so we went to this three day festival right - me, mike b, his friend l-o and the kiddo. perhaps when, five minutes down the road, i realized i had forgotten the tent i should have taken it as an inauspicious sign, but heck, what's a road trip without a few adventures, right? right.
ahem.
part one - friday
so after returning for the tent, we made it across the border with no real hitches. we hit a couple o' parking lots on the freeway, and stopped at an albertsons for provisions (and when i say provisions, i mean beer. clearly.) (ok we may have bought some apples and peanut butter too. but i digress.) we arrived at the gorge on a beautiful friday evening and fell into what became the rhythm of the weekend - missing bands in favour of campground comradarie. we set up the tents, threw the beer in the cooler (no room for food. good sign.) and made friends with the neighbours. so interesting that we'd driven five hours deep into another country only to find ourselves surrounded by albertans. le sigh.
now being my raspberry self, i immediately developed a crush on one of them. go me. sadly, i'd sworn off men and unnecessary nudity for the weekend, given the presence of the kiddo.
i did, however, manage to procure his email address by the end of the weekend and, now that i've translated the drunken chicken scratch in my journal, i've sent him a quick note to say hello. perhaps a roadtrip to edmonton is in the works for the summer, hm?)aaaanyhooo..... so we settle in to drink some beer, having come to grips with the fact that we will be missing some of the bands playing friday night (and when i say some, i mean all save NIN). the calgary girls in the tent to our right had been abandoned by their friends, who were in charge of bringing the beer, so we adopted them and poured liquor down their throats. ah the unifying properties of sweet sweet alcohol never fail to amaze me... as it got dark, we tucked our things away and headed off down to the ampitheatre. as we walked down, the kiddo had a bit of a vomit (another theme for the weekend), but reaching the show was pretty uneventful. inside, however, it was kind of a gong show. a small order of curly fries was $5.50US. beer was $8.25. there were drunken people everywhere and vomit on the ground (see, toldya).
we picked up some burgers etc as a makeshift dinner and were walking down to the stage when we passed by some guy who was pretty much twitching on the ground. the kiddo and i stopped to see if he was ok - his eyes were nearly rolling back in his head. we sat him up, the kiddo handed him the remaining half of his burger, and we watched him eat it, then continued on our way. who the hell leaves their friends like that? i don't get people.anyway, we made it to within about 40ft of the stage - NIN put on a great show: all sorts of lights and smoke and spectacle. he did, however, pretend to play the keyboards during one of his songs (hurt, i think) - his keyboard player was hidden in the darkness at the back of the stage, but trent's hands were clearly not moving in time to the music. after the show we herded back to the campground and met up with our edmontonian friends (the calgary girls had succumbed to beer for dinner and passed out by the time we returned), and got to bed.
next: saturday - nature's wrath and ben harper....
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