| Aaron in Reno, NV June 26, 2004 |
| I'm amazed that Debi and I got to see Aaron at all on Saturday, let alone have a private conversation with him. There was a SERIOUS lack of information about this Reno performance and we had basically given up hope of it even happening until Debi's sister, who lives near Reno, found all the information we needed just 4 days before the show. Aaron was set to perform at the opening ceremony of a volleyball festival -- what that entailed, we had no idea, but we were going to give it a shot! Around the beginning of June I had contacted Aaron's Fan Club trying to find information about this Reno performance. Unfortunately they couldn't tell me anything, but they did volunteer meet & greet passes IF there was still a show, which no one knew at that time. The day before the performance was supposed to happen, Debi and I each got emails from Aaron's tour manager basically saying, "Sorry for the confusion. I'll give you tickets for the show and escort you to meet Aaron after." Sounds damn good to me! We were hoping everything would work as planned, but it didn't. Hitch #1: It took us 7 hours to get to Reno! (It *should* take only 4) Luckily we went a day early so we weren't in a real hurry to be somewhere. It was just a long, tedious drive. Thank god Debi knows the way so well! Hitch #2: We didn't know the time of Aaron's performance. Everyone we asked told us something different. On Saturday morning we were told that the ceremony started at 6 pm and Aaron would go on stage around 8/8:15 pm and perform for about 45 minutes. At least then we knew it was an actual SHOW rather than just 2 or 3 songs. Hitch #3: There were no tickets waiting for us at will call. Apparently the ticket people had NO information from Aaron's people. Luckily Debi had printed out the email saying that we were supposed to have tix waiting for us, and the nice ticket people let us in. For all they know, the email could have been fake, but they trusted us. :) Hitch #4: The seating was general admission... in a football stadium. Talk about a disaster waiting to happen! We walked in and found out that the stage was on the 50 yard line facing one side of the stadium, so of course that's where we wanted to sit. However, the first 30 ROWS were blocked off for the volleyball players, leaving just the top 5 rows for their families. (I think we were the ONLY people there to see Aaron rather than volleyball) So we found a spot in the first open row around the 45 yard line -- it was faaaaaaaaar away from the stage, but it was as close as we were allowed to be. Hitch #5: The "opening ceremony" consisted of nearly 10,000 teenage girls parading into the stadium Olympic style, which took AN HOUR. A solid hour of watching people walk. NOT FUN. Hitch #6: Because there were no tickets waiting for us at will call, we figured that Aaron's tour manager had just flaked out, and we doubted that the meet & greet was going to happen either. During the time when all the girls were walking in, we saw a woman seating some non-volleyball girls in the front row right in front of the stage. Guessing that this woman could be Aaron's tour manager (we had NO IDEA who we were supposed to be looking for), I set off on a mission to track her down, leaving Debi to unfortunately continue watching the procession of people into the stadium. I went back toward the entrance to try to get onto the field where we saw the woman, but it was blocked off. I turned around and saw Aaron's dancer Natasha walking a few feet behind me under the bleachers. It took a couple of seconds to register who she was, but then I saw Amanda walking a few steps behind her, and looking ahead of them, I spotted Aaron! He was wearing a black t-shirt and a black baseball cap, totally inconspicuous, no one even noticed him. I was soooo tempted to just call out his name, but I figured that wouldn't be a good idea in a stadium filled with thousands of unchaperoned teenage girls. So I just watched to see where they went, which was the women's locker room in the far corner of stadium. I called Debi on her cell, filled her in on what I saw, and hung out by the bleachers for a while to see if there was any Carter action going on. Nothing. After about 15 minutes I headed back to my seat and watched the rest of the girls entering. Hitch #7: Aaron went on stage earlier than expected, 7:30, which really wasn't a problem for us because we didn't want to sit through any more volleyball theatrics than we needed to. Aaron and his 4 dancers (Natasha, Amanda, Nick, & Chris) were driven on a golf cart from the women's locker room in the corner of the stadium to the stage in the center. Aaron of course jumped off the golf cart before it stopped and made a spectacle of himself posing on the field behind the stage. Based on what I've read online, I think everything about the show was the same as his Staten Island performance a few weeks ago. Same outfits and same songs, including Bounce, NTYNTO, MFR, Shaq, One Better, Saturday Night, Aaron's Party, LIUTM, Go Jimmy Jimmy, AE, TATG, etc. The stage was about as tall as Aaron and was at least 10 feet away from the crowd, but that didn't stop him from jumping off it many, many times. We were pleased to hear LOTS screams for Aaron (before the ceremony we overheard quite a few people talking who didn't know who he was), although at least 1/3 of the crowd left during his set too. Good news for us though -- we moved up about 15 rows. lol Aaron's performance lasted between 45 minutes and a hour. He sounded and looked great. Love the choreography, especially for AE and MFR. We probably could have video taped the WHOLE THING because there was absolutely no security and there were lots of family members taking pix and videos of the volleyball girls. Damn it for not knowing in advance how easy it would have been! Hitch #8: After the show the stadium started to clear out and we looked for someone near the stage holding a sign with our names. (that's what we were told to do) Nothing. Aaron and the dancers hung out for 5 or 10 minutes behind the stage before riding the golf cart back to the locker room. But still no one looked like they were waiting for us. Great. We got screwed. We made our way over to the locker room, where there were about 100 teenage girls screaming for Aaron to come out. At first we thought he was going to leave right away because there was a van parked right outside the locker room looking like a get-away vehicle. But in a few minutes a volleyball official got in the van and drove it away. We knew then that Aaron wasn't leaving anytime soon because he was trapped with no way out. lol Unfortunately we still didn't know who we were supposed to be looking for to get us in the meet & greet. After a few minutes Aaron's dancers started coming out, and Debi and I decided that maybe we should chat with them to see if they could point us in the direction of the tour manager. I chatted with Nick for a minute (have I mentioned that he's gorgeous? lol) and then we approached Amanda, who was momentarily standing by herself. After talking about Aaron's past tours, I asked her about the person we were supposed to be looking for, and she knew who we were talking about immediately, took our names and Debi's email, and went to find the tour manager for us. I love Amanda!!! Without her help, we would have gotten nowhere. While we were waiting for her to come back, we also chatted with Chris. He said that they're dancing with Aaron through September but then after that no one knows -- Aaron's recording right now and they don't know if another tour is going to happen soon or not. While I talked with Chris more about dancing and choreography, Amanda returned WITH Aaron's tour manager! Debi and I were immediately escorted past the screaming teenage girls into the locker room. Before we even knew what was going on, we turned a corner and Aaron was sitting right in front of us. I was following Debi and didn't even know what was going on until she said, "Hi Aaron!" and there he was! Our conversation is a jumbled mess in my mind, but basically Debi and I had Aaron all to ourselves for 5-10 minutes. When we walked in Aaron practically jumped out of his chair and greeted us with huge hugs like we were his best friends. (Debi got a kiss too lol) He told us that he hadn't seen us for a while, and we were like, "Oh please, you don't remember us! You say that to everyone." But he got all offended and said that OF COURSE he remembered us. (If he didn't, he's a very convincing liar lol) Debi said that we were the people who gave him a 49ers jersey in Alabama, and Aaron said, "I know!" like he couldn't believe we doubted his memory. Then I mentioned the video tape that he allegedly has of us following his bus through Alabama and Georgia in a red mustang, and at first he looked confused but then the lightbulb went on (or he faked it well) and he was like, "OH YEAH, I have that." Scary if it's true! Debi asked Aaron about his ribs and if he was hurt, and he said that yes he hurt himself at another show jumping or something but that he was fine now. We both commented that with the way he was jumping off the stage earlier that night, he didn't look hurt at all. Aaron said he was purposely jumping all crazy and basically throwing himself off the stage. Aaron was really chatty the whole time we were with him, and in an odd twist he asked us, "So what you been up to?" like he knew all about our lives. Did he really expect us to start talking about work and our families and reality? lol Debi answered, "Following you," and I said something about him not touring for a while and us anticipating another tour and cds and movies. His tour manager was on the other side of the room busying himself with something and said, "We're doing it all!" I asked Aaron if he was done filming Fat Albert, and he said that he was and that it was a lot of fun. Debi said that he sounded really good during his performance, and Aaron was like, "Did I?" lol I told him that it was cool to see him perform older songs like MFR again, and he asked us if we liked the new ones too. Debi said Saturday Night was awesome and asked if he really wrote it, and he answered, "All by myself." He was so proud! Aaron's tour manager and a couple of his other "handlers" had been walking in and out of the room because they were trying to quiet the chaos of the girls outside, and somewhere in there his tour manager told Aaron to put on a shirt. (He had been shirtless with a towel around his neck) That's when Aaron walked across the room and we saw the tattoo on his back. You could have knocked us over with a feather we were so stunned, too stunned to say or do anything unfortunately. In hindsight we should have asked about it, but we literally had no brain functions at the time. As I said before, it's HUGE covering the whole area between his shoulder blades. The design looked like a sun with a skull in the middle, but we were so shocked that we could be mistaken. It wasn't reddish or scabbing, so we figure he's had it a least a month, possibly much much more. I know I'll never get that vision out of my mind. My memories of the rest of our time with Aaron are mixed up and have no logical order. The girls outside had been lined up for an impromtu autograph signing and Aaron asked us if we wanted to hang out and take pictures of him with his fans. lol It was random. His tour manager asked, "Don't you want to take personal pictures?" and all three of us were like, "Oh yeah!" We took out our pictures from Vegas last year for Aaron to sign, and he studied Debi's really closely. She said, "That was when you had pink hair," and Aaron responded, "What was I thinking?!" lol We both said, "We were wondering that too!" When he looked at my picture he said, "What was I looking at?" and I explained that there were lots of cameras and he and I didn't look at the same one. Then I told him not to do that again! lol There was only one camera this time so it wasn't a problem. Debi was ready to take our picture and Aaron GRABBED me and I think he said, "Come here" -- I know he said something but I was too flustered by the way he was holding me to pay attention. He's never done that before! Of course I couldn't do anything but throw my arms around him in return. lol The boy still squeezes TIGHT, and he smelled really good. I NEVER notice smells, but I definitely remember Aaron smelling like cologne or aftershave or something else very nice. Debi even told him that he smelled good when it was her turn for a picture with him. lol As I was getting the camera ready, Aaron told her, "Come here baby." I remember thinking, "OMG Aaron just called her baby, she's gonna die!" lol I think that's one of his new favorite words -- baby -- he said it to both of us a few times. Is it wrong to swoon over a term of endearment from a 16 year old? lol I asked Aaron for a favor -- if he would sign something for my 5 year old cousin Isabella. He was like, "Of course!" and I told him that she was going to kill me for being there without her. I gave him the Most Requested Hits cd cover and he signed it to her personally. I'm planning on giving it to her tomorrow -- hopefully she's excited for the autograph and not mad that I didn't take her with me. At some point Debi asked Aaron if he was living in Florida or LA. He said that he was spending time both places and staying with his brother sometimes. I think this is the only time Nick has ever come up when we've talked with Aaron, and it was kind of weird. Aaron's comment about "my brother" was about NICK FREAKIN CARTER! Kind of difficult to wrap my brain around the reality of it all. I'd stopped thinking of Aaron as "Nick's brother" a long time ago. I made a comment about how it was good that they could spend time together since they're usually so busy, and Aaron said that Nick's "been doing a lot of nothing!" I guess making butterfly cards for Paris doesn't count? lol Let's see, what else did we talk about... We told him that he needs to come back to the Bay Area again soon, and he said he's really trying to get back to "Cali" as he called it and joked that he only has one state to go because he was almost there being in Reno. I think that's when the tour manager brought in some little kids from the fan club to meet Aaron. We said our goodbyes, and Aaron gave us HUGE hugs and kisses, telling us that he'd see us soon. He also said, "Tell Isabella I say hi." Awwwww! He even remembered her name! How sweet! Debi and I started to gather up our stuff and chatted for a minute with one of the handlers, a Transcon employee. Aaron finished with the kids and grabbed his sharpie and a stack of headshots to take outside for the autograph signing. Before we walked outside we waved goodbye again, and he grabbed us for hugs and kisses again! Debi told him that she misses him, and he said, "I miss you too." He was extra affectionate that night, not that we minded at all. ;) Even though almost everything didn't happen as planned, it really couldn't have turned out any better. Getting the opportunity to have an actual conversation with Aaron was wonderful. I only wish it could have lasted longer. (Selfish, I know) In hindsight there are so many more things we wish we would have said or asked. I didn't even tell him it was my birthday! *slapping myself* But Aaron was as talkative and as friendly as ever. In my mind he's not "Nick's brother" or even "the manchild" anymore -- he's just Aaron. He made us feel like we really were his friends, and hopefully we'll get to talk with him again in the future. |
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| When we walked outside we realized what had been going on while we were with Aaron -- security had lined up all of the girls who were waiting (about 50) and Aaron was going to come out to sign autographs. They were allowed to take pictures of him but not with him, although he broke that rule a lot. lol We hung around for a few minutes to watch and snap some pictures. Aaron was very friendly, giving lots of smiles and hugs and kisses. (Guess we weren't the only ones!) After our rolls of film were finished we said goodbye to Aaron and his tour manager again. Debi told Aaron to take care, and he said, "You too!" After the signing was over he hopped in a white limo and headed for his hotel. In all the commotion apparently Aaron told a few of the teenage girls what hotel he was staying at, information which made its way through the crowd quickly. We went to the hotel and ended up seeing Aaron's tour manager again, but no sign of Aaron. A little after midnight we decided to end our search and our Aaron-filled evening. |