Did I mention its also an ART Festival. This was a moving crane flower
Well it took a bit of time but I finally caught up with my life to have a moment to write the Coachella blog. AND that is WITH a part time employee to help out and children and interns! For a bit there I was wondering how do I make this blog more than just a reporting of “we saw this…then we saw this, etc” Then I realized this is ME we’re talking about. Of COURSE way more than that happened!!
But let’s start at the beginning, which would be after Sex God & I dropped the kiddos off at school at 8 am. I had to pop into work to try and get ONE thing done. Sadly, that took way longer than it was supposed to and suddenly I find us more than an hour behind schedule! Yikes. This tends to kick in my rush mode cuz I’m a bit compulsive about being on time for things. So I was maintaining my favorite speed and I’m NOT posting that online. But lets just say Sex God’s comment by the time we arrived was, “Whew! Its like riding with a professional race car driver!” He hummed “Go Speed Racer” half the drive!
We got completely lucky at the hotel cuz our type of suite juuuuuust opened up when we got there so we got keys and were able to unload our stuff. Other people had to wait for hours. Mike and his troop were leaving much later than us so we left a key under the mat of the condo and headed out to the festival. And this is where having experience and a smart phone really helped. I KNEW we needed to hit the back entrance not the main entrance. The difficulty was just finding that working off memory which is a year old! But we got lucky and found it! I can’t tell you how nice it is to park on grass not dirt and be closer to the venue entrance!
Checking in on Facebook
We spent the first day seeing what was the same and what was different. It took me a while but I found my favorite item, root beer floats, for sale at a booth in the expanded food area. Which I must say was amazing. The food was expensive, as expected, but the diversity of choices were exceptional. Indian food, Chinese, cold sandwiches, pizza, ribs, roasted corn, veggie & regular burgers, Mexican… something for everyone.
Sadly we didn’t get thru security before 3pm so missed 3 hours of bands but had plenty of time to saunter over and see Group Love. They completely lived up to our expectations… as in Wonderfully Fun! It was packed and hot and amusingly every so often the oxygen level would drop or raise! But we loved every minute of it.
Lit balloons on wire held by people floated the night sky
After that we kind of wandered about, saw a bit of Arctic Monkeys, some Madness before parking at the Main Stage. Brant left me there to pop over to see M83 but said they weren’t that good after the one hit they played. Having seen Black Keys last Coachella we didn’t feel the need to “see” them. So I kinda hunkered down within sound range but back enough to lie down and well, I’ll confessed, I napped! Cuz I was stupid enough to go to the gym at 5 am that morning! Sex God came back from M83 & joined my nap, lol, cuz he’d been drinking all day.
But at 11 pm the wonderful beat of Swedish House Mafia woke us up. And wow… that experience suddenly brought home to me the appeal of house music. There were few lyrics, just music. But it was PERFECTLY executed. It would change and build up and then crescendo and change and build up and crescendo… all in a way that did NOT seem repetitive or boring and made you want to dance and dance. Which we did!
They were the last band of Friday and we left with the crowd and went to the camping site to look for Will and his group who were camping but couldn’t find him. Actually we DID find them but weren’t sure in the dark if it was them and the guys next to their site were all suspicious of us wandering around so we left and headed back to our condo. Turns out Will was there but asleep.. ASLEEP at Coachella!! Dude, get wasted at HOME… tix were too expensive to waste sleeping!
Freddie
Once at the condo Mike and Freddie and entourage had just arriving also. (Again.. yay smart phones!) So we all stayed up and chit chatted and drank and crashed probably around 2 in the morning. Reluctantly! But by 6 or 7 am my mind is up. Languid and easily dozing in and out, but once my mind is up its only a matter of time before my stomach wakes also. Of course, not before I “awaken” the libido of Sex God… although not too much! I send him off to pee first!! I’m THAT kind of a considerate girlfriend!
Drama of that First Day…. getting texts from Luke that he’d forgotten his key & I was on the phone & texting trying to solve his problem. After 30 minutes we settled on Grandma leaving work early & getting the spare key at her house. She was going to pick him up anyway for the weekend so it worked out.