Folkfest 2008 Day 4 (Friday)

I woke up after a great night sleep. I must have gotten 10 hours of great sleep. I didn’t know at the time but this would probably be the last night I would get a decent night sleep. But after a good night sleep I was all set and ready to go to volunteer.

11 hours of volunteering seemed tough, and it was. First 5 hours they had me on my feet running around. Second half of my shift they had me handling the exit. This is where my buddy Scott Wachal played a funny joke on me. It wasn’t funny at the time but in retrospect it was funny. I don’t want to go into too much because it may jeopardize his chances of getting volunteer work the following year.

I finished at about 10:00. Spirits were still very high. We walked back to the tents. Tonight was the night we were going to experience Folkfest. A group of us all got together and had a great conversation. When I got back to the campsite I noticed that my tent was done. Because it was so dark I had decided to leave it down and deal with it in the morning. I knew this was going to be an all nighter anyways. It wasn’t too much later that we all decided to do Shinanigans *. Must have been around 11:00 o’clock or so. After that we all sat around the fire talking, giggling and having a great time.

I was looking down at pope’s hill and they had a fire show going on. I tried to gather a group of people to go with me, but I couldn’t. So I went on my travels all alone. Somehow I found myself following some people to the fire show. They jumped a plastic fence to get close to it. I watched the show for about 10 minutes. It was so intense I had to get out of there. I was seeing more then what the show had to offer and I was freaking out a bit.

I turned around and realized that the fence that I had jumped earlier was not as easy to get over anymore. I tried to jump it a few times with no luck. This is about the time I started to panic a bit. Finally this huge line backer type guy was leaving the crowd. He just drove through the crowd creating the path for me to follow.

After the panic I had experienced I decided to just go back to the fire. On my way back I saw a beautiful sight, The Northern Lights. It’s sort of funny because Darby Jones was talking about the northern lights earlier on. He was hoping that we would get to see the Northern Lights. We did. I raced back to the fire and pulled everyone away to look at how beautiful it really was. I don’t know if the Northern Lights were real or if they were related to the Shinanigans we took. It didn’t matter because my mind thought they were real.

I find myself back at the fire just chilling. We had some great laughs around the fire. It felt like there were moments where we were laughing for more than 10 minutes straight because of nothing. Just random bouts of laughter.

It was at this point that Anthony was trying to pull me away from the fire. He was trying to pull me away because this pretty lady was coercing him to roll down the hill. He did the same to me. We raced to the hill. Just the 3 of us rolled down. This is where things became weird. By the time we reached the bottom I was pretty dizzy. I saw Anthony but the girl had disappeared and in her place to other women had appeared. These girls had a million questions for us. What are you doing, how are you feeling, what have you done tonight. I felt like I was being backed into a corner and because I was still a little dizzy from the roll so I didn’t giving out too much information.

It didn’t take long for those girls to leave once they realize that we were on crazy Shinanigans. We went up Popes hill this time and just sort of looked around. I remember having a great time being with Anthony but I don’t remember much of the details. I do remember us walking back to the fire a short while later.

The fire was great again. Lots of great laughs. I love being on Shinanigans because it feels like I am the center of attention sometimes. It’s a good feeling especially while on Shinanigans.

The sun started to come up and the effects were wearing off. I went back to my tent but because of the winds I found it very hard to put up my tent. I had to call Scott Wachal over to help. He did help me put it up and I tried to retire for the night. It was probably around 6:00. I got into my tent and it stayed up for no more then 15 minutes before it collapsed. Every time I put it up the huge windows would not knock it back down.

I finally gave up and decided to try to sleep in the collapsed tent. Another 15 minutes passed and it started to drizzle. I realized there was no way I would fall asleep as long as it was drizzling. So I got up out of the tent and decided to go for a walk.

For the purpose of limiting the length of this day it will end here because everything that happens after this point is like a whole new day. Stay tuned for day 5. It’s depressing boring and sad. I will do my best to dress it up though.

* We all decided that we could not speak of what we were doing that night. So we decided on the facebook approved name of shinanigans. I won’t tell you what Shinanigans means however I may reference it a few times throughout the rest of this article.

Folkfest 2008 Thursday (Day 3)

I woke up at about 11:00 am in the afternoon. Everyone was still asleep. I didn’t really know anyone around me. So I did what most people would do, Grabbed a drink propped my feet up on the edge of popes hills and watched all the pretty ladies as they walked through.

One of my neighbors woke up. Eric, Anthony and Max were all from America. Little did I know that they were be party animals and a strong focus of most of the weekend. We talked and smoke and drank for a good hour. Apparently we even partied the previous year because they were camped in the same spot. But this time they would be more memorable. After a while they decided to go for a swim.

This is when I decided to branch out and talk with a few of the neighbors. There are some wacky people that go to Folkfest. I asked one of my neighbors if they could put on some sun tan lotion. They said "no". Then they gave me this speech about how sun tan lotion can give me cancer. I just listed and went to the next campsite.

This is where I met up with a old friend's sister (Dan Chatwell's sister). Apparently we had been camping together for a few years but I didn't know what his sister looked like until very recently. We chatted it up a bit. From what I saw she was a very nice girl.

I decided to continue to hang out at my rock. I got to drinking and time passed somehow. I don’t know how I got to the next point but the next scene takes place at around 4:00pm. Where did the time go? I was talking with a bunch of people under the structure that we made. I don't remember who was there but there were a few people.

This is where this Folkfest volunteer comes out of the blue and tells us this story. The story involved something he claimed to do the previous night. I knew the story very well. I knew the story because he was talking about me. He was taking credit for my work. I’m not proud of what I do but apparently it had gotten around. It had gotten around so much that people were claiming they did what I did. But they didn’t do it. It was all me. Little did I know that what I did would cause me too have first choice volunteering for 2009 in any position I want. That is just awesome.

The volunteer had left shortly after the story. We were all smoking and having a great time when out of nowhere Christian makes an appearance. Christian joined the party and kept the conversation going for what felt like an hour.

More time past and Christian and Jenn (Christian’s lady friend) went to put up the tent. I started off helping out but it turned out I was hindering the process, yup I was pretty wasted. I bowed down gracefully after trying to put up the tent for what felt like 15 minutes. It still took them 45 minutes to get the tent up, but it would have taken them longer if I had stayed around.

This is around the time I decided to check out what was going on at the festival. Main stage had just opened up. I got to see the weakerthans. It was a great show but they tried to talk politics. I hate politics when I am being entertaining. There is nothing worse than an entertainer on a mission. After the show I went home and fell asleep pretty early. I knew I had a shift early on the next day for 11 hours. I didn’t want to be late, hunger over or tired. This is where the night ended for me.

The best day of the weekend comes on day 4.

Folkfest 2008 Wednesday (Day 2)

Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. I wake up from my sleep and look at the driver side window. The car in spot 2 is knocking on the window to get my attention. He yells out get ready they are opening the gate. I look around for Darby and can’t find him.

Panic sets in. He isn’t in the van. I race out of the van and start yelling at the top of my lungs “Darby”. I look down the line and see him 15 cars down as he hears my voice and turns around. It took him a moment to say goodbye to the people he was talking too and then starts racing down the line. He made it to the van and it wasn’t long before they opened the gates to let us through.

We parked in the overflow area and waiting to be let into the park. My and Darby were both in and out of consciousness for not getting much sleep the night before. It was about 10:30 when we got let into the campground area. My and Darby got right to unpacking. I was too scout out last year’s area and grab it for us.

Even though we were first in line in the morning the Ninja’s had already moved in and taken all the shaded tree areas. The area we wanted to camp in was still open though. I threw down a tarp to mark our spot and raced back to Darby to give him the good news.

The next several hours included putting up our tents and structures. Most of it was a blur. I think after I had put everything up I might have gotten some sleep. I did get to meet our Lesbian neighbors from last year. We didn’t spend a lot of time talking last year but as it turns out we have a lot more in common they I would have ever guessed. We had a mutual friend linking us together from the past. It was good having good friends as neighbors.

A little later on my sister arrived with her friend. We put up the tent and I went for my first volunteer shift of the festival. By the time it ended I went to my tent and crashed hard.

Not a very exciting day 2 but I didn’t plan on it being that exciting. Since I had to volunteer that night I didn’t want to burn myself out.

Stay tuned for Day 3. It holds a lot more excitement.

Folkfest 2008 Tuesday (Day 1)

Darby calls me up at 4:00 PM to let me know we should be preparing to leave in 1 hour. I was biking through the downtown area at the time. I didn’t expect to get the call so early in the day but I didn’t want to hold us back. So I raced home, took a quick bath, packed up and awaited Darby’s arrival.

We left my place at an undisclosed time. We went to McDonald’s where I dropped a bag of ice on my big toe causing it to split in half and caused it to bleed in the nail. I know it sounds discussing but it didn’t get me down. We were on our way to Folkfest.

There are a lot of reasons we could have been considered number 1 at folkfest. We could have been considered the best looking guys at Folkfest. We could have been considered the best dressed for folkfest. But no, we were No. 1 in line at Folkfest. We arrived 90 minutes before No. 2. We were the champs. It was totally awesome.

Things were kind of slow for a while until about 15 cars arrived. Car 8 had setup a massive table where we all played cards. We played Asshole if I remember correctly. We did this for a few hours where we ended up all separating from each other.

This is about the time we through down a massive towel and just sat on the side of the road. The first 2 people to come see us had to be the coolest 2 people of the night, a brother sister combo that played the guitar. It was neat because they played so well together. One played Guitar while the other played a brassier guitar. But then were in perfect sync. They were the first people we really partied with. Broke open our drinks and had a great time with.

Then this guy came around who was doing some sort of university paper on festival. Basically He had the chance to ride around the country to see festivals and write about them. What an amazing job. Before the night was up they would have interviewed Darby but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

While we were sitting on the blanket we got to speak to a lot of people. Everyone had the same question in mind “When did you guys arrive?”. Initially we told the first few people but then me and Darby devised a great plan. We would tell people to get the time from us we would have to get an interesting fact from them. We heard some pretty crazy facts. The craziest face was as follows: The average person will spend $3000.00 in hair products over a ten year period. Isn’t that a bizarro fact.

As time went on we had to change our ploy. As the night went on people no longer could give us interesting facts so we had to ask people to do anything that they could to entertain us. My favorite was the guy who sang the song that he created based on the previous year at Folkfest. It was a strange song. I just wish I could remember what it was about.

It wasn’t too much later that I started to get tired. I got about 90 minutes of sleep in van. During that time I did peek outside a little bit to see there was some activity still going on. I saw Darby get interviewed by that university dude. I also saw the brother/sister duo still playing there instruments.

This is where I would say the night ended for me and I fell asleep. Stay in touch to read about day 2.