You probably want to hear about the Eagles concert I went to tonight, but first I want to tell you what the Boss said this morning. I had to remind him that I was leaving at noon today. I'd told him earlier the reason I was taking a half day off, but I guess it didn't register.

"Have a good time at the opera," he said. Then he thought about it. "It's not an opera, is it? What is it called?"

"It's a rock concert," I said. "It's the Eagles. Tell Julie [his girlfriend]. She'll know what it means to me to be going to an Eagles concert."

"Okay," he said. "I'm writing it down. Eagles? Would I like them?"

Actually, he might. I even told him that. I hope to hear from Julie that she had explained to him who the Eagles are and why someone would want to see them play.

I'll get to the concert in a bit, but let me tell you about the ride down to San Jose. The concert was at the HP Pavilion, once known as the Compaq Centre and sometimes as the Shark Tank. They play hockey there all winter. There were ten of us going, and we went in two vehicles. I rode in John's truck. We followed Rick, because he knew which way he wanted to go.

We thought it might be a short cut, but as we followed Rick all along the beach in San Francisco, it seemed to be more of a tour. A tour of old homes. A tour of golf courses. It's not that we were in a hurry to be in San Jose, because we'd left early enough to have several hours to tailgate in the parking lot. A few more minutes (or hours even) wouldn't make a difference, except that we were getting hungry. Deli meats and cheeses (and beer and wine) were just out of reach in the back of the truck.

But oh, didn't we have fun complaining. We made great fun of Rick's leadership as we wandered around the ocean side of San Francisco. It was a beautiful day in the City, and the views along the beach were great. But we weren't sure exactly where we were headed from one block to the next. And we weren't entirely confident that Rick would ever get us to San Jose.

Eventually we were out of the City, back on the freeway headed south. We did get to San Jose, three hours or so after we left Rohnert Park. There were probably faster ways to get there, but we still had a lot of time before the concert.

But wait. Before I take you to the concert, let me tell you about the parking lot. It was one of the side lots near the arena, within view of part of downtown San Jose. We were so early that we had our choice of many empty slots, but there was no one there to take our money. The sign said to take an envelope and put $4.50 in the lock box, and that's what we did.

Half an hour later, as we were enjoying our preshow repast, an officious young man in a clip-on tie and starched shirt walked up and informed us that we had to pay him. We told him we'd already paid and put our money in the box as instructed. He said that he had no access to the box, and we let him know (in a nice way, of course) that that wasn't our problem.

He decided to give us a break. Maybe he was intimidated by the fact that there were ten of us telling him the same thing. He muttered something about cleaning up the area after we finished, as if we had an idea of tossing litter around before we left. He said we'd have to move when the other cars came streaming in. We looked around at the mostly empty lot and laughed.

In another hour or so, he was back. This time he wanted us to move closer to the truck. He seemed to think we'd be run down by all the traffic, but the lot was still empty. We did the right thing, though. We moved our chairs in closer and cracked jokes about Clip-on Guy and his attitude. It was still another half hour before any other vehicles started parking anywhere near us.

Actually, we were entertained by this self-important little Napoleon. Maybe he knew that. Maybe that's why he kept coming up to us and giving us orders that sounded like suggestions (or suggestions that sounded like orders). Maybe he even heard us snickering every time he walked away.

The concert? It was perfect. If (unlike the Boss) you do know who the Eagles are and know their music, you can imagine a perfect concert, and this was it. They played almost all the old songs, plus a lot of solo numbers by the different band members. They played songs the whole crowd could sing along with, and they rocked so hard they blew us away. And they played for almost three and a half hours. I don't think there was any more we could have asked of them.