Nitro Circus Premiere and all the connections that led up to it.

Let's back track to last year:

My husband has always been a Travis Pastrana fan. John was still in the Navy last year when he told me about a movie all about Travis Pastrana. Sounds cool. It's only playing in a few theatres for a few days. Awesome! John came home for a few days and we got tickets to go. Great movie. I just fell in love with what a cool, down to earth guy Travis is. Just an all around good guy. So talented in so many ways. Someone you could hang out with. I totally became a fan. There seemed to be at least a few scenes in the movie that were filmed in Utah. Even our governer Jon Huntsman was in the movie. So many connections to Utah.

After the movie, we ran into John's old boss. (from before his Navy days, back when he was a welder) We had been wanting to catch up with him and had been talking about him. We were excited to run into him. So we're talking about the movie and how John's such a huge TP fan. We find out that the producer who is also in the movie lives accross the street from this guy. Apparantly TP hangs out there a good amount and more. John was just in awe! John tells him he's getting out of the Navy soon, and "old boss" asks if he wants a job. Yes! This was about June 2008. Old boss says to keep in touch. He wanted to hire John right then, but John still had till the end of October with the Navy. So on his way home from San Diego, October 30th 2008, he called "old boss" to let him know he was out. He was asked again if he wanted a job. Yes, of course. He started the next week.

So,"Old boss" tells John about these shows/movies about TP and the Nitro Circus gang. The crew was coming to Utah for a premiere of their new movie, "Thrillbillies 2: Double Wide". We looked it up and got tickets. We could go to the premiere and meet TP and the crew. Well for the previous months John had shown our family just about anything you could see TP do. Our kids became fans. So we got tickets for our little family. I was pregnant with the surrotwins at the time and All Day morning sickness was pretty much in full swing. However, I wanted to go and try my best to have an awesome time.

We rode Trax down which was a fun little thing for our family. I don't think we had ever done that, the 5 of us. We didn't get there as early as we wanted to, but still we were there before the show started. There was about 150 chairs and about 500 fans. I could be off, but that was about the ratio. Well I HAD to have a chair to sit in. I could not be on my feet with the twins. So we got hooked up with a few chairs. We were in the last row and couldn't see the screen all that great, but we could see Travis and the group make their way to the front and announce the movie and talk a little bit about it. Woo hoo! Fun movie, we got a little taste of the Nitro Circus craziness. After the movie, we lined up to get autographs. We got free posters, stickers, hats, shirts. We got to meet TP and the crew (Nitro Girl- Jolene Van Vugt, Gregg Godfrey and his wife, Jim DeChamp, Everyone's favorite Redneck-Hubert Rowland, Eric Roner, Scott Plamer) and we got autographs. We might have met more people, and caught a glimpse of others. We didn't really know who everyone was last year. I didn't know we could take cameras, so we just had our cheesy phone cameras. We got one pic with TP and then a small video. I had TP sign my maternity shirt on my belly. Not sure why lol. Someone in the group asked if that was the same as signing a baby. Which led to the conversation of well there's 2 babies, I'm a surrogate, etc.

On the Trax ride home.. Little Jessica kept trading seats. She'd go from sitting by me to sitting by Jeremy or Tristan or Daddy. Well she was changing seats once again (2nd to last stop) and the train took off before she got a chance to sit down and she fell on one of the vents and cut the inside of her lip. So we got to take her to the ER which we usually get to visit every 6 months or so between our kids.

This year we were excited to hear about the Premiere of Nitro Circus Country Fried. We didn't have enough money to take the kids this year, but we were able to get tickets for John and I. We couldn't wait. The Premiere was Friday, November 6th, 2009. John was having issues with his eyes and we weren't sure if he was over his kidney infection. So I got him a Dr. appt. for the same Friday. His appt. was at 1:30. That would give us plenty of time to get to the Premiere at 6:oo when the doors opened. John went to his appt. where they did a few tests and was sent to an eye doctor, who did a few tests and then was sent to the hospital for blood work and an MRI. I met him at about 5:30 at the hospital. They didn't have time to do an MRI, so we had to schedule one for Monday morning. We then got his bloodwork done and we were on our way.

We decided to ride Trax again and got on at about 6:30. We made it to the Premiere at about 7:00, movie was to start at 7:30. We were happy that we had time to meet the crew and get autographs. We walked in and noticed a table set up with some of the crew. We headed in that direction. I started looking around and saw my uncle. Hey cool. Well he was pretty much working the premiere as the photographer. I said hi to him and he said my cousin was there as well. I hadn't seen him in years. I guess they were hired by Andy Bell and had taken all kinds of pictures for Nitro Circus. So cool. We talked about that for a bit.

Somehow we were kind of upfront and at the right place at the right time for just about everything. We got to meet and chat with Jeremy Rawle, Special Greg (TP's cousin) He noticed John's Navy jacket and chatted with him about the Navy. We had everyone sign the arm of my jacket. We met and got autographs from: Jeremy Rawle, Special Greg, Andy Bell, Travis Pastrana, Nitro Girl, Erik Roner and Scott Plamer. Everyone was really cool to just sit and chat with us. They were all so nice and even cooler in person. I think I might have a small crush now on Special Greg, lol. We just seemed to talk to him the longest. Later I was told by a few people I was lucky to get Travis' autograph. Not everyone got to meet him or get his autograph.

I think it was when Travis was at the autograph table, that we got stuck in the crowd. We were trying to get away, and people were trying to get in, but they were pushing in the wrong direction. I couldn't move. I was stuck in a crazy crowd. I was trying to let them know that if they let me out, they could get in...but they just weren't listening. John had to pull me through the crowd.

There was a raffle and John's name was called first.(he won a t-shirt) So funny, I wasn't really surprised, and he was right there by the stage when his name was called. Speaking of being right by the stage, that's where we sat to watch the movie. It's just where we ended up after meeting everyone. Later we noticed there was a bunch of chairs set up. How we missed that, I don't know, but I guess they were all taken anyway. We were up front on the floor. No big deal. A guy was sitting by us with a cup of beer. He had set it down and a girl walked by and knocked it over. So close to getting on me and John and my camera bag. We probably smelled like Beer all night. Ick! I know I could smell it all through the movie. There was just this little puddle of it sitting in front of us. After awhile it evaporated.

After the movie, we just kind of hung out and mingled. We had heard of an after party. I had gotten photos of me with everyone and got pictures of TP, but for some reason, I didn't get a pic of me with TP. I was bummed and wanted to get one, so I hoped we could at the after party. We headed over and waited in line.. it was at the Tower at the Gateway. There were some guys in line behind us that seemed pretty cool. They ended up sitting with us at a table in side. They were nice to talk to and hang out with and they didn't drink or cuss. We got some free Red Bull which was cool. We saw a few people from the NC crew, but no Travis. After about an hour and a half I asked another photographer if he was there or would be there. He had already left. :( I was so bummed I didn't get my picture with him. I did get his autograph though and we did talk to him for a bit. It was a fun night and I didn't want it to end. I wanted it to go on for a few more days.

My youngest daughter was telling me how she wanted to meet Travis Pastrana, and I explained to her that we didn't have enough money to take everyone, plus she wasn't feeling good. She said, "Yeah. That would suck if someone got Travis Pastrana sick!" I said, "Yes it would." lol
Then I was putting the pictures on the computer and she saw one of Nitro Girl. She said, "Is that Travis Pastrana Girl"? SO cute...