AUTUMN'S GREAT O-VENTURE
August 24, 2002
By Debra Braasch and Charmaine Frost
Photos by Adrienne Quinn Washington and Debra Braasch

Our adventure began when Autumn, a member of the Inside O-Town Message Board, entered the Nabisco/Albertson sponsored private O-Town concert contest. She sent in only 10 entries but was lucky enough to be one of 15 GRAND PRIZE winners! She invited 2 of her friends, members of the IO Crew (Debbie & Char), and her sister. It promised to be a memorable night for all!

Our board members were all very excited for Autumn and the IO Crew because they *knew* that we would be able to bring them the private concert experience as no one else would be able to! We were fortunate to get Adrienne in to cover photograph the event too!

We met Autumn at the Hilton Hotel in Universal City, where Albertsons and Nabisco had provided her with accommodations as a part of her prize. The hotel suite was lovely ... and Autumn was given a Nabisco baseball hat and lots of Nabisco goodies, which she gladly shared with us! (thanks for the goodies Autumn!) At this point, Autumn presented us with our invitations to the private concert, which would be our entry tickets. We were so excited!

Next, we were taken by tram to the Hard Rock Cafe at Universal City Walk, where the concert was to take place. The tram driver was quite peppy and we played games on the tram while we waited for the rest of the people to arrive.

The Hard Rock Cafe had been closed to the public for the night and transformed just for this concert! There was a huge banner over the front door welcoming all of the contest winners and the Nabisco/Albertsons VIPs. They had constructed a stage over a few of the booths on one side of the ground floor. It looked to us like the stage was really small for the guys and the ceiling was very low! We hoped that they wouldn't hit their heads when they were doing all of their bouncing and jumping.

While we were waiting for the show to start, they called us up in groups to get our pictures taken with O-Town! All 5 guys were upstairs waiting for us-we all got into the picture with them and said "cheese!" Adrienne, Char and Debbie had a hard time being in front of the camera, but we managed. We think the picture came out pretty good!

We were treated to drinks and dinner as we anxiously awaited the show! We could feel the excitement rise in the room as the hour grew closer! We ran into Doris, Vanessa, Rani and Traci at the concert ... seems that Trevor had been able to get them VIP passes! They got to go backstage and see Jacob with his monkey, Abby. The boys were really excited about the show too!