BAM! Climbing and more in the South and Beyond: Jetsettin' to the Beach

As a child of the early 80s, you really had 2 choices: bad English new wave music like the Smiths, the Cure, and Duran Duran ... OR ... the new wave of British heavy metal like Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, and Iron Maiden. For anyone who knows me it should be obvious that I chose the later, even rocking some long stringy hair (all pictures of this have been destroyed!). Over the years I've managed to see all of my old heroes in concert with one notable exception: Iron Maiden. I'd pretty much given up on ever seeing them as despite a busy worldwide touring schedule, Bruce and the boys never seem to come to America anywhere near Atlanta. Imagine my surprise when after a long and trying day Theresa surprised me with tickets to see them in Ft. Lauderdale. I was psyched!

We flew down early Saturday morning and headed to the beach.

We wandered up and down the beach and grabbed lunch, spotting several Iron Maiden t-shirts among the beachgoers. The ever-present Florida clouds rolled in for the afternoon so we headed to the Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida. We were pretty impressed with the casino, much better than the Hard Rock outside Tampa that we visited several years ago. After a few quick hours of poker we scurried back to our hotel for a dip in the pool and a shower. I have to mention the hotel, the Sheraton Suites in Plantation. It's a beautiful hotel with really nice, spacious suites for a good price. Here's the odd part, it's attached to an abandoned mall! I don't mean a strip mall, either, I mean a full-on 2 story shopping mall right out of zombie movies (seems to be a trend where we stay!).

The anchor store: Zombies are Us

The Food Court has seen better days. The cars are parked for the hotel

That night the show was awesome, well worth the years I had spent waiting to see them. Theresa did an awesome job getting great seats where we could watch the ever-changing sets and backdrops, a hallmark of Iron Maiden's stage show. Bruce Dickinson still sounds great despite being on the plus side of 50 and all the guys had great energy and put on quite the spectacle.

Rockin' the Trooper, one of the show's highlights

Eddie joins the band on stage

After the show we had a minor epic getting a cab but eventually Theresa flagged one down and we headed back to the Hard Rock. It was jumping on Friday night when we arrived and still going fairly strong at 3:30AM when we caught a cab back to the Sheraton (aka Zombieland).

The next morning we needed to complete our beach experience with some good seafood. We headed to Tark's, a local seafood dive with great food. Everything tasted fresh and awesome and we ate way too much.

I think we ate everything fried on the menu

After lunch we had time for a couple of hours of beach fun before sprinting to the airport. A super fun, super hectic weekend that packed a lot in to a short period of time. Thanks Chief!

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I found some random pictures that I'll post here for lack of a better place. ;)