A Festival Enhanced Weekend

First - a funny photo from yesterday afternoon.

I was mowing the lawn and the sprinklers went off on the course. I thought this was funny and it was VERY funny when that two some hit both of their balls within 10 feet of the sprinkler head.

Once they retrieved their balls they move forward and THOSE sprinklers turned off and the next ones turned on. TOO FUNNY!

Until the head 10 yards from me and my mower turned on for the first time this year soaking me and the backyard.

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With the 40th Anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair happening I spent a lot of the weekend obsessing, listening and watching anything and everything about the festival. I learned a number of cool things in the process and was sort of shocked to see how many "grown-ups" were so casual about telling the world about their acid experiences.

Most of my life when I have seen someone on TV talking about taking acid there was always some sort of dire warnings about how bad it is. Yet, from my experimentation days in the early 70's (Purple Haze, MDA, Window Pain, Strawberry Mescaline, Peyote Buttons, shrooms, blotters, microdots to name a few). I saw none of the "bad" (although I do remember winning so many spelling bees in High School . . hmmmmm).

Then here it is on TV for hours and hours with these normal looking older people who are just telling stories of their Woodstock experience with drugs and how they met their wife's on acid trips and so forth. it was refreshing to know that I was not the only one to remain alive and for the most part hellthy.

Granted the hallucinogens back then were much pretty clean.

LOL - did I just say "much pretty clean"?

So I had a big Woodstock weekend and wish I would have been a few years older as I know I would have gone (maybe I did go but don't remember?). But I do have one thing I can brag about in my life (besides being married to a wonderful wife who puts up with me).

I believe I was one of the first people in the WORLD to hear Dark Side Of The Moon. Here is why I think this.

On February 4th 1973 Pink Floyd played at the Roland Petit Ballet, Palais des Sports de la Porte de Versailles but that was the Meddle tour and at the time they were putting the final tweaks onto vinyl for Dark Side.

The very first time ANYBODY but immediate band members and family heard Dark Side was February 27th at a press release at the London Planetarium where a stereo recording was played.

Now something most Madison people do not realize. The very first performance of Dark Side was in Madison Wisconsin on March 4th 1973 when Pink Floyd kicked off their new tour. The concert was 6 days before the album was released.

I was in the front row (actually a poor place to see Floyd) just to the right of Richard Wright with 6,000 other people.

I went on to see Pink Floyd five more times.

And speaking of festivals.

I attended The 6th annual London Homebrew Festival and I'm going to have to talk everyone into attending this next year. What an idyllic setting for a festival. This is something that would make a great story from Good Morning America - small town festival in the summer. A true slice of Americana.

My buddy and I Elweed (I'm going to call him THE CRITIC from now on I think) attended and had a wonderful time. Much better then Quivey's Grove and you can really get hammered - no 2 ounce glasses at this baby!

I took a bunch of photos but in all seriousness they are boring. You can not take photos of tents and drinkers and have the same "feeling" we had. The photos seem sterile and lifeless. Not the wonderful, relaxed, content, CHEERS-like feeling we experienced. So - I tweaked the photos.

The setting is in the outskirts if unincorporated London at their Community Center. Two sides are tall corn with the Center and large oak trees for shade. It's absolutely perfect. Playgrounds for kids and dogs are welcome.

First an HDR photo to give you the lay of the land.

The rest are just images that give "me" the feel I had when I was there. As always clicking on the image (notice I do not call them photos) will as always enlarge them.

A summer oil portrait of the Festival if you will.





It was a mix of All Grain and Partial Mash brewing and just like micro brew fests there were good and bad and all sorts of interesting brews - the whole range. you sit back and drink all day among 150 friendly people! This event will keep growing I believe.

Next year DJ and I will be serving my homebrew at this event.

I have more photos but basically they are much the same.

That's it for today.

geez - I had SO much more I thought! hmmmmm

I'm not getting into the Columbus City Council today!