Nightwish Decades Tour at the Kalamazoo State Theatre

Two years ago, I had to travel a couple of hours east to Royal Oak to see Nightwish in concert. This year they made a stop in Kalamazoo, just about an hour south.

The Kalamazoo State Theatre is an interesting venue, but I wasn't terribly impressed with it as a concert hall. It has an old-time theatre feel inside, and it appeared that all the seats have a good view. There's a small open area in front of the stage, but most of the place is filled with standard seating. I was up in the second level, where I could see the stage just fine, but felt very cramped. The acoustics weren't great at all, in my opinion, particularly on the first couple of songs. Perhaps I got used to it as the concert went on, or maybe they made some adjustments, since things sounded much better later on. I think I'd enjoy seeing plays at this theatre, but it's definitely not my top choice for concerts.

Fortunately, the band is great and overcame the drawbacks of the venue. Nightwish has great stage presence and got the crowd into the show quickly, which is especially impressive when there's no opening act to warm things up. The stage backdrop was a screen playing various song-specific images, which I thought really added to the experience. They played for almost exactly two hours and I enjoyed every minute of it.

The set list was pulled from all across the Nightwish catalog, all 20+ years of it (thus the "Decades" tour name). I recognized all but one song pretty much right away, but then I've been listening to the band for more than 10 years myself. (That one was Slaying the Dreamer...looked it up later and found it was on Century Child, the one album I haven't listened to very often.) I particularly enjoyed the tracks from Once, including Ghost Love Score and Wish I Had An Angel.

Everyone who attended got a Decades CD to take home, which feels a bit 1990s. Probably that was the point. I may never open mine, since I do all my listening to music digitally these days. Nice to have a souvenir, though.

Irish Jig 5k 2018

It's time to end the Michigan winter hibernation, and get back to running.

OK, so I haven't exactly been hibernating. Even did a run up at Perrin Brewing back in January. But the Irish Jig 5k around St. Patrick's Day always feels like the turning point from winter to spring. This year the calendar cooperated so that the race fell squarely on the holiday.

Parking is a bit of a challenge any time there's a race in East Grand Rapids. I got there about an hour before race time, and got just about the very last spot in the parking structure that's right across the street from the race start. Any later and I'd have had to roam the side streets looking for a spot. Next year I might just go straight to the side streets, since it seems there's more and more people every year.

Good turnout again this year for the race - just under 4000 participants, according to the results page. It was pretty cold, down around freezing at race time, but that's far from the worst we've seen in West Michigan around this time of year. I remember running through a fairly heavy snowfall one year, and nearly slipping on ice another time. No snow, only minor wind, no icy spots...pretty good for mid-March in these parts.

The course around East Grand Rapids has a lot of up and down, but no really big hills. Still, for someone who has been running almost entirely on a treadmill for the last 4-5 months, it's a bit of a challenge. I purposely lined up quite a ways back from the front, as I figured I might be a little slower than normal, and ended up being near the front of the second wave of runners. That worked out nicely since it meant that I didn't have a whole lot of traffic for most of the way, though I did catch up to the tail end of the first wave on the second half of the course. I was pretty happy with my just-under-26-minute time, right about top third for my age group.

So that's the first race of the Triple Crown series done. Looking forward to the Diemer and Reeds Lake runs later on this year.

Michigan Brewers Guild Winter Festival 2018

That was some serious beer.

I went with a group of friends to the Michigan Brewers Guild Winter Festival this past weekend. It was supposed to be a week earlier, but the weather didn't cooperate. They've held this festival in freezing temperatures and blizzards in the past, but this year a rising river forced a delay over flood concerns. (Good thing, too, since I hear there was a couple of feet of water in the area last week.) The weather was awesome this past weekend, though. And the delay didn't thin out the attendees much...it was still plenty crowded!

Our group took a car service up to Fifth Third Ballpark where the festival was held. I highly recommend this approach, if you can get a group together to split the cost. No crowded public transport, no waiting on cabs or Uber, no worries about surge pricing. And you can easily contact them if you happen to lose something, which I did - left my phone in the car on the way home. Got it back easily enough, which probably wouldn't have happened with a bus or cab!

This festival is a big one, with dozens of breweries and hundreds of beers. (At least - the ads actually say thousands!) I tried around a dozen, almost all browns or stouts, and the majority were great. A few weren't, but that's to be expected with such a huge variety. I was particularly impressed with the number of barrel-aged brews. I'm used to thinking of those as premium, limited-edition runs that aren't generally available for long. But they were plentiful at this show!

With so many breweries to choose from, I had to narrow it down somehow. So I tried to focus on places away from Grand Rapids, since I can always visit the nearby ones at other times. There were still plenty of choices! If I had to pick one favorite beer from the afternoon, I think I'd go with One Well Brewing's Scheming and Plotting - a bourbon barrel aged chocolate imperial stout. But honestly, there were probably half a dozen that were so good that it's hard to choose.

It took me a few hours to recover after all that beer, but again, the car service was great for getting out of there after the festival. Spent a while on a considerate friend's couch and ended up no worse for wear. Next year I think I'll have more food - I only ate a bunch of pretzels this time. Which were fine, but a burger or two would have balanced out the beer a bit.

All told, the Winter Festival was a great time and I'm definitely going to keep it in mind for next year. Can't expect the weather to always be as nice as it was, but even if we'd had to deal with snow it would be worth it!