Hey kiddies. Its been awhile since I checked in, so I figured I’d take a little time and recap the trip to Dewey Beach for their Popfest. Be on the lookout for some guest bloggery, as we had some friends join us on the trip. Their posts should be up in the next day or two, and hopefully some pictures as well.
We left Friday morning fairly early as it’s supposed to be an 8 hour drive or so, it ended up taking us just under 11 hours to get there. We sat in a ton of traffic coming over the Delaware Memorial Bridge, which made us a little nervous in realizing we might be late to load in and get to the festival on time. I need to mention that it was a beautiful day on Friday, in the 80’s and half of the car wanted the windows down and to enjoy the awesome weather, and the other half are crazy lunatics and couldn’t deal with it and needed the Air Conditioning on… Bastards!
The ride down was fun, though the people in my car have the tiniest bladders in the world, which made for frequent pee stops, which can drive a man insane. We did however hang out at one of New Jersey’s fine rest stops for a few minutes and enjoyed some delicious chili cheese dogs from Nathan’s Hot Dogs. At least I enjoyed the chili cheese dogs. We ended up listening to Sirius for most of the ride which was awesome because there is just so much to choose from, and can typically find an awesome song at any given moment of the day. We did however have a hostile music take over at one point from Lisa, which I think we all agree was a frightening and traumatic experience. I eventually had to exercise my veto power.
We ended up making it to the venue in enough time to check in and load in. The venue was set up with 2 stages, which alternated performances. Luckily for us, the band that was supposed to play before us, didn’t make it so it allowed us some extra set up time. Viki who ran the show, was very helpful and made sure we had everything we needed. Most festivals are usually a chaotic unpleasant experience, but this one was not. It was ran very well, and I’m psyched to have been a part of it.
We got on stage at 9pm and started rocking Dewey Beach. The beach was literally behind my drum kit, so close in fact there was talk about someone jumping on stage and pushing me into the water. Luckily, my knife fighting and gator wrasslin skills were enough to hold off such an attack. The crowd seemed to really dig us, which always makes for a great gig. Mike had some technical difficulties with his guitar strap, so in between a few songs he felt the need to entertain the audience with his comedic repertoire of “Drummer Jokes”… We had a good time playing and hanging out after the set.
Later in the evening a few of us decided to jet and try and find some food. There was a nifty diner open a few miles down the road, so it was nice to sit down and take in some grub. After eating we were exhausted, so we went to the Motel to hit the rack.
As I lay in my death coma, apparently there was a party going on in the room next door at one point during the night. I didn’t hear a frickin thing, but according to others, it was loud, obnoxious and for a moment there was debate if it was some of our bandmates throwing a rager! I have since inquired, and found out that it was not The Motion Sick. I’m surprised I wasn’t woken up by it all, but I’m psyched I was able to get some decent rest.
When I got up in the morning I had to take a piss, so I head into the bathroom. As I’m peeing, I notice there are bugs crawling on the floor, sink and ceiling. I’m officially sorta freaked out at this point as I pretty much hate anything creepy crawly like. I report back to the rest of the room that there are some freakish looking bugs invading the bathroom. I try to convince everyone that they aren’t cockroaches (I’ve seen far too many in my day), but Mike gets up to check out the scene. Mike identifies the bugs as Termites. He reassures us that they won’t harm us, but I’m still creeped out. I don’t do bugs and I don’t do snakes! That shit creeps me out big time, I’m like a little girl.
So, I get up and shower and try to not have a nervous breakdown in the shower thinking about bugs crawling everywhere and thinking about how they could be crawling into my ears and laying eggs in my brain… I go outside to hang with Lisa for a bit and do some roaming around the beach. It was like 75 degrees fairly early in the morning, so it was nice to walk around without shoes and a shirt and enjoy a little taste of Summer. We meet up with Mike and Sophia and take a walk down the beach to find some coffee. We found a Starbucks/Bookstore which ended up having the worst coffee I’ve had in a long time. It was terrible. There were two old men who worked the counter and they reminded me of the two old guys from The Muppet Show that sat in the balcony…
After we have coffee, we make our way back to the car to head out. In a short period of time, the wind shifted and temperature dropped a bit, so it became chilly. We headed out of town and stopped at a local seafood joint called “Crabby Dick’s”. It was a cool little spot, and the highlight for me was that they had Yuenling on tap. Mmmmm! We also pulled over to check out a mini-golf place, which happened to be the most awesome thing I’ve seen in forever. The mini-golf joint had a freakin volcano with an airplane stuck on top of it! It looked AWESOME! There was also a giant pirate! We didn’t play, but we were in awe of it.
We headed back on the road and started the journey to NYC, as we were stopping there for the evening/night to visit some friends. Early Sunday morning I get a phone call from Mike asking where I was… He tells me it’s 7:30am. I get up in the biggest panic imaginable, as I had set my alarm for 6am because we needed to leave NY really early to get back home. My alarm didn’t go off and Mike’s call woke me. I literally threw on my clothes and raced out the door to pick up Mike from a Subway stop. His train ended up being really late, but he thought I had left without him. I had to haul ass home because I had an appointment at 11am. I ended up being really late, which sucked because it caused some stress. I HATE being late. It is one of my biggest pet peeves, it makes me mental. I felt so bad. Nothing I could do though, bad set of circumstances.
So, that was pretty much my experience for the weekend. I had a lot of fun playing the Dewey Beach Popfest, and hope to play there again next year. I’d like to see them try and do it a little later in the summer when the beach is hopping! I’m sure you will get some other stories from the rest of the band and our guest bloggers. Until then, be cool and I hope to see you soon!