camping

I was still feeling a little bit sick on Friday but ran around and managed to pick Eric up a couple of minutes after 8. We drove (and when I say "we", I mean "Eric") to Raccoon Creek and got there around 9:30. We managed to find a campsite that was pretty decent and got the tent set up for the first time in the dark. Certain persons (being not me) managed to smash their finger up with the firewood we were using to pound the stakes in. Ouch. Eric got a fire going, which took a while because most of the wood was pretty damp. We ate POLISH kielbasa, because apparently other sorts are inferior, and drank Heineken and hung out in the woods. Unfortunately our neighbors were pretty much total jags and kept yelling until all hours of the morning. The ground was pretty lumpy and we didn't bring enough blankets or any pillows at all, but honestly it probably wasn't much worse than our beds, which suck.

Saturday morning we ate dinner again for breakfast, only with no bread this time because some raccoon ran away with it, as I may have mentioned earlier. There was a short trail down to the beach, so we hiked our way down there, only my dumb ass didn't put on any socks and got this really great blister on the back of my heel, which will play a role later in the story. We went swimming and failed to hear anyone yelling about having their breasteses grabbed, and then got sunburn by hanging out on our towels on the "beach".

For some reason we ate lunch at Cracker Barrel on the way back. I never thought I would actually want to eat there ever again, but then I thought about hashbrown casserole. We got ready right quick and left the city again within about an hour of our arrival to go to Everybody Gets Laid 3. And then we drove, and drove some more, and kept driving. 28N is really boring, especially two weekends in a row. It took us about two and a half hours to get to the party. When we finally arrived, they did a very cursory search of the car, and we had to pay $13 ($8 for parking and $5 for bringing beer in with us). I thought this was somewhat lame since Eric was spinning for free, but whatever.

We set up the tent again, in about ten minutes this time because we rule, and grabbed ourselves a couple of beers and started walking around. Most of the stages weren't even set up at this point, and it was about 8pm. There were, apparently, some issues with generators and cables and things and whatnot. So we hung around on the tailgate of Jason's truck and drank Busch beer n'at, and waited for that stage to get underway.

There were a lot of people there but with six stages or something, all spread out, it really didn't look like anyone was in attendance. It was a little strange. Nothing really crazy went down that I know of. It was my first rave, and I was prepared for craziness, but it was just kind of a big party in a field with a bunch of kids with glowsticks. Definitely fun, though.

We sort of ran all around for a while, watched Jason play at midnight, then wandered over to the house stage for a while. Since we were camping in the middle of a field, building a fire was a somewhat risky proposition, but it happened and we ate some really good food. A bunch of kids showed up when they saw the fire because by this time (3:30? or so?) it was really cold. I pretty much passed out for half an hour and then Eric spent a further half an hour trying to wake me up. He was supposed to play at 7:30 but people didn't show up so he went on around, oh, 5:20 or thereabouts.

I stumbled down to the stage with a blanket wrapped around me and probably managed to look like a total zombie. I will have to make damn sure I'm awake for his set at Cozumel in a couple of weeks, since I've been zonked for the last two. Bad girlfriend, si? For some reason everyone kind of bailed to their tents when the sun came up, so Eric turned things over to Vinny and Mike and we went to sleep at about 6:30. We couldn't set any alarms because there was no phone service to speak of, but Eric woke up and got me up at 10. We took the tent down, packed everything into the car, and drove back to the 'burgh. I was two minutes late for work, which I am informed was due to the "jags doing 50 in the fast lane."

Now I am tired, and I can't wait to get out of here and go home and TAKE A SHOWER and go to sleeeeeep.

Here is an obligatory photo, more at flickr. Having never been awake at 6am to see it, I didn't realize Eric apparently turns into a ghost at that time. Or, my camera is fucked.




eta highlights:
- Eric spilled at least four beers over the course of the weekend. Apparently he doesn't like to drink as much as he would have us all believe.
- I got to meet a few pretty cool people at the party and listen to good music.
- Jason's set was very cool. I made Eric at least tell me what all the pieces of gear were, not that I really understood. But the fact that Jason was doing the music live was really neat.
- Other mutter mutter name of the party, ok?

RE-eta:
- There was also the part where the sign at Eat n' Park said "WELCOME BASSMASTER FANS" only I thought it said "WELCOME GRANDMASTER FLASH" which would be pretty cool, if you think about it.
- After I kept reading signs wrong all weekend I saw a van today that I thought said "Holler Back!" on the back of it, only it actually did.