So six of us packed up our stuff and headed to
Rothbury, Michigan over the 4
th to attend the first ever
Rothbury Festival.
Four days of camping and live music. It’s just like
Bonnaroo but in
Michigan…and with only 40,000 happy campers, it’s only about half as big as
Bonnaroo.
In attendance were me, Katie, Benny, Becca, Sean, and Marissa
It’s really hard to condense 4 days into one blog posting and not make it obnoxiously long. So sorry for that. I emailed everyone and asked them for their favorite moments. I also emailed Theresa and Conor, our friends in the Ukranian Village who watched Billy all weekend, and asked them what there favorite moments of their 4 days with Billy were. Here are some of the highlights:
Benny:
music, music, music. the music was fantastic! panic stole the show for me (as usual). friday and sunday were the best days for the music. the whole phish buzz was great. dmb put on a great show. snoop dog and modest mouse were my biggest surprises. the black keys and gov't mule were solid. also, i will see uncle boogie pants here in town. it was cool to actually see them (i had heard about them). i saw two members of the grateful dead and they both played "fire on the mountain" AND "sugaree." what a lineup! everyone pretty much brought their A game.
It's really no secret that Benny and I BY FAR got the most enjoyment out of the music. 
I really wish that everyone else shared our same passion for these bands. Passion might not be the right word, in fact I was pretty out of control for a good portion friday...here was our friday in this order...
Snoop Dogg
Drive By Truckers (photo below...fired up)
311
Modest Mouse
Yonder Mountain String Band
3 hours of Widespread Panic
By the time we made it to panic we were pretty much whipped into a frenzy.
Even though the others didn't share our passion for hippie music, the one thing musically that we ALL could agree on was that Snoop Dogg is amazing. He rolled out on his pimped out bike
And started throwing "left handed cigarettes" into the crowd. 
I never thought that 30,000 hippies would go ape shit over snoop dogg, but they did. and it was hilarious to watch.
Speaking of hippies...
Katie realized that "hippies are not my scene, I am not a hippie, I don’t want to be a hippie – I actually already knew this yet wanted to appease my boyfriend in pretending I was some sort of hippie music fanatic, low maintenance, go with the flow, super cool chick, weekend camper, no showering sweet ass girlfriend – but never again all at once – separately, maybe."
Benny:
There is also a bad side to hippy life. we were up front waiting for phil and friends to start on sunday night. this guy behind me started arguing with his girlfriend (she wouldn't give him his $300 sunglasses back). well, she squeezed his sunglasses and broke them. he then slapped her in the face, she got up, he spit in her face, then he pushed her down. this older guy (probably in his 50's) came out of nowhere and punched this guy in the face. this was in front of hundreds of people. we all basically made him leave. then she went running after him. it was one of the most awful things that i have ever seen. it still makes me very uncomfortable just thinking about it.
Katie:
In a separate incident, we had a domestic violence fight break out at about 2:30AM between neighbors Christy and Brian after Brian wouldn’t give Christy $10 for her weird posters and then threw her phone to the ground and broke it in half. When they started hitting each other and when Brian threw Christy into the side of their tent, Dave and Sean flew out of the tents to break it up. And Dave was wearing a t-shirt, boxer briefs, and one sock.
How I only had one sock on, I don’t know.
Marissa and Sean both enjoyed the trippy hippie human choo-choo train. Imagine it's around 1AM, and you're walking through this forest...
and in the distance approaches a pack of about 15 hippies in a flying v formation being led by a master hippie wearing some sort of costume you would find on the drum major in a marching band. They would shuffle shuffle shuffle and the stop. Then shuffle shuffle shuffle then stop. And they all did it in unison. It was creepy and entertaining.
There was one big aspect of the festival that was missing...showers. None. But there was a lake...we walked to the lake to find it was beautiful!
And that you couldn't swim in.
Unless you didn't mind sinking three feet into mud. Bummer.
BENNY TO THE RESCUE. He heard his neighbors talking about the water park. The water park turned out to be the other most frequently mentioned highlight of the weekend. And when we say water park, we mean a full blown waterpark, with water slides, a lazy river, and all...
It was full of dirty hippies, paddling around the lazy river and cleaning themselves off. I am pretty sure that the owners put 200 times the amount of chlorine they would normally put in the water, because my eyes were burning for about 2 hours after leaving the lazy river. either that or it was just hippie funk.
The other big discovery of the the weekend is that there is life on other planets. Alien spies do exist! We found this guy wandering around and attempting to interact with humanoids. This photo doesn't do it justice, he really looked like an alien:
He came up to our tent and spoke in slow, oddly constructed sentences. This was our first interaction with the alien on Thursday:
"Hello"
pause 15 seconds
"I was just driving by and saw all these tents and didn't even know this music festival was going on. So I decided to camp out."
await response. after response from humans pause 30 seconds.
"which bands are you going to see?"
wait for response from humans. pause 20 seconds.
"I'm just going to wander around in there and soak it all in."
slowly walk away
At first we joked that he was the alien. Every time we saw a light in the sky, we wondered if it was his buddies coming to join him. Sean commented that the alien must be here scoping out places to draw his crop circles. Katie thought he was here to discover this "music" that humans make. We saw a blimp flying overhead...it was clearly piloted by the alien. and on and on...
We got a lot of jokes out at the alien's expense over the course of two days. but by Saturday morning, we were completely convinced that the alien was real. Here's how it went down.
Katie: has anyone seen the alien today?alien appears within 30 seconds. NOT A JOKE.
Alien: good morningMarissa: oh my god look at katie's hair. Katie's hair is literally standing up, like she has her hand on one of those giant static electricity balls in a science fair.
Sean: The alien is stealing Wholey's knowledge.
Katie and Marissa laugh in alien's face.
Alien (oblivious to earthling humor): so, what was your favorite band yesterday?
Dave and Benny start 15 minute conversation about the best day of their lives (DBT, Modest Mouse, Yonder, Panic...blah blah girls are bored to death, alien feverishly is taking notes on paper).Dave to Alien: who did you see last night?
Alien (this is NOT A JOKE): my favorite band was Primus. I really liked the giant astronauts they had on stage.
Everyone except the alien - jaws open, staring at the alien in disbelief.
Here is a photo of the Primus stage, astronauts and all...
I'm not sure how the conversation ended, i think we were all in disbelief. We avoided the alien the rest of the weekend to ensure none of us were abducted.
Oh man...what a weekend. There's so many more photos I didn't post...including my favorites of the hippies lighting of fireworks, the cops playing bags with the hippies, and the 4th of july fireworks that went off above the stage right after panic finished. but if you want to see those, let me know...
And to bring it all to a close...I emailed Teresa and Conor (our friends who watched Billy all weekend) and asked them to give me the top five things they learned about William over the course of the 4 days:
5. Despite our best efforts to keep him off of our new offwhite, Ethan Allen couch (we waited a long time to afford that couch!) - Billy found a way over, around, under a barricade of other "blocking" furniture to find a perfect spot for a nap.
4. His running days are over, he can make it about 1 mile at Teresa's slow running pace of 10 minute miles. He is officially a walking dog - but he's good for a couple miles - no problem!
3. Apparently, he doesn't like fireworks - Who knew?? Note to self: Do not dog sit over the 4th of July weekend when you live on the west side of Chicago (otherwise known as Beirut). :)
2. He thinks he can catch squirrels. Seriously, he really thinks he can chase down a squirrel. He even tried to jump up a tree in hot pursuit of one sly gray squirrel.
1. He wanted to sleep with Teresa so badly that he woke Conor up early in the morning, followed him to the living room, pretended to fall asleep on the floor while Conor dozed on the couch, then snuck back into the bedroom to join the, still sleeping Teresa, for a few more hours of comfortable sleep. No problem jumping right into her bed!
oh bill...what an ass.
cute little bugger at that. congrats you two! can't wait to meet the little one...
funny because it's true.
