Carrender 1

Daniel Carrender

Ms. Moore

ENG 111

9/8/2023

Welcome to Rockville

Even though I was hundreds of feet away from the stage I could feel the bass in my

bones as blinding lights shrouded the stage in a ghostly white aura. Welcome to Rockville

was a metal festival in Daytona, Florida, and one the highlights of my summer second only to

FCA leadership camp which was a deeply spiritual and private experience for me. It was a

truly amazing experience but even though it was a dream come true, there were many lessons

I had to learn while we were there. Welcome to Rockville taught me that it is unfair to expect

others to ignore their discomfort for the sake of allowing me to have fun.

Welcome to Rockville was a four-day festival but we decided to only go to the last

day, both because it was the only day we wanted to attend and it was on a Sunday so my

mom would only have to take Monday off work. The plan was to leave for Florida on Friday

after my mom got off work, and that's exactly what we did. The drive down was surprisingly

eventful for a seven-hour car ride. I am from Kentucky and most of my family is still living

there so I am used to long car rides because it's also a seven-hour drive from here to

Kentucky, but even though the drives are very similar, the drive to Florida was exponentially

more interesting. Normally I just sit in the backseat and try to sleep or listen to music so that

the time will pass faster, but this time we left in the afternoon so I wasn’t tired enough to

sleep through the car ride and unfortunately, I had neglected to charge my headphones so

before long I lost both methods I had to make the time pass faster. This did not bode well for

the rest of the trip especially since my two younger brothers decided that they would entertain

themselves by bickering and throwing things at one another for the majority of the trip.
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Despite these unfortunate circumstances the drive turned out to be quite enjoyable, the

beautiful trees of northern Georgia and the glistening salty water of the Florida Everglades

were some amazing sights that I would not have seen if I had taken that nap or had zoned out

to some music. While we drove through these beautiful states we stopped at various gas

stations, one of which heavily sticking out in my mind. The gas station was a small

nondescript Chevron station in South Carolina which became one of my favourite places

along the road trip. As we pulled into the parking lot of the gas station I saw an orange cat

run out from the trees. Being the animal lover I am, I hopped out of the car not to go inside

like the rest of my family but to make friends with this unknown cat. I slowly approached the

cat and lowered my hand for him to smell, as I did so he dropped to his side and rolled to his

back welcoming me to pet his fluffy belly. I did so and after a few moments, I decided to sit

against the wall, when I did the cat rolled up into a ball in my lap and made biscuits on my

leg. I later found out that the cat belonged to the gas station and that his name was Chevy,

Chevy was a very friendly and beautiful cat which only added to the interest of the drive

down there. It seemed that everywhere we went there was something beautiful or interesting,

this showed me that even though long road trips are monotonous, it is important to disconnect

from technology and try to find comfort in the beauty around me.

Later that night we arrived at the place where we were staying, it was a beachside

condo we had rented for the weekend. It was small but had plenty of room for me and my

family. It was late when we arrived so all we did was bring our bags into the room and then

went to bed. The following day we all got up around mid-morning and planned out our day.

My dad is big into baseball cards so he had gotten up before all of us and took the car to a

card show an hour away. Since we did not have a vehicle we decided to get an Uber closer to

the beach. Once we got there we got sucked into a tourist trap for about a half hour, this was

mainly because of my mom and girlfriend who both wanted to look at clothes and different
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knick-knacks. I did not have as much fun as them but I did find a football and obviously, I

immediately called my brother a nerdy band kid (which he is) and started throwing it to my

brother who promptly took up this challenge and threw both his insults and the football back

at me, the owner did not like that so we apologised and ended up buying the football so we

could finish our game on the beach later. After we were freed from the tourist trap we walked

across the street to a restaurant that claimed to have the best burgers in all of Florida and they

may have been the best burgers, I wouldn’t know, I got the mahi-mahi, which was excellent.

My mom paid for the food then we walked down to the beach where we went swimming until

all of us were tired, sunburnt, and bored. Before we left, me and my brother finished what we

had started in the store, that being the two of us throwing increasingly extravagant and

difficult passes to one another while insulting one another at the same time. Soon we met up

with my dad and we all went to the state park to explore the various trials that they have

going through the dense jungle-like brush, as we explored we found ourselves at a small

pavilion overlooking the surrounding ocean. As I looked out into the ocean with my

girlfriend we saw a group of dolphins rising to the surface for air, this was a truly beautiful

sight fitting right along with nearly every event preceding it. Soon after we went down to the

beach since my dad had not gotten the chance to go yet, we were all tired so we stayed out of

the water especially me and my girlfriend. We wound up sitting on the beach just watching

the waves, it was very serene and peaceful until I felt a hard gritty lump of sand hit my

shoulder. I turned to look at who threw it but as I did so my brother let loose another fistful of

sand aimed at the back of my head, now normally my brother's accuracy is terrible when

throwing things but this time he was on the money, and hit me square in the jaw and I looked

towards him. This filled me with rage and in moments I tackled him to the ground and yelled

at him. Lashing out because of a misunderstanding did not sit well with my brother who got

mad too and began to yell at me before storming off. This made me realise that my actions
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were far from the right and it took me longer than it should have to figure out that he was

trying to get my attention and have fun instead of being a jerk trying to ruin quality time with

my girlfriend. I followed him and apologised but he did not accept it and was mad at me for

the rest of the day. This made me realise that revenge is never right and that it is never a good

idea to make a decision purely based on emotion.

Having gone through two incredibly enjoyable and eventful days in Daytona, it was

finally time to go to the concert. I couldn’t wait as we climbed into the car to drive to the

concert, but it was five pm and the concert didn’t start until six so we went to the store to buy

some things. Those things were clear water bottles, clear bags, and flavour packets for the

free water they had there. After we checked out there was nothing stopping us from going

into the concert besides the congested traffic. As we crawled our way along the busy streets

the music from bands already on stage became more and more audible until I could feel the

bass within my core. Despite this when we parked we still had a 20-minute walk before we

even got to the entrance. After getting our steps in we arrived at the tall prison-like wire fence

of the race track entrance, we got in line and slowly wound our way around the maze of metal

dividers until we made it to the long row of metal detectors. I stepped through the metal

detector and grabbed my stuff from the security officer, as I did so I began to look around the

inside of the concert. The concert was being played on the Daytona International Motor

Speedway with four different stages spread out on the racetrack, the coolest part of the venue

was the fact that the stands were empty leaving nothing but an abstract mosaic of empty

seats. It was a truly amazing feeling to walk onto the tarmac track, completely immersed in

the music, and not have to worry about anything but making it to the next stage. While we

were there we saw a ton of bands including some of my favourite bands ever, those being

Tool, Coheed and Cambria, Deftones, Filter, and Deaf Haven. Coheed and Cambria played

about halfway through the show and were amazing. The music, beautifully distorted and
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heavy with contrasting highly pitched vocals, sounds great in the studio but amazing in

person. The same goes for the other bands listed, each of them with their own unique sound

and lyrical style that makes them some of my favourite bands. This is especially true for Tool

who played at the end of the night, Tool is a contender for my all-time favourite band, and

watching them live was a dream come true and truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The

heavy bass, intricate visuals, and bright lights made for an amazing show to wrap up the

night, but unfortunately we had to leave before they finished. This was because while I was

having fun, nobody else in my family was. My brother only wanted to go on the trip to the

beach, my parents were both sunburnt and tired of being on their feet, and my girlfriend was

too hot and had an upset stomach. Potentially leaving early and ending such an experience so

soon was very upsetting to me but the longer we stayed there the more miserable my family

was getting, it would’ve been selfish of me to force them to stay and ignore their discomforts

for the sake of my continued enjoyment. So after coming to that conclusion I put aside my

desires and chose to leave early from the concert.

This trip was truly amazing and opened my eyes to many things in life. It showed me

that there is beauty everywhere and that it is easy to find entertainment in it alone. It showed

me that I need to work on controlling my own emotions and handling situations logically and

ethically. Finally, it showed me that the feelings of those close to me are far more important

than my own. While I realise talking about how a concert and beach trip emotionally moved

me and changed me for the better may sound pretentious, I believe that there are things to

learn from everything in life. The lesson I learned during this trip is a small portion of

everything in both my past and future life.