I am quite possibly writing this from beyond the grave.

Okay, I should explain.

So, we're in Hilo, right? And from the time we landed, it had been raining. Rain, rain, rain. It rained more in twenty-four hours than it had rained in Albuquerque all year, and that might not be stretching it. It was friggin' wet.

On our first day, we reacted to the rain the way you'd expect. We walked around in it, we watched it fall, we took pointed breaths and exclaimed over how A) green and B) fresh everything was.

By day two, we were rained out. Day two. We're wimps.

So I turned to Adam, and said off-handedly, "y'know what we could do? We could just find a flight, go to Honolulu and catch the Pearl Jam show tonight."

I was kidding. Kidding. We'd found out about the show after we'd booked the vacation and there had been grumbling about paying for a room we weren't going to sleep in, and mutterings about rental cars and Ten Club tickets and promises to download the boot, but we weren't going. It had been decided. We weren't going.

It was raining in Hilo.

Forty-five minutes after I made the suggestion, Adam had bought concert tickets, booked two seats on a puddle jumper and had started harassing rental agents in Honolulu.

I was kidding.

He wasn't. We were on a flight to Honolulu within the hour.

A football game and participants in next week's marathon had wiped out the rental agencies, but we were able to rent a blue minivan out from under a trio of German surfers. Believe the Miata driver when I talk about how much I adored that minivan, but understand three things: it was large, it was unassuming, it was available.

After short discussion, we decided we would go first to the venue and pick up our tickets. It took some cajoling for directions; the woman behind the rental counter had no idea what we were talking about. "Aren-a? Con-cert? Mus-ic?" Seriously. We were speaking a foreign language as far as she was concerned. But the lot attendant guy? He knew.

So we went to Waikiki, got lost, got reoriented, found parking (this could be an issue next week), paid for parking and got the tickets. It was four plus hours from show time, but fans were already milling around in their Mooky Blaylock 10 jerseys and t-shirts that listed obscure shows from two tours ago.

Of course we lined up with them.

Actually, I lined up with them. Adam didn't want to right away, he kept muttering about the opportune time and not wanting to be a nerd. I kindly pointed out we were showing up at the venue four hours early and playing the ABCs of Pearl Jam, so we were well past nerd territory.

We lined up.

And, as it goes with me in a line that has no chance of moving for hours, I got chatty. There was a woman behind me, and a father and son duo, and we just started yammering back and forth. She was a pediatric nurse from Miami, in town for both concerts. He was a flooring guy from California who had gone to thirteen shows this year and was taking his 12-year-old son to his sixth show. We recounted the morning's decision to come, and every time it began, "It was raining in Hilo."

And this is where I'm wondering if I'm actually dead.

About an hour before the doors opened, the pediatric nurse, Vanessa, asked where we were sitting. "Nosebleed. Waaaaaay up there." There was some explaining about Ten Club tickets and spur of the moment decisions and she said, in this most wonderful voice, "trade you."

She had four tickets for the floor and three friends who had backed out. She gladly handed us two tickets for the 18th row. She didn't want anything for them, she just gave them to us, because she is awesome.

From nosebleed to the crowd, just like that, just because it was our first chance to see Pearl Jam in concert, because she was kind, because there is goodness in the world.

I would have been just as happy with our stupid nosebleed tickets, I think. I would have been happy with just hearing the sound check float from the arena, really. One minute there was discordant strumming, and the next, I could hear "Love Boat Captain," a song I love, being played live. If we had left then, turned around and flown home, I'd probably tell the story until my dying day. "And then we heard Eddie sing 'Love Boat Captain' from outside the Blaisedale arena and it was one of the happiest days of my life. The end."

But we were on the floor, on Row 18. And I can't believe what happened next.