BrockLi Soup

This was the best festival I’ve been to yet. The Grillbillie turnout was lower than usual, and there were definitely folks I missed, but there were also a lot of people that I was really hoping to see. And I got to spend a lot of time with everyone, too - everybody pretty much stuck around Grillbillie Hall.

Adam bought himself a new camper over in Delaware, and literally picked it up on his way to the festival. When he pulled in, we filled the place with people (and a tree) and did some exploring. The guy who sold it to him left everything in it (dishes, bedding, cleaning stuff - everything), and since Adam had bought the thing just two hours before, he never got a chance to clean it out or figure out where things were before we got our hands on it (FN did manage to find himself his own room).

On Saturday afternoon, Amy sent me a text message from the other end of the camper - “I deem you a official grillbillie.”

“Can you even do that?” I yelled back to her.

“Of course I can, I’m an original. Go see what Matt says.”

So I showed Matt the message, and he goes, “I thought you WERE official. You’re not going to fit into an extra large, are you?”

So I don’t have a t-shirt yet, but three years after the festival where I first met them, I’ve become an official Grillbillie. Definitely my best festival yet.

I had a ridiculous and rambunctious weekend at OATS, despite the fact that people kept disappearing to work the festival for a few hours at a time, which wore everyone out. There were a bunch of new folks and a bunch of not-so-new-but-new-to-me folks, so there was always someone to strike up conversation with. I rented a car for the weekend and wound up with a Taurus, and let me tell ya, it was a lot roomier than the Hotel Honda Prelude.

Bluegrass festivals with the Grilbillies are impossible to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. The weekend exceeds the amount of fun you’d think anyone could possibly have in two or three days, but by Sunday afternoon, you’re ready to head home just so that you can get some sleep and a shower. And that night, you experience such overwhelming withdrawal that you wonder if it would be easier to never see them again than to feel that morning-after pain the next time around.

Thanks to the holiday, I had an extra two days to recover from the weekend before going back to work. The Monday after Abbipalooza was the longest of my life, and I’m glad I don’t have to go through that again. The toughest part is knowing that I probably won’t be able to make it to any more festivals this summer - I’m poor, I don’t have a car, and I can’t keep taking Friday’s off, so trouncing off to Pennsylvania every weekend isn’t really an option. It’s unbelievably hard to leave those weekends behind and go back to “real life,” knowing that it may be another six months before I can see them again.

I should just retire and buy an RV.

(More pics)