For my wife's birthday we bid on, and won a Starwood moment, using Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) starpoints. The "moment" we won, was to see Journey in concert in Mountain View, California, which is their home town. This is the equivalent of seeing Soundgarden in Seattle or seeing Boston in Boston (lol).
We began our day getting up at 8 AM and throwing our bag in the car, headed to Seatac airport, and checked in for our flight. We upgraded our seats to first class for the way down. We flew Virgin America. 
If you haven't been on a Virgin flight you should try it. The inside of the plane feels like you're entering a swank lounge like 'The Sky Bar'. The interior panels are all white (not the oatmeal color of most aircraft), the seats are white and black leather, and hidden mood lighting gives the inside a pink and purple glow as 'chillout' lounge music permeates the air. Our flight took off at 11:00 am and on the way we enjoyed a couple drinks, a movie and a light lunch.
We arrived in SFO at 2:45, took a tram to our rental car and started driving down to the W Silicon Valley. The drive took about 20 minutes, and took us past the new headquarters of Facebook (whose sign is just a big "like" thumbs up icon). We checked in and were upgraded to their suite, where they brought Cindy some birthday cake.We had to be at the stadium before 6:00 PM so after a few bites of cake and ice cream, we jumped in the shower and got ready to go.
Mountain View's Shoreline Amphitheatre is just past the main campus of Google, so we saw that too. We called our representative from the SPG moment at the Stadium and asked where to park. He directed us to a VIP parking section and brought us our tickets and credentials to meet the band. The Amphitheatre has several open air bars inside and many booths with carnival/fair food and booths from sponsors and companies.
We had a Philly cheese steak sandwich which wasn't quite worth $10.00 ...but what can you expect from a booth outside a concert.
Our credentials said 6:30, so we got to a place behind the About.Me bar where we would be escorted to meet the band. Our escort showed up a t 6:20 and led us back-stage down a flight of stairs. At the foot of the stairs was a line for photos with the band, and a wine maker and an artist who designed a huge magnum wine label commemorating the tour. The wine was from Williams Selyem and I met Bob Cabral, the Director of Winemaking and General Manager of the winery. The picture of me is with the artist who did the label but he didn't have a business card, perhaps I can get his name from Bob.
Then we got our picture with the band.
After the photos, we found ourselves at the About.Me bar (about dot me). If you haven't checked out about.me and you're into social media, you should. It's a place where you can consolidate links to all of the places people can follow you, and they'll even give you some free business cards if you create a site. The bar had a professional photographer and backdrop, and was running a promotion to upgrade your seats to their special 'box seats' if you created an about.me account. - We did, you can check us out: http://about.me/kenmizell and http://about.me/cindymizell .
We ordered a couple of lemon drops there and then headed to our seats. On the way into the stadium we passed by the About.Me box seats and walked even CLOSER to the stage (I guess we didn't need an upgrade). Our seats were next to a guy who had been a roadie for Journey (and several other bands) in the 1980's. He told us a few interesting stories before the lights went out and the first band started.
The concert began with Night Ranger.
What was great about this whole concert, with Night Ranger, then Foreigner, and finally Journey, was that we knew the words to almost every song they played. They were all songs from our high school days, and skating parties. Songs like "Sister Christian" and "Urgent" and "Don't Stop Believing".
Night Ranger finished their set and Foreigner started. During the Foreigner concert the singer walked into the crowd and stopped about 3 rows directly in front of us. Cindy got a few great pictures of him.
By the end of their set our drinks were empty. So I headed out to the About.Me bar to get a couple more between Foreigner and Journey. When I arrived, Joel Hoekstra was getting his picture taken for an about.me page. I got a video of him checking out his picture. I headed back to our seats and we sang along to the Journey songs. Giant beach balls bounced throughout the crowd, some ending up on the stage and being punted by the band back into the crowd. I was amazed at the new singer. Pineda sounds just like Steve Perry. Every song sounded just how you remembered it.
It was a great night. We got in the rental and headed back to the W and had a couple more lemon drops before heading up to our suite. The next day we had a late checkout and headed back to the airport. We were home by 5:00 Sunday night.
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