My Other Paul Shows
Saturday, June 1, 2019. I’m pretty sure that I’ve never been more excited to go to an arena in my life, even the one where I met Paul. I went to school at the University of Kentucky, and I basically lived at Rupp Arena during basketball season for almost my entire time there. A year before I graduated, I was badly injured at a concert (not Paul) in Cincinnati, Ohio. And, that made me super not want to basically leave my dorm room, so so I stopped going to the games, preferring instead to watch them safely in my dorm room.
So, this was a homecoming for me. Not just for seeing Paul for the first time in 2 years, but also to Rupp Arena. I missed it so much.
Before I transferred to UK, I started my collegiate experience at this smaller school called Berea College in Berea, KY. So, I decided to make this a walk down memory lane. I booked a hotel room to stay in overnight in Berea, rather in Lexington. It’s not a huge distance between the two places, besides the rooms in Lexington were very outside of my budget.
I arrived on campus at Berea in the early afternoon on June 1. I went by my old dorms, the theater, all my old hangouts. Almost everything was the same as it was when I was in school there; just a few upgrades from what I could tell. I stopped to eat at Boone Tavern (where I used to work as a server) and was sure to have a bit of their renowned spoon bread. I checked into my hotel, cleaned up a bit, dropped my stuff, then I made my way to Lexington.
I wanted to tour around campus at UK to see what was different, what I recognized and what I didn’t. lol After all, I hadn’t set foot on campus since I graduated in August 2000. There was bound to be some kind of change, right?
Every single thing was different. No Wildcat Lodge. In its place was a huge high rise dorm called Blazer Hall. The building I knew as Blazer Hall for many years was now some kind of administration building. The student center was entirely brand new. There were several new buildings over the entire campus, most of which replaced older ones that I would have instantly recognized.
I parked at the student center but I didn’t go inside. Instead, I walked towards central campus, and sat near what we used to call “The Quad”. There were still places I recognized there, thank Goodness. But, still, I felt like I was trapped in a bad episode of The Twilight Zone. I didn’t expect everything to be different. Oh well.
I wandered around central and north campus. It was pretty up in the That was where I spent the majority of my time when I was in school, and I was trying to orient myself and reconcile my memory with what currently existed.
I thought about leaving my car parked there and taking my old short cut/walking trail to Rupp. But the trail was blocked, and mostly erased. I was actually pretty sad about that because I’d taken that short cut from my Blazer Hall to Rupp Arena dozens of times in all kinds of weather when I was in school. Ugh. So, that meant I had to drive.
I’d never driven to Rupp before; had never parked in the parking lot. But, I pulled right in there, handed them my $20 bill, and found a slot. Then it was time for the true madness to begin.
Honestly, I had nosebleeds seats up in the rafters, but I was happy to be there. The video above explains it all. I cried through most of the experience #1 because it was Paul and #2 because I was home at Rupp.
After the show, I made my way back to the hotel in Berea.