Ahh.. home again.. cool weather., showers and a working fridge.. everything we did no have at the gathering of the vibes. It was a GREAT trip.. made even greater by having my whole family there. It was a wonder short trip back to hippydom.. that made me appreciate that lifestyle and my current middleclassmiddleagemiddleamaerica quotidian existence..

 

Variety is the spice of life.. even if it means sleeping half naked. on a litter strewn cement sidewalk surrounded by drug dealers..(not kidding)

 

beyond family time.. my next favorite thing was lsitening to miusic and dancing like a middle age white guy (don’t imagine it.. too scary)

The crow was awesome.. every age/stage.. lots of good vibes.. and good lights.

The main music lasted every night until 1:30 AM.. then the second stage show went until about 3L30.. there were folks at our camp every night till about 4.. Max rigged up a cool MAX/Jittter patch eith my webcam. and gary’s projector.. so we had a cool interactive display of folks walking by the camp.. it drew a cool and trippy crowd.

mornings always came too early… little kids up at 7 after 3 -4 AM bed time. make for a short nights sleep.. not too bad.. sicne it was really too haot to sleep.. there were people everywhere.. many just sleeping where they landed.

Lot of trash every morning.. most of it cleaned by afternoon.

Despite the litter and the persistent sound checks.. we had yoga the last two mornings.. the perfect rememdy for a stiff backl from sleeping on concrete

 

this morning I found a perfect ‘S’ of grass on my yoga mat.. i like it when stuff like that happens..

Day’s there weere pretty lazy.. a couple of us volunteered at the ‘carbon cutters’ booth next to our camp.

Their misssion is to raise awareness of each person’s carbon foot print.. my prius driving. compact florescent, wood burning lifestyle sounded pretty good until I started adding up how many miles I fly every year.. .. (tho- I am traveling less now)

 

Gabe was doing the senior statesman thing with the little kids.. here he is poking at a dead horseshoe crab.. that turned out not to be dead at all..

 

this one had gone to the other side..

 

since we were about everything solar.. we did our lunch cooking with a solar oven.. here is my solar burrito

 

the rest of the day we spent wandering around looking at the merchandise and crowd watching

here are our friends terryleigh, dan and our friend/camp-ate paul.

 

 

afternoon shows on saturday started with my friend scott’s band, max creek. they were awesome .. I hadn’t seen them in nearly 15 years..

 

After max creek.. a plane flew over with a proposal.. wonder what she said ?!

then Bridgeport’s own Deep Banana Blackout.. great sound..

We heard that Amy Winehouse had died.. DBB did a short tribute to her.

 

On the way back to the bus we saw sam’s exact bike.. same color and make.. we left a samstone on it ..

 

the kids had found us a treat (?) freid oreas.. yum ?

then back to music.   next show was. Moe. (awesome)

Then elvis costello (nice.. but not my style)

 

great dragon folks made…

 

max made a scepter on the spot

last band was janes addiction.. not bad.. but again not my style.. we could here it fine at camp..

I ended up helping the guys from the bridgeport discovery museum (dave and dave) hook up their 10″ schmidt cassegraine do that the crowd could look at saturn.. then later at the moon and jupiter.

 

dave 1 even had the same lab coat I have !

 

here’s a quick picture of Saturn from holding my camera up to the eyepiece

and a similar one of the moon..   not bad for such murky skies !

 

We must have shown 100 folks the sky.. Dave was still working the scope at 4AM this morning.

around 2:30 there was a great fire dance at the circle right in front of the bus..

this morning gabe woke up with something in his eye.. which involved a quick trip to the medics.. they rinsed it outwith a syringe.  looked spooky but didn’t hurt. .

 

meanwhile back at camp Oren and Skyler were selling shells and any other stuff they found. quite a good racket

 

oren taught gabe and diane how to make friendship bracelets

 

then.. all too soon it was time to go back to the ‘real’ world.. we packed our stuff..   and said goodbye to our solar bus friends..

 

 

 

ahh.. one last job.. we helped gary refuel the bus.. we didn’t have a source of used oil.. so he went and bought about 30 gallons of salad oil from a wholesale place

we filled her up ..

we said goodbye and left the bus for the ‘real’ world..

great trip.. ok.. bartteries going..

more tomorrow

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

Greetings again from beautiful bayside park in bridgeport ct.. another hot day.. today was ‘only’ 96.. but it felt infinitely better than yesterdays 104. there was a breeze and it was quite tolerable.. tolerable ? what am i saying. it was great.. we’ve had a full day of usic and hanging out.. can’t ask for much better than that. Blogging is proving to be difficult these last two days.. 20,000 freaks are vying for the same bandwidth.. it’s taking forever to upload pictures.. Ugh.. still can’t get pictures up.. how ’bout if I post them tomorrow. I’m goign to go listen to MOE. mrore tomorrow .. or later.. nite all, nite sam -me

Greetings from hippyville. Were here at the third day of the vibes and it’s been record breaking heat.. strangely.. I don’t mind i…

i haven’t moved all day..

 

Last night was great.. hazy hot sunset..

Then a really nice Dark Starr Orchistra set.. it lasted until 1AM.. then we showed cartoons at our campsite.. we had guests until about 3:30 AM

 

I loved the LED hoops I saw.. gave me ideas

I slept again behind the buss.. and woke to blazing heat and screaming kids.. not a pretty sight !

Max managed to get an hour more sleep

 

Hygiene is minimal here.. maybe even optional

 

Saw a bunch of morning yoga folks

 

max sprayed passerbys as a merci

 

 

then I went out to help ben and the folks from bio bus collect specimins fwith the kids

 

 

my friend Tim stooped by with his very cool friend Dave.. great hanging with him for awhile !!

 

Man.. hippies coming out of he sea !!

 

I went to see dave’s book signing. He’s just published “marketing lessons from the grateful dead’ looks like a fun read.. I’ll report here

 

our camp became a favored hang out because we are near one of the few shade trees here.. drew a great crowd all day

 

did a lot of hanging out with max, kennie, gary and friend Paul.. who says “Hi Mary and Riley !”

well thats it.. further playing tonight..   shoul dbe good

batteries failign but spirits are not

 

more tomorrow

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

 

Howdy from the Vibes day 2.. It’s hotter than Hades here.. and goign to be hotter tomorrow. There’s actually a high heat advisory for this location.. it’ll be 97 tomorrow and 70 percent humid.. they say it will feel like it will be 110

 

All said though.. it wasn’t too bad today.. I spent the day trying not to move.. pretty successfully I might add. I woke up around 8 to bright sunshine.. despite the heat I had to cover up for the light and bugs.. here I am

here’s max.. he managed to sleep till 9:30

 

I went for a longish run before it got too hot.. I eneded up getting out to a lighthouse at the point nearby.

First order of business was to get the wind generator up.. Gary and paul lead the installation,. it was like our own iwo jima

All day long we did simple slolar demos.. we had a solar founain. a solar cell phone charging station.. we even made our burritos in a solar oven.. lots of folks dropped by to check it out..  We’re even on the agenda !

 

 

midday, Max and I braved te ehat and checked out the vendors.. nice stuff..

 

the only airconditioned plance is funded by the tobaccoc association.. it’s only for smokers.. It’s in the low 60’s in there .. and full of green plants. how funny is that ?

 

the best thing about festivals like this is the people watching.. I talked to so many folks today.. i love hearing theur stories.

 

there are also a bunch of non profits (like us) here.. Just down the street is Seva (http://seva.org) a wonderful org started by ram dass and wavy gravy. They give gifts of  gifts of health and training in the emerging world. . Several of the past christmas’s our ‘gift’ to sam was a donation to Seva.. Once we made a donation to support midwife training, another time it was for eye clinics..   Please check out seva

Right next store is Donate Life. an org we know and love.. that promotes organ donation.. I told them both about Sam and gave both t a samstone..

 

down the street from them is Ben and Sarah’s biobus.. doing life sceince demos.. tall day.. tehy had soem microscopes set up looking at creaures they pulled from the sound.. it was so cool !

Max and I helped ben tilt his solar panels on the bobus.. it was a great place to watch the coming sunset..

OK.. music’s starting.. ogtta shut down now.. More later  it’d goign to be a long and wilde night

-nite all, nite sam

-me