T-Shirts, Toll Roads, and Taylor Swift... Unforgettable

Boooooy-howdy, has it been a while...

FAIR WARNING: THIS ENTRY IS RATHER LENGTHY. YOU MAY NEED TO GET YOUR BOOKMARK READY AND TAKE A COUPLE OF BREAKS WHILE READING IT.

Also, I'd like to send out a special thank-you to Shelby and Cherise for inadvertently providing the encouragement for me to saddle back up and update this blog again. I hope y'all get to read this!

Let's see, where did the inspiration come from this time around?

Well, I think at the base of it all was just a chance to slow down a little bit and come up for air!

Most of the reasons that I haven't written in so long have to do with school school school and a schedule chock-full of all sorts of busy "fun"... Y'all know how that goes.

I found myself sitting on the bus on the way back to my truck after classes the other day, just going over and over all the things I had to get finished for the week. It was one of those moments when you kind of sit back and think, "Man, if I put my nose to the grind stone and work every second of every minute for the next three days, I STILL might not get everything finished on time!"

That thought had just gone through my head when the bus made one of its normal stops on the route and I saw a guy step on wearing a black t-shirt with shiny, scripty letters scrawling "CARPE DIEM" across his chest.

"Ha, yeah, great timing..." I thought, "SEIZE THE DAY." I think the original, direct translation of "carpe diem" is something like, "what will be, will be," but folks have also used it to mean, "live in the moment," and other things like that. But really? That day, at that time?..."Seize the Day"...How fitting.

Well, I that t-shirt put me on a guilt trip. I was worn out at that point in the week, and I reeeally didn't want to seize any more days, or hours, or minutes even...I just wanted to rest for a while.

One thing I've learned, though, is that when I'm at the point where it feels like I can't do any more, can't go any further, can't try any harder, it's good for me in those moments to think about times that I HAVE pushed through, HAVE seized the moment, and HAVE come out on the other side with that sense of accomplishment that makes the effort seem worthwhile.

I leaned my head back against the bus window, closed my eyes, and thought to myself, "All right, Mr. Ty, when was the last time you really 'seized the day'?"

Silence.

Then it started to come back: Last semester, the end of September / beginning of October, after I had been up sick all night and missed the job fair the next day. That was a Tuesday night and Wednesday, and little did I know then that Wednesday night would be the last night with more than 2 1/2 hours of sleep for the next 5 days, but those 5 days would hold one of the coolest adventures and most unforgettable moments up to this point in my life.

Like I said, I pretty much missed the whole engineering job fair that Wednesday because I was sick, but one of the companies I had signed up to talk to called me on Thursday afternoon and asked if I would still be interested in visiting with them.

"Heck yes!" is what I was thinking, but I think the conversation went more like, "Oh, yes sir, that would be great!"

"Ok, son. Good deal. You look at your schedule and see when you might be able to come see us."

This was at about 3:30 on Thursday afternoon. I called him back before 5:00...

"Mr. Janister?"

"Yes sir."

"This is Ty Basye returning your call. How would this Saturday around lunchtime work for you?"

"Sounds great to me, Mr. Basye. Looking forward to seeing you! Just give me a call when you get close to town and I will let you know where we can meet."

Wow, this was spur-of-the-moment, but AWESOME. Turns out, the "town" he was talking about was Kansas City, Missouri... 12 hours away. It also turns out that I'm kind of big on family, and my cousin was to be a Homecoming Queen nominee for her senior class that Friday night, so my "plan" was to watch her participate in the crowning ceremony at halftime of the football game on Friday night and then drive straight to Kansas City to be there in time for my "interview meeting" with Mr. Janister at lunch on Saturday.

Crazy as it sounds, that's exactly what I did, but that's basically just the start of the adventure...

After blazing over toll road after toll road, I met Mr. Janister for lunch at Mama's 39th Street Diner. The "interview meeting" turned out to be more like a "get to know ya" than an actual interview, but I felt like it went really well nevertheless.

We finished our lunch, and then finished our meeting a little bit later. 

Needless to say, on such short notice, I hadn't even booked a hotel room to stay in, and I wasn't about to just turn around and drive 12 hours back to Lubbock on no sleep except a short gas-station-snooze on the way up to KC.

At this point, it was about 1:45 in the afternoon. I started calling hotel after hotel from the list in my trusty little Garmin... All booked. Every one of 'em.

A couple dozen phone calls later, I still hadn't had any luck, and then a cute little voice came over the phone from one of the Residence Inns on the eastern outskirts of Kansas City...

"Residence Inn, this is Danielle. How may I help you?"

"Hi Danielle, I was wondering if y'all (that's right, I said y'all) have any rooms available for tonight, and if you do, how much would it cost to book one?"

"Well let me see; it looks like we still have a couple of rooms open, but those are suites and will run about $128 per night."

Daaah...are you kidding me? I had already tried all the cheap places and they were all booked. I was out of strikes and looking at either spending the night in my truck or finding an IHOP where I could fill up on pancakes and then crash in a booth for a couple of hours before heading back to Lubbock. Neither of those plans sounded particularly appealing.

Who would have thought that TV would come in handy in a situation like this? I've been ardently honing my negotiating skills over the last couple of years by watching countless episodes of Pawn Stars, as well as Priceline commercials starring William Shatner... I had nothing to lose; it was time to take the sparring gloves off, turn on the charm, and put all of that training to use.

"Oh wow. Well Danielle, you sound pretty cool, so here's the deal: I'm looking for something more conducive to a college kid's budget. I'll just be here in town tonight and then I'm heading back home early in the morning."

"Oh really? Where's home?"

"Home is Sweetwater, Texas, but right now I'm going to school at Texas Tech in Lubbock."

"Texas?!? So what brings you to Kansas City, just a weekend roadtrip?"

"Yeah, more or less... I just got finished with what I thought was going to be a 'job interview' sort of thing, and every hotel I've called to find a room has been booked full. What's going on?"

"I've heard there's an art exhibit going on down town and a big concert at Arrowhead Stadium tonight. Are you going to that?"

...No, I wasn't going to a concert. This was news to me, but I figured, "What the heck?" I was 12 hours from home with nothing else scheduled for that night, and going to a concert sounded like fun. The only problem was that I still didn't have an affordable room to stay in! The conversation was going well, though, so I figured I would milk it for all it was worth...

"I hadn't planned on it. Do you know who's playing?"

"I believe it's Taylor Swift. It should be a really good show!"

Pffffft (that was the sound of disappointment). Taylor Swift... not really a big fan, and a stadium full of 12-year-old girls screaming their bloody-murder heads off didn't exactly sound like an evening of fun to me, but I didn't want to kill the good vibe... I still had a hotel room to book.

"Hm, sounds interesting, but at the moment my main concern is finding an affordable place to stay tonight," I said with as much "suave" as I could muster.

That snapped her back to reality, but I was on Danielle's good side now. "Oh yeah! We're still trying to book you a room, aren't we? How much are you thinking for your 'college kid budget'?"

Suddenly, the voice of the Priceline Negotiator was in my head, "Naming your own price, are you?"
'Yeah, they want $128 a night. I'm going $110.'
"Ehhh, you wuss."
'What?' I ask.
"Go lower," it whispers.
'$90,' I counter.
"Mamby-Pamby."
'$75?'
"Cup-Cake."
'But I want a good room!'
"It's a guaranteed suite, Mama's Boy..."
'.....50 bucks.'
"Now you're negotiating!"

The gloves were off; Danielle didn't know what was about to hit her when I poured on, "Ideally, about 45 or 50 bucks since I'm only staying tonight."

"Weeeell, I don't know if I can do that," she answered, "but let me make a couple of calls and see what I can do for you."

She had me on hold, so I sat there listening to the radio in my truck thinking, "Ha, there's no way, but it was worth a shot."

Then she was back on the line, "Sir, it's your lucky day. My boss said we could let you book one of the suites for $60 just for tonight."

I felt like yelling, "BINGO," right into the phone, but I was on a roll so I played it cool. "Sold," I said, "You've got a deal."

Then she gave me instructions on how to get there, got my name and billing address so her boss could be sure to get his 60 bucks one way or the other, and in no time I was on my way to the Residence Inn.

2:15 pm. As soon as I opened the door and walked in, the receptionist looked up from behind the desk and said, "You must be Ty. I guess you found the place alright?"

She's lucky it wasn't someone else or she would have looked a little silly, but I guess she looked at me and saw a certain swagger, which in Texas is called "walking." Ha, sure, that was it... Actually, I'm really not sure how she knew it was me, but it really didn't matter, so I just went with it... "You must be Danielle. And yes, your directions got me here with no trouble atall." (She did give good instructions, but I didn't think she needed to be informed that GPSs are handy little buggers all by themselves.)

The smirk on her face said she was either pleased with my answer or thought it was cheesy, but she seemed happy either way when she said, "I'm not sure how you did it or what got into my boss, but you got one heck of a deal. Here are your keys for your room, and you can just leave them here at the desk when you check out in the morning. Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you."

Well, that made me feel like a winner. I was 2-for-2. Blazing solo overnight trip to make it in time for an interview - Check. Track down a decent room at an affordable price - Check. I scooped up the keys, and a hot shower and a nap were all I was concerned with as I said, "Hopefully I'll only need one key, but thanks for your help, Danielle; you've been a lifesaver," and made my way to my room. When I got there, this is what I found:

The thing had a full kitchen with wood floors and a King-size bed! For 60 bucks?.. Cha-ching!

I took a shower and hopped up on the bed to relax and watch TV for a bit. I had no intention of going to a Taylor Swift concert, but just for kicks I pulled out my laptop and logged onto the Residence Inn's wireless network to see if there were any cheap seats still available at the show.

To my surprise, at 3:00 pm there were still about 10 seats left up in the nosebleed sections of Arrowhead Stadium, ranging anywhere from $20 to $65. The gates were to open at 4:00, and the show was to start at 7:00. "Eh, it's 20 bucks, Arrowhead is just down the road, and the seat is at the top of stadium. Nobody will ever even know you're there, and if they do, they'll never see you again, so you might as well go," I thought to myself, so I went about purchasing my ticket to see Taylor Swift. If I had only known...

On the webpage where I purchased my ticket, there was an information box that said something like, "Get the most out of your Taylor Swift experience." It went on to explain how to go about getting passes to the meet-and-greets or where to find the tour bus (*buses...she has like four THOUSAND of them, as we from Lubbock who saw when her tour came to the United Spirit Arena know).

None of that really intrigued me. Taylor Swift + meet-and-greet = mobs of little girls = NOT somewhere I particularly wanted to be. There waaas one little bit of information that caught my eye, though. The article said that at a certain point in the show, Taylor's mom, Andrea, would go stand by the sound board until that part of the show was over, and if there was something you wanted to give to Taylor, people were usually able to walk by and give it to her mom at that point in the show. Apparently security didn't interfere with most people doing this as long as it looked like they were headed to or from their seats.

This got the wheels turning in my head. I didn't have anything I wanted to give Taylor, but I knew that one of my friends back in Lubbock was (is) a huuuuge T-Swift fan, and I knew that Taylor's "Speak Now" tour would be headed to Lubbock in a couple of weeks. I figured that if I could somehow make it possible for Taylor Swift to give a shout-out to my friend at her concert in Lubbock, or even give her a call or something, I would forever be on my friend's list of heroes.

So what did I do? I sat down at the little table you see in the picture above and wrote Taylor a letter about how sweet my friend was, how hard she works and what a good sister she is, and how excited she gets about any and all things "Taylor Swift." I went on to explain that if Taylor would only give her a call, or give a shout-out at her concert, how awesome that would be and that it would probably be the highlight of my friend's whole year.

I had every intention of just finding Scott (Taylor's dad) before the concert or Andrea during the concert and handing that letter to one of them, but that's not what happened...

I got to the stadium early to scope things out, and after mingling with the dedicated dads, boyfriends, and chauffeurs who all seemed to be clumping together (caveman voice, "men stick together") to avoid getting swept away by the throngs of fanatical teenage girls, they finally opened the gates and let us in.

I soon found out that in order to go down to the ground level, you had to have a ticket to a seat down there, and you had to have a pink wristband that showed security you were allowed to be there.
I didn't have a floor seat.
I didn't have a pink wristband.
Plan foiled.

Crap. Now what was I going to do? Since I had never been to Arrowhead, I figured I would I wander around the stadium for a while and see what there was to see.
I found a couple of information desks and chatted it up with some of the friendly event staff people who asked if I needed help with anything. "Well, not unless you can help me meet Taylor after the show," I would tease them, to which they would laugh and then tell me about different things to see in the stadium if I wanted to.

After a couple of leads of that sort, I found myself in the Kansas City Chiefs Hall of Fame, near another one of the many information desks. "Sweet! Guy-stuff, something I can actually find interesting until the concert starts," I was thinking.

I browsed through the bronze busts of all the KCC hall-of-famers, read all kinds of different plaques, and eventually made my way over close to the information desk, which was surrounded by people asking who-knows-what. Only this wasn't any ordinary information desk... This was like the "Information Headquarters," and one of the ladies behind the desk in a business suite wore a fancy name tag with "Event Director" engraved in it above her name. She wasn't answering questions; she was supervising. This lady looked like somebody I needed to talk to.

I made myself visible and when she spotted me, she motioned for me to to make my way through the mob of inquisitive T-Swift fans to go speak with her.
The crowd parted as I strode up to the counter, past several lines of fans waiting to ask the ladies questions.... The noise even died down a little.
Things seemed a bit tense.

"What can I help you with, sir?" she asked. This lady was one of our sisters-from-a-darker-mother, two inches taller than me, with a weave down to her waist that looked like it had kept a loom in business for quite some time, and I was pretty sure that she could have body-slammed me THROUGH that desk if she would have felt the need to.

"Well ma'am, I'm looking to get this letter to Taylor. This is why..." I explained the situation in the smoothest Texas drawl I could manage, "and you look like someone who could make it happen, so do you think you could help me out?" Mind you, this conversation took place in front of a significant number of fans, so there's no way she could say "yes" to one request like this without expecting to get 100 more. She wasn't nearly as mean as she looked, though, and once I got the conversation rolling, she and the other ladies working the desk thought I was just the sweetest young man for making such an effort to do something special for one of my friends.

After Ms. "Event Director" looked through her schedule to see if there were any hints she could give me, they all took a short break from the mob to tease me a little and ask a few more questions, and she finally sent me away with a laugh and a grin and a, "Hun, I'm sorry there wasn't more I could do to help you. Good luck, though!"

It was almost time for the concert to start, so as I wandered back through the Hall of Fame, I decided it was time to make my way back to my seat. When I emerged, I noticed a stairway that started at the covered area where I was standing and descended through the bottom section of seats to the corner of the stage where the performers would go back to the locker rooms. This section was roped off and people weren't allowed in it because one of the platforms for the show's fireworks was set up in the middle of it.


I had also noticed earlier in the day that I was dressed similar to the members of the event staff, and if I walked around like I was on a business errand, the other event staffers would nod, or wave, or at the very least not ask me any questions. I was wearing my nice jeans and boots, black Polo shirt, and my black Oakleys pushed up on my head where my hair was cut pretty short.

I still didn't have a ticket to a floor seat.
I still didn't have a pink wristband that would let security knoooow...
Waaaait a minute, who was in charge of where people were allowed to be?
III looked just like a security guard, only without the walkie-talkie.
A new plan began to form in my head:


I would wait until the end of the show, walk down to the corner of the stage in the roped-off section marked "Event Staff Only," and when the performers made their exit, I would ask the first person I could get the attention of if they would give my letter to Taylor...simple as that.


Well, it wasn't as simple as that, but it was definitely more fun!


I went back to my seat and watched the first half of the show with some really neat folks and their little kids I met in the seats next to me. Then, without really telling them where I was going, I just left and made my way down to the walkway I had spotted earlier. I didn't want them to know anything or have any connection to me if somehow I got in trouble... It was all for the kids, you know?


I went to the handrail that was roped off with caution tape and played the part of an event staff person on security detail for the second half of the show. I answered questions from wandering T-Swift fans, allowed people to take pictures from a designated vantage point beside the stage as long as they stayed behind the caution tape, and chatted with a couple of other security guards about how it would be nice to go get some coffee in the break room (it was getting cold out there) or get to go home at a decent hour.


I was on my game.


Then it was time. The fireworks started booming, the smoke and lasers fired up, and the grand finale was coming to an end. Pretty soon the performers would make their way back to the locker rooms, but I wasn't sure if it was completely safe to go down past the fireworks' stand. 


Then I saw the "real" pyrotechnician make his way down to the fireworks behind the stage and start unplugging things. I had the official look, and I figured I'd help him out, so I went down to the set-up in front of me, unplugged the cords that I could see and rolled them up, and then went and put them with the other cords he had already rolled up.


"Thank you, sir. I appreciate that," he said.


"No problem, man, I've got you!" I replied, and at that point I was at the end of the walkway, right at the corner the performers had to walk around to go back to the locker rooms, but there was a problem: most of the performers had already bolted off the stage to go get somewhere warm, and there weren't many left for me to talk to...

Then I saw her. Taylor Swift, walking down the ramp on the back of the stage, meeting her parents who had a blanket waiting for her... heading my way.

This was it. I didn't have time to get nervous; she was five steps away and her body guards had just materialized out of the equipment boxes behind her.

I caught her eye and held her gaze as she walked up. Three steps...Two steps...One step...

"Taylor, will you take this and read it?" I held the letter out to her.

She stopped, untangled her hand from her blanket, and took the letter from my hand, "Oh my gosh! Thank you so much!"

"You're welcome," I answered, and the next couple of seconds were a blur as a bodyguard stepped between us and I turned to walk away from Taylor Swift. She continued around the corner, down the tunnel that would take her to her dressing room. There were steps at my feet... I started climbing,  climbing up the steps that would take me out of Arrowhead Stadium to my pickup.

I had done it. I had gotten my letter to Taylor Swift. Not to Taylor's mom, but TO Taylor Swift...handed it to her, spoke to her, and she had actually looked me in the eye and responded!

Two sentences. She only said seven words to me, but those were seven AWESOME words as far as I was concerned. I was as giddy as one of those concert-crazed little girls, but once again, I had to play it cool as I walked to my truck.

Once I got there, I had to call my brother and a couple of friends to tell them what had just happened. I'm sure thousands of little girls have given or sent letters to Taylor Swift, and thousands more have said hi to her and she to them before or after concerts, but I doubt any of those little girls went all "mission impossible" and played the part of a security guard and pyrotechnician at one of Taylor's concerts!

Getting out of the parking lot took forever. Taking all the traffic-jammed detours and designated routes away from the stadium extended the journey back to my hotel by over an hour.

Sunday, 1:30 am: I got back to my room. Sunday, 4:00 am: I woke up, showered, and headed toward Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, to go to church with my old youth minister and his family at 9:00 am. We went to lunch together after worship service, and then I hit the road home.

It's almost eight hours from Broken Arrow to Lubbock, so I had plenty of time to think about what had taken place over the last 40 hours or so. During that time I tried to make sense of, and take lessons from, all that had happened. I had jumped on the opportunity to set up, and make it to, an "interview" after a roadtrip for the ages. I had gotten a *nice* hotel room for less than half of what the hotel would have normally charged. I had written a letter to none other than TAYLOR SWIFT and played the part of a security guard and pyrotechnician, allowing myself the chance to HAND that letter to her. I had run on minimal sleep and made it to church on Sunday with some of my favorite people in the world who I hadn't seen in a really long time. And after more toll roads than I care to drive over ever again, I was on pace to get back to Lubbock at a decent hour on Sunday evening.

As a matter of fact, the sun saw me rolling into Lubbock as it set over west Texas that evening, and I made it home safely.

Yep, that was the last time I felt like I had really "seized the day." It was actually three days or so, all rolled into what seemed like one loooong one because of the lack of sleep, but I had pretty much taken advantage of every opportunity that presented itself to me, and had even done so with a little bit of "style."

A grin crept its way onto my face as I opened my eyes and got off the bus that day. The best part about it was that that adventure had been 100% real. It wasn't a dream. I had pushed through and "made it happen" over the course of that weekend in September, I would make it happen again by the end of this week in March, and I'll make it happen in the future if I find my back against the wall.

After all of that story, it would probably make sense that it bothers me when I don't make the most of an opportunity. How is it that I can walk straight up to Taylor Swift under threat of being tackled, tasered, or arrested by bodyguards and ask her to read a letter, but I have a hard time asking someone on the bus at Tech how her day is going? How can I negotiate a deal that lets me stay in a super-nice hotel room for half of what it would normally cost to stay there, but I have a hard time visiting with my friends about things that matter, like friendship and faith?

This is what this whole blog spot has been driving at. This was meant as an encouragement to take hold of that boldness within yourself when you don't think you can do it anymore. Seize the day. Seize the moment. Make something of it.

The more I thought about what that guy's shirt said, the more I wanted to apply what I was thinking to my spiritual walk, and the more this passage of scripture came to mind:


"And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone."


This passage comes from Colossians 4: 3-6, and the more I read it, the more it motivates me. I hope it will do the same for you.


If you made it through this whole thing, thank you for taking the time out of your day. I hope it's been a blessing, or at least kind of funny. You might want to go ice your eyeballs now, though. I really doubt the next entry will be even close to this long, and there's no telling when the next one will be.


Until next time, God bless and have a great rest of the weekend!


In Him,
-)Ty(-