Going to a party in the desert is a undertaking. Between the packing, the planning, the organizing, the trip, the setup, the party, the booze, the tear-down, the trip home and the unpacking, there are a great many things which are added together to create the experience. This creates a situation where only the dedicated appear at the show, making for a less dramatic weekend, but also makes you see and realize a great deal of things. A few of these things really stuck out in my mind, and I will now share those with you for what is bound to be another journey through my thought processes.
Things learned this weekend:
- The correct music is essential for a good road trip. Breakbeats or Drum and bass for the night part when you are so tired you kinda want to stop driving, Tom Petty and Willie Nelson for driving through Eastern Oregon ranch land under a bright sun, and something fast paced and fun for the beginning. Chill tunes for the drive home.
- Fast food is essential for road travel, but nothing that makes a person disposed to filling up with gas that he is then forced to diffuse into the cabin of the vehicle. Onions are another no-no, especially when mixed with carbonated vegetables.
- Driving with your knees to do such things as change CD’s, hit the person next to you, mess with the stereo, eat food or look for something that probably isn’t really that important in the grand scheme of things is ok, unless you are driving a car with bad ball joins, loose steering and a bad alignment. In that case I would not recommend it. One can only wobble all over the highway at 70 for so long before the Cops or Murphy’s Law begin to take notice.
- Some people would think that getting up in the morning and eating breakfast burritos while drinking a luke-warm beer placed outside your tent before stumbling into it to pass out for the evening would be a terrible idea. Those people would be wrong.
- Everything is better when cooked in bacon grease. Everything. Vegans and vegetarians don’t think so, though in this case I am not able to defer to their judgement.
- There are a very few things in this world or any other than spending a weekend with your nearest and dearest friends, surrounded by nature and permeated by high-quality music. It’s just not very good for your pores.
- Dancing is good for you. I cleans out your soul, gets you exercise. Dancing next to a huge, deep, nearly invisible mud puddle is bad for your shoes. Please keep this in mind.
- Flirting with a cute woman who looks as if she works in a library but still has a Rock Shoxx sticker on her car is something that is fun to do. Keeping her attention on and off for a couple of hours is fun to do as well. I recommend everyone try it. Just don’t try it on the highway, or else there is a chance you will end up almost run off the road by a tractor-trailer loaded with farm-impliments.
- Potato guns sound like real guns. They are not – they are actually far cooler than real guns – though one does not look nearly as awesome firing one.
- Oregon has the coolest town names ever. Be it The Dalles, Dufur, Fossil, Celilo, Blalock, John-Day, Haines, Umatilla, or any of the other plethora of names used by the Native Americans to name their people and transferred to the possession of the not-as-native Oregonains, they are awesome and make for much laughter when driving across the state.
- Getting back to the city after spending a weekend in the desert is a jarring experience, especially when returning to Portland. Coming in from the east on 84 you are surrounded by trees in one of Americas most beautiful places and within literally 2 miles are in the middle of the city. It’s dirty, shiny, and has too many straight lines. It smells like exhaust and is full of people moving fast. It is a far cry from the relaxed and plesent atmosphere of the Idaho back-country. It kinda sucks.
This is but a sample of the things that crossed my brainicles while on my sojurn as desert-camper. Unfortunately I forgot my notebook, so I had to write these from my memory, and for those of you who know me, this is a somewhat dicey proposition.
