When Opinion Matters

Luckily I have the perfect example of my opinion mattering.
  This past weekend my girlfriend, three of my great friends, and me, all flew down to Los Angeles to attend the most epic concert of all time. It was the largest single-headling DJ event of all time (an estimated 26,000 people), and ended DJ Tiesto's Club Life: College Tour; as DJ Tiesto said, we changed history that night. We flew down on Friday morning and roamed around all day, then followed suit on Saturday until the concert. We have been to Tiesto concerts before, so with that experience and knowing that there were 3 opening DJ's, we figured we wouldn't even get try to get there until a few hours in.
  I agreed with everyone that Tiesto wouldn't be coming on for a long time after the event started. However, we put lots of money, time and effort into getting to this concert; I didn't want to take the risk of missing this history-making concert. I decided to convince everyone to leave an hour earlier than we originally planned for the concert. Once we got there, we saw the constant flow of hundreds of people just like us piling in. After waiting in line, emptying our pockets, and being patted down (luckily for this type of event, people know coming in that this will occur) we got into the Home Depot Center in Carson, California.
  We head over to the top of the stands, and see thousands and thousands of people raving and dancing. The lightshow was non-stop crazy instense: the music boomed louder than at any concert I had ever previously witnessed. After using the bathroom and buying some waters, we head down to the general admission floor. We get right in the middle of the madness, as we love to do. Within minutes, the last opening DJ gets off stage, and DJ Tiesto comes on! It was perfect timing; had we left when we originally planned, we would've showed up halfway into his show that we traveled over 1500 miles to see. My opinion mattered.
  After dancing all night, meeting countless interesting people, and celebrating life to the fullest, we were pooped upon arrival at our hotel. We planned on spending the entire next morning at Redondo Beach, before catching our 3:35 flight out of LAX. I have much experience with waking up all of these guys, who were currently passed out in my hotel; I knew waking them up in the morning would not be an easy task, especially after a night like that. 8:30am came around, and I forced everyone to wake up. The morning went slowly, but we were all up and about. They wanted to sleep that extra few hours, but I knew that wasn't the way to end our stay in L.A.
  Once everyone was ready, we called our taxi, checked out of our hotel, and headed to the beach. Let me tell you; there couldn't have been a more perfect way to end this crazy journey of ours, together, than relaxing on the beach all morning. After plopping down our luggage within sight, we headed to the shoreline. The majestic sound of crashing waves filled our eardrums. As we sat along the coast, we let the breeze flowing from the ocean fill our nostrils; a smell we shared together. The waves crashed, and we heard them together. The sun's warmth surrounded us, and we felt it together. We sparked the joints, and tasted them together. We gazed upon the endless Pacific Ocean, looking to where the sky and water become one; we saw this beauty, together. We laughed at the heavenly joy life has to offer, together.
  My opinion mattered.