The Great Dividing Clash

Things went very well in Asheville. Susie and Brian, who we were staying with are extremely lovely people. Both are teachers. I had a very excellent time hanging out with them and they both did so much to show Rich and I the sights and bring on the good times.

The day before Rich and I were meant to leave for 10 000 lakes I looked up the website and discovered that the festival isn't actually located near Detroit in Michigan, as Rich had said, but was infact located in Detroil Lakes, Minnisota. Many mother fucking kilometers further. I'm not going to lie, things hadn't been going particularly well between Rich and I. We both had very different ideas about how the trip was going to play out, and what we wanted from it. I think we are just very different people also. I found him very annoying. I turned into a teenager again around him. I'm not particularly proud of the way I responded to the situation, but something about him put me in this downward angry spiral. I ended up yelling at him... I can't remember the last time I was so angry at someone I felt I had to yell at them.

Anyway... The extra distance the money we would have to spend on gas, the extra time I would have to spend in a car with Rich, and his reaction to my reaction to the extra distance lead to me purchasing a ticket on the next plane back to Vancouver. So here I am, back in Van and I'm very fucking happy about it.

All Good?

So much has happened. I will try and keep it brief, suspect I will fail though.

Basically I was dumped in Pine Bush, New York. Small town in the middle of no where. I wont get into details, but it was a bit of a shock to the system after at least three of the best weekends of partying in a row ever. Was staying with Richard, guy I met at Woodford folk festival over last New Years.

We drove to this festival called All Good. http://www.allgoodfestival.com/
I hadn’t heard of any of the bands. I was expecting something kinda small. It was huge though. More than 20 000 people. We got there on Thursday and left on Monday. It was the most drugged out festival I’ve ever been to. Never have I seen drugs sold or consumed more obviously. We had to walk down this street to get to the main stage. We called it crack alley. People were just standing on the side of the road yelling out the name of the drug that they were selling. Every second person was smoking weed or popping pills. On the walk back to the tent at night this street was lined with people with balloons of nitrus oxide, I’ve been told it’s just laughing gas, starves your brain of oxygen, real bad for you. Every prick was doing it at this festival. There were used balloons everywhere. So gross.

We were camped next to these two dudes, both early forties. They’ve been friends for ages, met in College. Once a year they make this pilgrimage to the All Good festival to take as many drugs as they can and party as hard as they can. They were actually really damn cool. Never have I met anyone who can party as hard. For the whole 4 days they got about 4 hours sleep and had two meals. They were taking pills, dropping tabs of acid, eating Marley (crushed Ecstasy?) snorting coke, drinking beer and who knows what else. One morning I was up and heard them playing Ween, so I came out to investigate. There they were sucking up some nitrus. They were surrounded by all these little canisters of the stuff and had an almost empty box of 50 canisters sitting next to them. Funny as hell.

At one point there was a few of sitting around drinking and talking. It got onto the topping of a lot of the world really disliking America. One girl said "They're probably just jealous". Man, I laughed so mother freakin' hard. I couldn't stop myself. I'm pretty sure she was damn offended. I just couldn't help myself.

Once that was over we drove towards Asheville, North Carolina. We mainly drove the scenic way, doubling our drive time, but seeing a lot of cool out of the way places. Can’t even remember where we were. Think we saw Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia… not real sure. So here we are in Asheville, staying with Rich’s college friend. It’s this cool little town, full of artsy alternative types. Lots of live music and art galleries. All sorts of good things. I’m liking it.

Plans are: stay here for about a week, drink home brew, eat good food, see live music, hit up some art galleries and go Kayaking. From here we drive to Michigan, to the 10 000 lakes music festival http://www.10klf.com/. It seems way less druggy, more straight edge, bands I’ve heard of. Should be heaps good. Then back to Vancouver at the end of the month. YAY!

I wanted to add photos, but I'm on this old shitty computer that wont let me. Click on the flickr link on the right for photos.

America - Fuck Yeah!

Arrived in America safe. Haven't seen or done anything yet except meet Rich at airport, get driven to his place in Pine Bush, New York. I've slept, had something to eat and checked my facebook (all the important things).

Still not really sure where we're going or what we're doing. Sure it'll be ace though.

April - BFF - Lesbian Lover?

All my life I've been the kinda person who has a lot of friends, all really different types of people. I've been fairly good friends with a lot of people, but have never had a group of REALLY close friends, or someone who I could hang out with all the time, or whatever. I always noticed other people and their close friendships and just presumed I wasn't the kind of person who would ever have a super close friend... a best friend... or whatever.

I have been proven wrong! Thank you April! April is the coolest mother fucking chick ever. I've never spent this much time with anyone. We just get along so well. It's damn awesome. We're really different, but really the same. We always go to say the same thing, read each others minds, other soppy shit like that. It was a really damn sad day yesterday when I had to leave Vancouver. I'll be back... but I prob wont be living with April. So much sadness.

Apriil recently said that she went to the supermarket and one of the lady's who worked there asked her where her friend was (ME!). She said that everyone who worked at the supermarket knew when we were there. We were always singing, dancing around, being crude, loud and obnoxious (in a good way).

I just discovered recently that a friend of April and mine thought that we were lesbians. He said something like - you're always hanging out together, dancing together, linking arms walked around together... shit like that. When I told April this, she said that one of her friends had asked her if she was a lesbian, and if I was a lesbian. I'm really curious to know how many people thought we were lesbians. No wonder we hadn't been getting any boy action.

Party All The Time

Last weekend was the third weekend that April and I partied relatively hard. It was real worth it though.

Highlights:
- Critical Mass - big bike ride that happens on the last Friday of every month. Everyone congregates downtown at the art gallery and follows who knows who to all diff places around the city. There are shit loads of people who do it. We took over three different main bridges throughout the evening. Ended up in Stanley Park (where I worked teaching kids about trees) for an awesome ride through the forest. We stopped at English bay and watched the sun set. This was followed by an awesome all you can eat sushi meal. So good.

- Fish's Farewell. Fish is a friend of April's, and now a friend of mine. He had this crazy party at his house as he is leaving Vancouver. The highlight for this party was watching party do a handstand against the wall. He had seen April and I do it an make it look so effortless. Tried to do it himself and just sunk to the ground. Hilarious. Another highlight is April saying she'll take off her clothes and dance around if the DJ played Michael Jackson. This was at about 6/7am in the morning. Fish had requested chill out music, we wanted to keep dancing though. So on came Michael Jackson and off came the clothes. So it was her, Marty, myself dancing around in underwear. There were like 4 other people dancing fully clothed. Fun times. April went to the bathroom, so marty thought it would be a good idea to put on Aprils dress. So I put on his clothes. April was happily surprised and put my clothes on. Good damn times.

- After Fish's the three of us walked to Bons. Cheap breakfast joint for 3 dollar breakfast. Paid for it with money found at party. Spent the rest of the day falling asleep to flight of the concords.

- Evening BBQ. On same day as sleepy Concords we invited some people around for BBQ. While April was getting food ready Marty and I got outside organised. Marty is full of good ideas. We were setting up the futon couch outside and he suggested that we make a trail of rose petals from outside the kitchen where April was leading down the stairs to the backyard and ending up to to the couch where Marty and I were laying down in our underwear. Unfortunately some guests arrived before April discovered us, slightly embarrassing. We got them to go knock on the front door so April would see the trail of rose petals. She loved it.

- 200 flavoured ice cream. Curry, blue cheese, wasabi, all sorts of crazy shit. I opted for the more straight edge fruity flavours.

- Package from parents. Most awesome thing ever. It was kind of ill timed though. I pretty much hadn't had any sleep. The weekend kinda ended on Tuesday at 11:30am. Meaning I had half an hour to move everything out of my room for the new house mate to arrive. I got that done, and when she was moving her shit in with 3 other people the package arrived. I was feeling pretty emo... had to go hide out in the backyard to open it. Dad had made Anzac biscuits, mum sent me this really nice soft fabric shirt. There was all this strange candy (presumably Ben's idea), there was the Wagga News paper, and an Australian newspaper. The highlight though was this kids toy that records and warps voices. When I hit play there was this awesome message from Mum, Dad and Ben. Ben's was my fave. It was a string of swears that had been warped. There was also an Australian flag I had chosen not to take with me when I left Australia. I am glad to have it now though, gonna put it on the dash of the car when Rich and I drive around the states.