If there's one thing I believe, I will see you somewhere down the road again...

**Never Gone Tour - August 16, 2005 - Cincinnati, OH - Riverbend Music Center**

In my last post about my past BSB Adventures, I discussed the bleak, sad time in my life where BSB were put onto the back burner.  It was the Never Gone tour that rekindled my addiction.

When Never Gone was released, I was home for the summer from Ball State University.  I don't think I bought the album the day it was released, but it was shortly after that.  It was also at this time that I bought The Hits: Chapter 1 album as well.  It was not long after the album was released that the tour began.  The only problem was that I did not have anyone to go with.  I had lost touch with my Backstreet friends from high school when I went away to school and I really did not want to go with myself.

Megan and I during my wedding - June 23, 2007

Luckily, that spring I had rushed a Philanthropic Sorority, Epsilon Sigma Alpha.  I discovered that there was someone who was a Backstreet fan, although Hanson is her number one favorite.  Megan and I made plans to attend a show in Cincinnati together, as that was the closest show to Muncie.

At the time, I was living in Muncie and commuting to Indianapolis every day for my elementary education practicum classes.  Megan lived in Anderson.  The day of the show was my first day in the classroom for set up but the day after the concert was going to be my first day with a classroom full of 30 first graders in an urban school setting.  Not sure what I was thinking but I was not going to miss this opportunity.  I had already made the mistake of letting BSB out of my life for several years and they were not going to be back in my life.

Indianapolis to Anderson - 44 miles - 57 minutes

Anderson to Cincinnati - 142 miles - 2 hours, 38 minutes

So, I made the trip from Indy to Anderson.  Megan was going to actually be doing the driving from Anderson to Cincinnati since I was going to have to be up so early the next morning for school.  I was able to leave school at a time in which we would have been getting to Cincinnati right on time.

We are driving along and run into some road construction.  We slow down a bit but we are still making good time.  I decided to check out my cell phone and realize that the time had changed!  Crap...we had forgotten that Ohio was on Eastern Time!  You may be saying to yourself...isn't Indiana on Eastern Time as well?  Ha!  You must not know about "Time In Indiana."  Until 2006, the majority of Indiana did not observe Daylight Savings Time and was on Eastern Standard Time.  However, because they did not observe DST, sometimes during the year we had the same time as Central and at other times, Eastern.  At the point of this concert, Cincinnati was an hour ahead of what we had planned.  We were going to be late!

Megan stepped on it, traveling at very high speeds...through construction.  Does anybody know what this leads to?  Running off the side of the road.  I thought we were going to die!  So, we did slow down a little but were probably still going over the speed limit.  Then, the directions had us go into Kentucky, just to come right back into Ohio.  It did not make a lick of sense.

When we got there, the opening act was on.  Actually it may have been the second opening act but I don't know since we were late.  Anyway, the opening act that we saw was Seminole County....we hated them.  Not sure what the group was thinking because their music was nothing like what we like in the Backstreet Boys music.  I came there to see pop music, not punk rock.


Our seats were not the greatest but we were just happy to be there.  It would have been better if one of us would have actually had a camera.  That's right, I have NO photos from this concert.  Later, Tammy would give me a CD of the photos she took at all of her Never Gone concerts but none of them were specifically from our show.  And since I took no photos, it is a little harder for me to remember parts of it.

I think my most memorable moment was during "Siberia" when confetti came raining down and it looked like it was truly snowing.  It was such a cool effect and I know I have expressed in this blog several times about how much I love "Siberia."

I knew at that moment, that if I was going to get back into the Backstreet Boys then there was one thing I was going to have to do...remember my camera at all other future events!  So far, so good.

So since I don't have very specific memories from this tour, what were some of your favorite moments?