Oh, let me count the ways I dislike Charlottesville. Upon arriving on the campus of UVA, I was informed by the parking attendants that unless I had purchased a parking pass when I bought my tickets, I had to go to the "cash lot," which turned out to be a parking garage that was closed (and apparently did not open until 4pm). After driving around for about 45 minutes, making phone calls to people who were familiar with Charlottesville, and running into Tim while temporarily parked out in front of the box office area, I was able to find an "alternate" parking arrangement (and thankfully my car was neither towed nor ticketed when I got back to it after the show).

I met up with Big Jeff, Ron, Sean, and Lauren at the venue and we headed over to the GA entrance to get in line, which there wasn't much of. There were already some familiar faces there, including Joie and Dawn. I was also surprised to see Jordan, a fan from Ontario whom I met in Chicago in January ‘09. Chicago was his first show, and I remember telling him it certainly wouldn't be his last. He and his friend (or maybe it was his brother) had driven all the way down to Charlottesville from Canada. After the typical "we're going to need you guys to move" bit from the event security, they started pat-downs early and let us move back up to where we had been waiting from the get-go. Eventually, doors opened and we did the whole grab your spot routine. Gojira and Lamb of God did their thing, which seems to make time go by EXTREMELY slow. Big Jeff got into with a security guard over spitting on the floor, which is fairly amusing considering the dude from Lamb of God leaves bodily fluids all over the floor in front of the stage. The same security guy was also talking up UVA football while bad-mouthing Virginia Tech, which didn't really help endear him to Jeff.

"Whatcha ya lookin at sucka???"

After surviving all the waiting, Metallica delivered an extremely solid performance, with setlist highlights including my first time seeing "My Apocalypse" live, which sounded awesome. We were also treated to "Fade to Black," "Blackened," and "Trapped Under Ice" (second time live for me). It was also good to hear "Fuel" live for the only Virginia stop on the tour, and it was also cool having so many Virginia Fuelers down on the floor at the show. Another solid performance in the books. It was a welcome change to be able to drive back to Blacksburg the night of the show and catch some sleep before hitting the road for Charlotte the next morning.

The Good: "My Apocalypse," a lot of Virginia Fuel peeps at the show, running into Jordan again
The Bad: The parking SNAFU at UVA
The Ugly: While we didn't find out about this until the following Monday, a fan went missing from the show, and she still has not been found.