a Friday flashback (part 1)

We were at Passion2013 last week with Journey18:25. It was a great time. It was just what I needed, personally.

But, there were a couple tests of patience and wits.

Dear me.

Let's flashback to...

New Year's Day, 2013...

Some facts, first.

Passion was in Atlanta, GA in the heart of downtown. I had been to Passion before. So had a few of the students we took.

Aaron had not been.

Our other leader, Leah, had not been.

There were 24 of us. Three leaders. Twenty-one students. 

Also, 18-25 year olds are by all means adults. They are legally responsible for themselves. I myself am 25, and would like to believe I could totally fend for myself. I definitely don't want to, but I could I suppose.

While they may be adults, we sure felt great responsibility for returning them home safe and sound.

This seemed a bit daunting as we were in downtown Atlanta, our little group of 24, among the 60,000 other Passion attendees. Sixty thousand. Thats a lot, if you didn't know. 

I swear I aged last week. Go figure. Keeping up with college students is stressful. Maybe even more so than kids. Maybe not. I'm not sure anymore.

So, I'll share one day of our adventures with you. And I think I'll share it in two parts, because as I write more of it, the longer it gets. How about half this morning and half tonight?

Here we go.

We left on New Year's day at 7:30am. 

We were soon on our way in the rain and cold in two 15 passenger vans, after much rearranging of luggage to fit 24 people and their belongings.

Our drive to Atlanta was fairly uneventful, and after a stop in Charlotte to pick up one more group member and a stop for gas and lunch, we arrived around 3pm.

Now, it was still pouring rain. And, if you can just imagine with me, 60,000 people arriving basically at the same time in the same place.

Got that?

To make matters more fun, we had ended up with two different hotel reservations in order to accommodate all of our group. Half were at one hotel, half at the other.

We stopped at the Westin first. It is the big, giant, round monster building in the picture below. It's like 75 stories. Oh, the curses upon it. I digress though, let's carry on and we'll get back to the Westin later.

So, Aaron went inside to check-in while we all stayed with our vans. The half of the group that would be residing at the Westin unloaded their bags and headed into the lobby. The rest of the group looked to me for direction.

Like I knew anything. Bother.

The nice valet men informed us that we needed to move along. They had countless other vans and buses of eager Passion attendees waiting to pull in behind us.

I was not about to drive the van, as I had earlier attempted driving it from Zaxby's to the gas station accross the street and expressed my utter fear of being behind the wheel of it again. Luckily, Amanda stepped up. I navigated her to our other hotel a couple blocks over, the Sheraton.

This hotel would be the home of the majority of our girls on this trip. Twelve of them split into three rooms.

We unloaded their luggage, and waited in the lobby for Aaron to come check them in.

He finally made it over after having waited in a ridiculously long line at the Westin only to now wait in the line at the Sheraton.

I had prepared him for the lines. I knew about the lines. They are just be expected at Passion.

And wouldn't you know, the Sheraton didn't have any of our rooms ready. I'm not sure how that happened when they should know about the chaos that is Passion by now, but alas, we rolled with it.

Aaron then informed me that even the Westin only had three of our six room there ready.

Our room being one that wasn't ready.

We formed a game plan for the rest of the afternoon:

• The girls at the Sheraton would hang in the waiting area provided with their luggage until we could get them in their rooms.
• The others at the Westin were sharing the three rooms amongst themselves for now.
• We had somehow not unloaded our own luggage at the Westin and it needed to be taken there and stored in one the rooms until ours was ready.
• We had to go over to the conference area and register our group.
• Three of the girls who had registered late needed to go with us and had to be gathered from both of the hotels.
• We had to figure out the best place to park our vans for the remainder of the week, and the $22 the hotels were asking per vehicle per day seemed utterly ridiculous.

Aaron, our friend Hannah, and I headed to the parking lot where Amanda had moved the vans. And wouldn't you know it, they were parked in, no lie, three inches of water. Aaron beat us there and sunk his Sperrys and socks all down in it. Hannah and I were then the wiser. But, poor Aaron...he now had soggy shoes and socks for the remainder of the day. It was only 4pm. And. still. raining.

We left one van at the hotel for the time being. Since our rooms weren't ready, it was currently free.

We took the other van and picked up the necessary people to go register. Our friend Joe came down to get our luggage to put in his room until later.

We made it to the Georgia World Congress Center where Passion Registration was located. I sat with the van on the street while everyone else went in with Aaron.

I had no idea how long I would be waiting for them, but thank goodness it was only about 20 minutes.

We then dropped the ones that needed to be back at the Westin and told them we would be back in an hour to take everyone over to the first session of Passion.

We went back to the Sheraton, and Aaron charmed his way into two of the rooms being ready for us.

We sent the girls up to drop their luggage and hurry down so we could go pick up the other group.

We now took both vans and made our way over to Passion. It was 5:30pm at this point. The main session started at 7:30pm. The doors opened at 6:00pm. There were 60,000 people vying for seats in the Georgia Dome.

And of course at this point, it was made aware to us that parking was a nightmare. Did I mention it was still raining? It was.

It took us thirty minutes to find a suitable sketchy parking garage. 

It was the best we could do at that point, and our group hurried to the Georgia Dome.

By some miracle, we ended up with pretty amazing seats.

The first session was awesome.

It made the day's annoyances totally worth it.

But, the day was far from over.

To be continued....