APR 2011 Coachella, man.

The drug of choice is Music.  This would be my second go at Coachella and Jenn’s first.  We were joined by multiple friends including our good pals Steve, Cole, Gina, Katy, and Alex.  My parents also decided to join during their year long “Living in a Van” trip.

We left late in the afternoon on Thursday in the Jeep Liberty followed by my parents’ van and two other cars of friends and friends of friends.   We hit traffic getting into the festival well after dark and still a ways from our 10’ X 30’ camping spot.  The line getting into the festival takes forever and is fairly unorganized.  They have to search everyone’s car for weapons and dangerous things.  Knowing this would take a couple of hours we all cracked a beer and celebrated the beginning of the weekend’s shenanigans.  We arrived in our camping spot at 3am and set up our new tent in the dark for first time ever.  Luckily Jenn is a pro at pitching a tent, hehe.

As the sun rose, we were all awoken by the heat. It gets so hot in the tent with the sun beaming down that you feel like Ace Ventura climbing out of that fake rhino when you finally shake off the lazy and exit.  My parents brought an Easy-up that provided much needed shade and without this the sun may have fried us like bacon.  The first shows started at noon everyday so there was a solid 4-5 hours of waiting to go in the venue which was about a half mile from our camping spot.  This time was filled with making breakfast, playing cornhole, showering, and mostly, starting to drink slightly chilled beer way too early.

It baffles me why anyone thought it’d be a good idea to have a camping festival in the desert at the end of April.  The heat at times is overwhelming and it’s a constant battle for shade or water.  Although, these kind of treacherous conditions make for better story telling and it feels like an accomplishment to leave there alive after 3 days.  Maybe, it’s the alcohol, but sometimes is so horribly awesome it just makes you laugh.  OK, I’m done bitching about the heat.

Instead of saying what shows we saw on each day, I’ll just talk about the highlight shows alittle.  Arcade Fire was the best show we’ve ever seen.  They did an encore and played “Wake Up” while thousands of glowing beach balls dropped from the top of the stage and bounced around the crowd.  Easily the best concert moment of our lives.  Kanye and his Ego killed it.  He rapped for what seemed like 3 hours almost non-stop.  Ratatat was awesome, but unfortunately cut alittle short.  Cole insisted we go see Two Door Cinema Club and I’ve been a megafan of them ever since.  Other highlights were Good Old War, The Chemical Brothers, The Black Keys, Freelance Whales, Mumford and Sons, and Duran Duran.

Monday morning came and our sweaty bodies piled back in the cars like a dozen glazed donuts into a box. It was a long, smelly drive home and the sight of our own bed and bathroom was heavenly. You wouldn’t think it, but a with little hot water and soap that Coachella washes right off. It feels nice to be clean and relax inside on your couch and it’s within those first few moments of doing just that …that you can’t wait to go back.