The Finale.

*Disclaimer- there comes a section of this post where I may seem to be mocking Megan. Worry not, she is completely aware of her actions that night and knows this is coming*

After the concert ended the guys graciously held their meet and greet as they do after every show, even though they would be cutting it pretty close to midnight. There was a giant mob of people standing and waiting for the meet and greet to begin. We made our way to the back of the said mob and there we found a rather large group of chasers who informed us that they always go to the end of the line at meet and greets. I guess that’s so incase one of us gets lost, we all know the meeting place? It was a bit overwhelming seeing the other chasers being so chatty with the guys parents and seeming like they’ve known each other forever. The line got moving but as mentioned we were in the very back. As we were waiting we noticed someone very near and dear to us….RICHARD! He was talking to Jerome’s dad and if he had been talking to anyone else we probably would have just pushed our way into that conversation and made our selves known. He did look over at us a couple of times but there’s a good chance that’s just because we were yelling his name in a sort of loud whisper.

            It’s safe to say at this point we had gone completely insane.  Megan was in the beginning stages of her break down and transition to hot mess. We had made a little something to give to the guys and Megan had gotten her speech all ready for Jerome (he’s usually the first one in the line) but as we got closer to the guys we saw that it wasn’t Jerome who was first, in fact he was last. Randy was first! Megan looked at me and said these exact word, ”Jerome’s not first. You need to talk.” Signs of things to come? Yes.

T-Shirt Magnet

       It was finally our turn to say hello to the guys. First thing first, we both had our group photo with the guys framed with a matte and that was what we were getting signed. I gave my picture to Randy first and he looked at it and said, “oh this is in Rhode Island.” You are correct Mr. Stine. Our picture was in fact from the Rhode Island show. Remember in an earlier post we mentioned we got our creative juices flowing, well we did, and this project had a lot to do with Jerome and the t-shirts we had made for ourselves. Jerome had asked if we would make him one, with no glitter of course. We wanted to fulfill his dreams but since it was so hard to find those shirts and they were only women’s sizes we went a different route. We got red and white felt, and adhesive letters and made the guys mini replicas of the shirts that we put magnets on. They came out absolutely adorable! We each had 5 to give out. I gave mine to Randy, Ryan (who loved it and said it was going on his fridge as soon as he got home), Seggie, Mike, and DR. Mike originally looked at it with a confused look and then got excited and said,  “Wait! Is this for me!?” I told him yes and he put it in his suit jacket pocket.  Seggie and Megan had a nice conversation about whether Seggie’s head was magnetic or not. He licked the back of the magnet and stuck it to his forehead and said, “Thanks for the head magnet.” Seriously, so funny.

notice Seggie's head magnet

            Megan and I also had Ryan’s Malibu EP CD that we wanted to get sign and Megan also had Mike’s CD as well (I would’ve had mine but Amazon was being a bully and it didn’t deliver it in time. I have it now though.) She got so flustered and over whelmed that she forgot to have Ryan sign his CD so she just pushed her way back through the line (even though these are usually one way events) to have him sign. As she did this, She left her CD with Mike to get signed. At first he tried to put it in his pocket, but then he signed it. He sneakily tried to ask me what her name was, but she apparently has ridiculously good hearing because when I said her name she whipped her head around and said “WHAT!” At this point she was a complete hot mess, although she had a little side conversation with Seggie that seemed to calm her down. After Ryan signed her CD, Seggie made a joke asking if she wanted him to sign it next, considering he had written all the songs on the CD for Ryan. Being able to joke with them brought her back down to reality and she was able to compose herself for the rest of the line.

Megan's CD. Time stamped

Megan's CD

My CD       

     Whew! And that was only the beginning of the line! At this point I was out of mini shirts to give out, so I spent the rest of the line with the guys trying to guess where our picture was taken (apparently they hadn’t heard Randy) This became a very cut throat game for the guys (well Tyler and Charlie) They had a conversation that went something like this

            Tyler: “This is from Rhode Island.”

            Charlie: “Good guess, Tyler.”

            Tyler: “It wasn’t a guess, I KNEW!”

Most of the guys recognized us, our picture, remembered our shirts we had made and really liked the magnets. I know they remember a lot of their fans, but it still blows my mind at how awesome these guys are. Charlie was the first one to point out that we had our Christmas lights on again. (They were in the picture as well.) We had had them on since dinner; we turned them on during “Hey Santa!” at the VIP dinner (completely ruining Dottie’s pictures. Sorry!)

Sorry Dottie!

            Sadly at this point we were at the end of the line, Walt had signed our photos as “Fatty Walt” and we noticed that on everything we have signed by the guys his signatures changes every time. We had a little heart to heart with Jerome about the shirts and he thought it was awesome. I also informed him I was sitting next to his dad and he just shook his head and was like “oh gosh” and he laughed when I told him about the baby stories I was hearing. He wasn’t surprised by it at all. His dad was so proud. It was so cute! As we were leaving we looked back at the line of guys and it was awesome to see the magnets we had made them sticking out of all their jacket pockets. Kind of surreal.

Signed group photo

            The next day it was time to go back home to MA. Neither of us really wanted to but then we realized that since the guys were gone Reading PA had nothing really to offer us. Check out was at 11 but our train home wasn’t until 3:18. Oh well we figured we could just hang out at the train station for a while; we both have Kindles and iPods to entertain us. Driving back to the station to return our Rav 4 we realized that both our CDs have been signed and can not be used anymore. We scanned the radio and talk about throwbacks! Some good, some bad, some staticy and indecipherable. We finally made it back to the train station, found our good friend Abraham, and returned the car. At this point it was only about 12. Only 3 hours to wait.

30th Street Station

            This is where my comment, Land of the hobos will be explained.  We found ourselves a nice bench to sit on for the short 3 hour wait. During this wait, we experienced 3 different guys. Not all at once, one at a time. The first man we encountered was the most low key of the three. He was pretty quiet with his glasses and cane. He also wasn’t there very long. Not sure where he went, at the time there weren’t any trains leaving.  The second man had a small radio and he thought that everyone in the area wanted to listen to extremely loud classical music that he was playing. Wrong. We did not.  He also had a very fancy plastic bag that he kept with him. I’m not sure there was anything in it but he was very attached to it.  The third and final man was completely hysterical. I can only believe that he was writing a song of some sort. He took out his WALKMAN, yes you read that correctly, made completely of duct tape and started singing. He also was choreographing his new song with his sweet moves? Then he broke out into manic laughter. It was like this man was on repeat because he went through this cycle multiple times before abruptly picking up all this things and laughing and dancing off into the distance. I’ve been told that these should not be the experiences I base my judgment on PA from, and they’re not, but I won’t be able to not think of these things when ever I think of PA.

Again

Megan's CDs framed

            Finally there was hope, our train was boarding! Only a short 6-hour ride home. There happened to be a screaming baby on board this train that I believe legitimately cried the entire time. It was fine because all we needed to do was put on our headphones and turn up the Straight No Chaser. That’s exactly what we did. It was a pretty uneventful and boring ride home. It was good to be home but sad the most amazing weekend was over. I know there will be more to come. (Atlantic City Anyone? Hopefully we won’t have to wait that long for our next adventure) I’m sure we’ll update again soon, as our lives are currently revolving around SNC. Stay tuned friends! Thank you to SNC for a fantastic weekend and thank you for reading!

Megan and I. Courtesy of Dottie