alaska.
Once I got home I saw the commerical again and went ahead and ordered the DVD. One it arrived in mid August I put it in my DVD player and watched the whole thing from start to finish and watched the interviews. Once it was over I started it a second time. I was just about one third of the way through the concert a second time when I said to myself..."Ive just got to go see this live". So I got on the computer and found the main website for Celtic Woman.
I found the tour dates for the fall tour and decided that the only date I could do would have to be Cincinnati, Ohio on October 28, 2005. I went to the venues website and bought a ticket for the 6th row. Once I had my concert ticket bought and paid for I started looking for airline tickets from Anchorage, Alaska to Cincinnati, Ohio. I found a round trip airline ticket on Alaska Airlines. I had to change airlines and planes in Seattle. So it was Alaska Airlines from Anchorage to Seattle and Delta for the rest of the way. Because I booked the flight through Alaska Airlines website I was awarded the miles on my Alaska Airlines account for the whole trip. That turned out to be 8000 miles.
Once I had all that in place I started going over the Celtic Woman website where I found the forum and posted for the first time about how I was going to travel over 8000 miles to see Celtic Woman in concert. Of course at that time nobody had traveled anywhere near that distance to attend a Celtic Woman concert. Today thats not at all uncommon. The responses i got from everyone were awesome. Everyone was friendly and those that had see concerts before gave me advise as to what to expect. I hung around the forum more and more each day and started chatting with a couple of people quite often. One of the people I was chatting with was planning on attending the same concert as me in Cincinnati. So we decided to meet each other at the theater.
As I was planning the trip I booked a 1 bedroom suite and decided to buy a new outfit for the concert. I ordered a suit from Brooks Brothers in downtown Cincinnati. It cost me a little over $1000 but i figured it was worth it for such a special event. After all I do work 3000 hours a year with little time off so I figured Id enjoy life a little and have fun and splirge a little.
About 2 weeks before the concert, the guy on the forum that I was planning on meeting at the theater informed me that he wasnt able to attend because he had been sick and he didnt know if he would be feeling up to making the drive to Cincinnati. He told me a couple of days later that in fact he wouldnt be able to go and that he had put his concert ticket up for sale on the forum for $25. I was a little disappointed that he wasnt going to make it because we had been chatting for almost 2 months and I was expecting we would be meeting each other at the theater. But thats how it goes.
Of course once he posted the fact that he was sick, couldnt attend and had posted his ticket for sale many people posted in response get well soon messages. About 24 hours later I was checking that thread on the forum and noticed 2 posts that stuck out. The first post was from Kira who posted to Danielle that she should buy that ticket from Matthew and go to the Cincinnati show. Danielle's response to Kira's post was that she couldnt aford the money it would take to buy the gas she would need to make the drive. I reconized Danielle's name on the forum as someone who had just just joined the forum a few days before. I wouldnt have paid much mind to the post that Danielle had made if it werent for a couple of things. First of all she had posted quite a bit in the short time she had been on the forum and that in the posts that I read she seemed like a cool person. The other was she started a thread where we could post pictures of ourselves. I was having trouble posting my picture as usual because Im not good on computers and she explained to me how to do it.
I fingured what the heck. I decided to send Danielle a PM on the forum and told her that I was traveling from Alaska to see the Cincinnati show and that if she really wanted to go that I would cover her gas money. I already knew which seat that ticket was for so I figured we could just meet at the theater. She sent me a PM back and told me that she couldnt evern aford the $25 that Matthew was wanting for the ticket. I told her that if she could just get a loan that I would cover it. Anyway she called several people and wasnt able to prevail. So I decided to take another approach. I was chatting with her on the IM and while I was doing that she emailed Matthew and told him that she was interested in the ticket and that I was going to help her. Whlie she was emailing him and responding to his response I sent Danielle $150 through Western Union. Matthew gave her the ticket free of charge and he sent it to her. And Danielle asked me if it would be OK for her to bring her sister Michelle too. I said "of course". Danielle told me that she would just get a "cheap seat" for Michelle and then I looked and found a ticket in the 6th row about 10 seats to my right. I bought the ticket and was issued an email that Id just have to go to the Box Office to pick it up the day of the concert. I gave Danielle all my contact information along with directoins to the hotel I was staying at and that we could just meet there and walk to the theater. All this took place about 1 week before the concert. She picked up the Western Union the next day and she emailed me that she recieved it.
I couldnt wait to see the concert but I really wasnt looking forward to the long flight that I was going to have to be on. I dont travel with checked baggage anymore so at least I knew I wasnt going to have to wait around for my bags to come off the plane. As it turned out the flight wasnt too bad and I didnt have any problems arriving into Cincinnati and getting to my hotel.
When I arrived the Hotel was really nice except it smelled really bad of cigarette smoke. I had quit smoking 20 months before and it bothered me when I first walked into the lobby. After I got checked in, I walked about 4 blocks to the Brooks Brothers store and was fitted for my new suit that I had ordered 6 weeks earlier. Then I ate and went to bed. The next morning, the day of the concert I got up and picked up my new suit and walked around Cincinnati and then picked up Michelles ticket. It was really cool. Id never been there before and it was alot bigger then I expected. There were people everywhere! I went back to the hotel later that afternoon and got ready for the concert.
Around 6 PM I got a call from Danielle and she told me she was in the lobby so I told her to come up. They came up and we tlked for about an hour then we walked to the theater.
When we got to the theater you were able to walk through the doors but they had the stairs leading to the main lobby roped off. Once they let us in the first thing I did was went to the CW table to buy every solo CD they had on sale and since they had them on sale I also go myself a Celtic Woman hat. Since then Ive refered to the girl who sold me me hat as HatGirl....What a living doll !! I wish I knew her name. She is really nice and I love her Irish accent.
Anyway the concert was as good as I expected it would be. In fact it was even better then I expected. I was i row 6 and had a great view. I didnt know what to expect as far as seeing Deirdre Shannon because I hadnt heard her before but she was totally awesome. I looked for her CD after the concert but there wasnt one to buy so I was disappointed about that. The concert was geat and it just seemed to end so fast. I wish it had been longer.
After the concert Danielle, Michelle, and left the theater and walked aound the building where we spotted the tour busses. I pointed them out and there was a bench against the wall between bus 2 and bus 3. None of us knew if we were going to be able to meet any of the girls or not and at that point none of us had ever met any of them before so this was all new to us. We had been sitting there for about 5 minutes and I noticed a few people come out of the door that was about 30 feet from us. It was dark outside but I was able to at leat notice that one of the gals that came out was really good looking and of course I took note of that. They walked right passed us. Neither Danielle or myself reconized her but Michelle did. Michelle said..."LISA???" It just so happens that it was the very person I took note of just a few seconds earlier. She turned around and took one look at us.......(keep in mind that we had never meet and we didnt say who we were)........and LISA said...."Danielle!!! I didnt know you were comming to this concert. I though I saw you there in the forth row." The 3 of us were totally shocked!! Then LISA says to Danielle..."And this must be your twin sister Michelle." It was amazing!!! She knew exactly who we were just from our pictures and postings on the forum!! I thought that was totally cool and we were all fabergasted by it. Of course Lisa looked at me in my suit and said " and you must be Tony the guy from Alaska. Right?" I was like WOW!!! Talk about a meeting. We didnt even have to introduce ourselves. Then Chloe walks up about 30 seconds later and we met her as well. It didnt last very long because they had to get on the buss and head for Washington D.C. but before we said our goodbyes I handed Lisa a Northernlights Canender from Alaska that I had brought with me to give to them in case I had the chance to meet them.
After that the 3 of us walked back to my hotel and we all talked for a short while. I gave Danielle and Michelle each a signed poster and then they headed home. I flew back to Alaska 1 day later and took another week off work to relax. Two days after returning to work I made the decision to go to Toronto to see them again in concert and to meet more people from the forum. It was alot of fun in Cincinnati and I wanted to do it again. But thats a whole other story.....
