Down and Back

In one weekend we headed to Clearwater's Hudson River Revival Music and Environmental Festival.  Down the turnpike for Croton-On-Hudson for a 2 day spell of selling our fair fare.  The crowd was much different than the past festivals.  Much older and mellower.  Except for their causes.  People stumbling over each other to promote one thing or another.  Probably really nice people but there was an awful lot of pretentiousness floating around.  We were surrounded by do-gooders trying to out do-good the do-gooders next to them.
"I'm against nuclear power."
"Yeah well I'm really really really against nuclear power."
"Yeah well I triple dog dare you to sign my anti-fracking petition."

The venue was gorgeous.  The Hudson is definitely in that group of mighty rivers flowing down to the sea.  To stand on her banks is to easily imagine what it must have been like hundreds of years ago.  Before there were nuclear power plants.  And do-gooders.

Next to us was a space called Story Grove where they told stories about evil executives dropping nuclear power plants on little kids' heads.  They had a dragon soaring overhead that was pretty cool.

Pretty Cool Dragon

Over us we had a mulberry tree that kept dropping mulberries the size of quarters on our heads and landing in our coffee cups exploding coffee everywhere.  It blocked our sign and lowered our "visibility quotient" (I just made that up, pretty good 'eh?).  Donald wanted to cut down the tree but I convinced him that it probably wasn't the right crowd for that sort of thing.  So many hugs, so few trees.

Stupid Tree

Mulberries the size of quarters.

People watching is the thing to do at these festivals.  I must say the hippie population has not aged well.  There were a whole lot of tree-hugging, dirt-worshipping, co-existing pasty white toes twisting out of Birkenstocks. 

Arlo Guthrie?  Or maybe his mother.

Yea for our great crew!

It's always great to return to the sanctuary!

We get a week or so off and then head for Michigan and the Electric Forest Festival where we will hear music from bands such as Girl Talk, Ghostland Observatory, Datsik and 12th Planet.  Who are these guys?  Man, I'm not aging well.

Love you all.  Peace.  Peter.

Post Bonnaroo

It is raining.  After 6 days of fairly nice weather it is raining.  It is Monday morning after Bonaroo and the heavens have let loose over Manchester, Tennessee.  

We did a good amount of packing up late last night but everyone is so exhausted after 2 weeks on the road that we quit to get some sleep.  After all-night music coming at us from three stages, a night of silence meant an absolutely wonderful sleep.  Awake now and refreshed but it is raining.

The team, the crew, the guys and gals have been a joy to work with, maintaining wonderful senses of humor despite 18 hour days of dealing with grease and heat and impatient customers of varying degrees of sobriety and sanity.  Those of you who are on the road must have a code that you can live by.

So we wait.  Until the antsy kicks in and we decide to slog it out of here.  To the nearest hotel with hot showers, sharp razors and a laundry machine big enough to fit several tons of socks, a couple of tents and me.  Climb right in and take a spin on the wild side.  Tumble dry and roll on.  

The list of the first thing I’m going to do when I get home has grown from sleep in my own bed to wolf down a big-ass juicy cheeseburger to drink a couple of cold beers and back to sleep in my own bed.  Maybe watch a Red Sox game.  Read a newspaper.  Do a crossword puzzle.  

The road home is long.  The rain makes the driving hard and slow.  Everyone is sick of eating gas station food but no one wants to take the time to sit down for a real meal.  So we subsist on the jerky food group, the honey roasted peanut food group and the diesel fumes food group.  Try forming that into a frickin‘ pyramid that will satisfy the nutritionists.  Those amongst us who are health conscious drink orange juice.

The road home is long.  I like Bruce Springsteen.  I really do.  When Born To Run came out I was hooked.  Screamed and swayed when The Boss and Clarence dueted.  But I draw the line at the Sirius E Street radio station that plays Bruce 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  The alternative is non-stop Jimmy Buffet.  Or non-stop Howard Stern.  Or non-stop reggae.  So we got 20 hours of Bruce.  I’m sure there’s a Geneva convention against this.  We get a break from Bruce by going into a gas station to get some honey roasted peanuts. 

It is raining.  And There’s A Darkness On The Edge of Town.  But we are making progress.  The familiarity of the New York Thruway make it seem almost like home.  We pass Kingston and realize how funny it is that we will be back here in three days to provide food for a folk festival.  Then we realize it is not funny at all.  And the trip odometer passes 4000 miles. 

We pull into the yard to disband for several days of alone.  It is raining.  But it is Vermont rain and feels wonderful.

Day Two. On Route to Wakarusa

Closing in on Arkansas one state at a time.  We left a little rubber on roads in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri before settling in St. Louis for the night.

An early morning wake-up call because we wanted to get to Restaurant Depot and stock up up on food and equipment.  Well what do you know it looks as if the folks at Restaurant Depot get Memorial Day off.  Well that throws a bit of a kink in things but we quickly adapt.

Here's the initial gang of young thangs ready to hit the road first thing.  Just waiting for the Donald to finish his bagel.

Monica on the left. Isn't she pretty?  Sasha in the middle. Isn't she pretty?  Shawn on the right. Yes Shawn you're pretty too.

After a good solid hour in the car the young thangs were very tired.

Sasha and Monica still pretty.  Shawn? Not a good look.

Traveling through the midwest is strange.  They have billboards all along the highway.  The advertisers are very concerned about where I am spending my days after death.  Thus  we passed things like "Hell is an awful place to spend eternity because you made some poor choices."  And "do you know how you are spending the afterlife?  Jesus does".  And what I think is a little shot at the Jews, "Jesus IsReal".    

At the other end of the wackometer spectrum are billboards advertising adult stores and fireworks.  There must be more adult stores and fireworks shops per person in Indiana than any other state in the union.  I suppose this cvombination makes sense.  If the adult toys don't do it for her you set off a couple of Roman candles.  Oh baby baby.  You big cowboy stud.  I think I felt the earth move.  Let the church say, "Amen".

The Donald is great.  We get to Restaurant Depot.  It's Memorial Day.  We know they are closed.  There is not a car in the parking lot.  No answer when we call.  And yet he walks around peering in windows.  As if there is an entire crew inside waiting to open if someone happens to show up.  So we decide to head to St Louis and hit stores tomorrow.  We get to meet up with the crew that is on route from a festival in Illinois headed for Wakarusa.  Hugs all around.

The Gang of Young Thangs gets bigger.

Dinner tonight at a Mexican restaurant and then to bed.  Early try tomorrow at the St. Louis division of Restaurant Depot.

I'd like to introduce clockwise starting on the left: Scott, Sarah, Maddy, Sasha (you've already met), Orion and Dave.

We should be arriving on sight tomorrow afternoon.  No more Mexican restaurants.  No more hotel rooms with hot showers and toilets with doors on them.  No more internet.  Plenty of great food, music and fun people to watch.  Amen.

Love you all.  Peace.  Peter

Summer '12 Adventure Begins

I left Middlebury yesterday with my friend and landlord Donald, owner of a ragtag enterprise called Crescent Foods.  He travels to music festivals during the summer making burritos, quesadillas and other vegetarian fare for mostly very stoned young hippie wannabees.  The thing that's great from a food entrepeneur's point of view is that very stoned translates into a lot of hunger and a complete loss of what a $20 bill is worth. "$12 for a small flour tortilla, a piece of cheddar and 4 leaves of spinach?  No problem.  And you'll melt the cheese?  Oh wow man, cool."

Right now we're in Ashland, Ohio.  Traveling with Donald and three young thangs named Sasha, Sean and Monica.  The young thangs sit in the back seat of the pick-up and chatter constantly.  Mostly all at the same time.  Donald doesn't want to listen so he turns up the all Bruce Springsteen, all the time radio station.  The young thangs can't hear each other so they start talking louder...so Donald turns up the radio..."What did you say?"   I said, I WAS BORN IN THE USA!"

It's about 5:00 AM in Ashland.  By the way, Ashland was named by its early German settlers from the word ashelaxelschaftekberg which roughly translates as "because the wagon wheel broke and we don't feel like going any further".  Donald wants to be on the road by 5:30 at the latest so I won't dilly dally.  Hope to see you in Arkansas at Wakarusa.  Wakarusa. It will be interesting to discover where that name came from.

Love you all.  Peace.  Peter

Four Days at Tunbridge Worlds Fair

We recently spent 4 days at the Tunbridge Worlds Fair working for Crescent Foods selling very un-fair fare.  Nothing fried.  No animal parts shaped into giant tubes and cooked in great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts.  No sugar spun into tufts of pink clouds on a stick.  All vegetarian burritos, quesadillas and tortilla wraps.  My god we were out of place. 

Deciding what to eat at the fair and when is an art form that can only be perfected with practice.  Fair food should be attacked in the same systematic way a good lover approaches sex.  I look at popcorn kind of like getting to first base.  You can still move around, checking out all your options without having to make a serious commitment to any one (type of food).  Which makes fried dough the oral sex of the fair.  Things are definitely heading in the right direction but it’s not too late to head to the parking lot satisfied.  Taken to a logical conclusion this of course makes Italian sausage and peppers the big O.  Which I suppose makes maple cotton candy akin to a good post-coitus smoke.

There are quite a few overweight people in Vermont and I think most of them spent a day or more at Tunbridge.  Nothing like a September chill in the air to get people thinking about an extra layer of warmth.  I was lucky enough at one point to look up from my tortilla wrapping position and be greeted by the backside of a fairly large woman with a serious case of plumber’s butt wearing a bright red thong that stretched from one end of the Gobi desert, up and through Mongolia and ended somewhere in the foothills of the Himalayas.  Not a pretty sight but not unlike witnessing a good trainwreck I found myself constantly checking to see if she and her family had moved on.

We did get to see quite a few people walking around wearing camouflage.  Which doesn’t say a whole lot for the people who design camouflage.

And if I might offer the following bit of advice.  Only buy stuff you won’t take home with you.  Like rides, fair food and fortunes from Zelda the gypsy.

No giant inflatable hammers.

No goldfish in baggies.

No oversized foam cowboy hats.

No balloons that have been twisted to look like poodles with challenged colons.

No belt buckles the size of a Prius.

I’ve got to go.  Somewhere out there is a clown riding a unicycle while twisting long skinny balloons into poodles that you can wear on your head.  I think I might see what will happen if I jam a stick in his spokes.

Love you all.  Peace.  Peter

After Lanakila

The best time of the day is 6:00 AM.  Coffee is made and there is time to sit on Main House porch and listen to Brook running after a full night of heavy rain.  The boys of Lanakila still sleep.  Brook runs down past Health House, Woodcraft and Exploring.  Running with the spirit.  The spirit that provides the faith that Lanakila will be here in another 90 years.

There will be at least one counselor (a direct descendent of Doug Pilcher) who will have two bowls of cereal and two pitchers of milk served to him in bed.

There will be a bugler.  It may not be Hans or Fraser but someone will blow reveille.  Probably really badly.  Mostly likely not recognizable as reveille, but boys and young men will still get up.  Some will brush their teeth, some will not.  All will coming charging to breakfast.

During the first week of camp at least one Brooksider will miss his Dad but will be quickly and firmly and lovingly made to feel part of a community by someone with a heart as big as Angus Davidson's.

Dogs belonging to no one and everyone, will wander into and be shooed out of the dining room.  The dining room with the piano played by someone who knows the power of music to lift hearts towards the heavens.  Probably someone whose Grandfather was prepped for chapel by Robbie Pennoyer.

There will be a chef who will not prepare enough grilled cheese sandwiches.  And a group of Bridgers who are terrible dishwashers but incredible rat-tailers.

Jenn Grossman's mist will hover over Lake Morey's surface and I will sit on Main House porch with a cup of coffee and listen.

Boys and young men will return next year and Brook will still run down past Health House, Woodcraft and Exploring.

Me, Irene, Tula and the iRobot Roomba

I left camp as Hurricane Irene was making her way up the East Coast not really sure of direction or where landing would be.  Both me and Irene.  We both lit about the same time, me back in Middlebury for a short while and she, briefly but very efficiently as hurricanes go in Stockbridge, Rochester, Gaysville and numerous other communities.  Reeking of devastation and vandalizing our notion of final resting spot;  what will become for those of us close to her as “our hurricane”, left behind a lot of mud in the wrong places, dead cows and substations of power grossly downstream.  But there was the unintended heroic consequence that pointed out why places like Stockbridge, Rochester, Gaysville and others are called communities.

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

I think Irene.

I think Irene who?

I think Irene the lottery, my home isn’t upside down.

So after a couple of days at my sister’s house in Cornwall and a hurricane extended trip to New York, New York (the city so confused they had to name it twice) to move daughter Grady from Brooklyn to her new life as a student at NYU I find myself with 4 or 5 days of not a whole lot to do other than drink beer, watch the Lake Dunmore shoreline slide back into position and keep an eye on Tula.  

Tula is Ashley’s dog and is the heir to the Miss Bindergarten fortune.  I have been tasked as a dogsitter which in this instance is not that taxing a task.  Food twice a day, a walk every morning which she could do in her sleep and throwing a tennis ball into the lake.  Throwing the ball is the hardest part of the job because throwing it too far results in a look of yeah right.  “Woof woof” (trans: “There’s a good strong wind blowing into shore, let’s let that take care of things shall we?”)

There is no internet access (something which has jumped ahead of access to healthcare on my list of great job benefits) and no TV.  But who cares.  I’ve got me an iRobot named Roomba.  More precisely Roomba the Model 400 vacuum cleaning robot.  This little bad boy “Cleans routinely...so I don’t have to.”  And is quite mesmerizing as he bumps his way around the room like a severely drunk dancer at a very white wedding.  (What is about the culture in which I matured that names bad things like hurricanes for women and assigns maleness to modern life-altering wonders?)  Better than any Jim Carey movie, I watch endlessly, trying in vain to figure out the algorithm that guides Roomba.  Yo stupid!  Lift your feet outta the way.  Tula at least is smart enough to leave the room when Roomba fires up.  Out of the room and up on a bed.  “Woof, woof, woof” (trans: “Call me when you learn how to climb bedspreads.”)

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Irobot.

Irobot who?

Irobot out to pick up the tennis ball because the wind changed direction.  

So it’s 4 or 5 days after Irene and Tula, Roomba and I await the arrival of another storm due to deposit up to 4 inches of rain.  The Cherokee have a saying that roughly translates as “don’t piss off Mother Nature”.  Actually I made that up.  What do I know of the Cherokee.  But it seems like something a culture with more sense than ours would say.    

So we wait.  Woof, woof, woof, woof. (trans: Roomba!  Get your ass out of that corner and bring Peter another beer.)

Love you all.  Peace.  Peter