Coachella 2007

I am unable to contain my excitement for this great trip. First it will be the first trip my boyfriend and I will take together, not the last!!!

I am going to be re-united with my best friend from college out in Los Angeles. I hope to be able to fly into LAX, enjoy some great sushi, drive out to Temecula for some wine tasting, and then drive out to Indio, CA to set up our camp grounds on Thursday night.

I am just going to post a picture of the music lineup that I will be seeing at this awesome festival in the desert of California. Let the sun shine hit my head, light up my heart, and toast my skin :-)

More to come,

~April

We arrived at LAX right on time. Could not get in touch with my friend for 40minutes. He was late picking us up. I guess I wasn't too surprised, but I was just so happy to be in California I didn't care.

My friend said he was going to have everything together and ready to go, but that wasn't the case. We spent 12 hours of our day helping him get himself together. We didn't mind too much because the faster he could get all his stuff done the faster we could get to the campsite and relax. We did get some good sushi at this little hole in the wall. The fish was so fresh that we watched the guy cut the fish, de-bone it and serve up the fresh pieces. The spanish mackrel was amazing. The cook even deep fried the bones & head and put lime juice on top. Quite delicious. We also had the brains of our fresh sweet shrimp put into our miso soup to add extra flavor.

Scott and I had to drive down to San Diego to take care of the last chore my friend needed to finish, then it was off to Indio. We took route 74 and it was beautiful. Driving through the moutainside of California. Although it was really late at night, we had a great time enjoying the sites. No pictures of that or our first few hours, because we were so busy.

We arrived at the camp site at about 1am. We weren't the last people to show up!!!! People were piling in from early that moring until late in the next afternoon. We were so surprised to see the sea of tents at the campsite. Scott and I walked around for awhile, but contrary to belief there werent that many "friendly people" who wanted to hang out. We decided to go to sleep around 2am to get ready for the first long day of the festival.

OH MY GOD!!! It was so hot!!! People were talking about how hot it was going to be but living it is a different thing. Scott and I had to be up at 8am because the heat was too much to bear in the tent. It was like sleeping in a sauna.

Scott and I didn't plan too great and didn't have a tent that had an overhang so we could sit outside the tent in the shade. We toasted for a long while and ate some of our fantastic tuna and just got really really hot. After a while we decided to go walking around and check out the beer garden. We weren't really planning on drinking that much, but it was the only place with shade to chill out ountil 12 when the festival opened.

Good thing for bringing cards. Gin Rummy and some cold Amstel Light really made the early morning better. Around 12pm we decided to walk over to the festival, figuring that it should be more fun in there than sitting at a beer garden. We were so right!! There were so many sites to see. We spent the first hour walking around figuring out where everything was and stopping for shade frequently at different tents.

It was so hot that sitting outside to see some of the acts was horrible!!! Good thing for hats & sunglasses. I was happy that I decided to bring a bathing suit for each day. I couldn't imagine wearing anything but a bathingsuit. Some people were in full outfits, all black, and other crazy stuff. I couldn't believe they could dress like that.

Scott and I heard great music! It was by far the most relaxing day because it was the least packed. We got to hear Silversun Pickups on the main stage at 5pm and they ROCKED IT!!!!! I was so excited they were on my must see list. Scott and I never heard of them before that day, but I knew I had to see them after hearing their song Lazy Eye on the Coachella music player. After that we saw Stephen Marley at sunset on the second stage. That was great because he played mostly Bob Marley songs.

Nickelcreek was a great band to jam out too during the 4pm hour. Once the sun set you could go anywhere and would not be nearly as hot as during the day. It was a great time!!!!

This day was just as great as before. We learned our lesson from yesterday and just brought our tuna and Uno over to the beer garden and got a nice spot early in the morning. Playing Uno all morning and having a few beers and talking to your significant other is a great way to past the time. We were still kind of sad because we had not met any real cool people. That was why we decided to camp so we could party at night with new people, but seriously after you have spent 12 hours in the sun and standing you are so tired when you get back to your tent that you just pass out. Then at 8am you are awake to do it all over again.

Strapped with a few beers in our stomach, sunscreen, and some hats we headed over to the fesitval grounds again. We had to getme new sunglasses because I lost mine the first day and the second pair I had brought had mysteriously disappered also. It was great though because Scott picked me out awesome new pair of glasses that I love. He also got me a sweet skirt and dress. Today we decided to try out most of the festival food. The Gyros were amazing and so was the vegetarian Indian cusisne. The rest we tried was okay. The great thing about our favorite food there were very small lines.

The music wasn't that great this day, but still awesome. I will put up pictures later of all the bands we saw. Scott made sure to get a picture of as many of the people we saw possible. Busy P & Mehdi rocked it today. We thought that Justice was going to be so great bcause there was so much hype over them, but seriously they werent' that great. They just sat behind these awesome speakers and didn't even get into their own music.

OH YEAH!!! I almost forgot the Red Hot Chili Peppers were awesome live!!! They had this great new guitarist. The music felt like it went through my body it was so fabulous!!! I was happy I got to see them. So I guess I take back my statement of the music not being that great. hahaha...it was awesome!!! How could it not be with so many artists?!?!!?!?!

YAY FOR SUNDAY!!! THe main reason why we came our favorite bands Rage Agaisnt the Machine and Infected Mushroom. This is what the whole trip was for!!!!

This morning we were up really early and was definitly at the beer garden. We stayed there longer because we FINALLY!!! met awesome people. We had a great time playing Uno and meeting new people and getting somewaht tipsy by 9am..>I would consider it time well wasted as Brad Paisley says.

Scott's best friend Brendan came for only that day and his friend Mandy. We were excited to see them during the day. We hung out all together only for a second but it was still awesome seeing them. We met back up with them again when our favorite groups dj was performing, Pendulum. It was good, not as good as I thought it was going to be. We saw The Roots and Willie Nelson. I couldn't have asked for a better day.

There were so many people there. There had to be at least 80,000 people. AT LEAST!!!! IT was so crowded. I liked this day a lot because of the music, but the crowd turned me off a little. Especially since I tend to not like too many people around me. Our phones were both dead by this point so Scott had to cycle to get battery power to his phone. It was funny. (See picture of him on bike) That didn't last too long because it was in 90degree weather. At least it was the cooler of the 3 days.

Rage agianst the machine rocked it of course. There were so many people there. I decided to stay in the back because our other favorite group Infected Mushroom were playing at the same time as Rage. We went to go see them for a little and they were great too because it was a live set and not just a DJ set.

After that day, we decided tow alk around the camp again and try our luck with meeting more people to party for the last night. We came to one crazy camp, but everyone was just hitting beach balls in the air. We thought it was going to be a little more than that, but people love their beach balls at festivals. I figured out that you are at a good festival if there are a lot of beach balls bouncing around!!!!!

Hahahaha.....Loved it!

Tired as hell we finally wake up on the last morning. We decided to sleep over one more night so we wouldn't have to worry about driving late night. We left and went to REAL bathrooms at Jack n the Box and had a horrible lunch...hahaha but it was okay.

I convinced my friend to blow off any responsiblities for the day and drive us up the PCH -1 to Santa Barbara. It was the best decision ever. It is where I want to live at some point for awhile and I needed to show Scott so he could contemplate moving with me ;-)

We stopped at a brewery and had a few drinks and some great food and did a little walking around downtown. There was a vendor on the street that had many Hindu & other eastern goodies. We both liked these two tapestries hanging up and the one I liked was the goddess Sheba who is supposed to be awesome and he liked the one with the god of Obstacles. Which is perfect because he needed something to help remeove obstacles from his life. I mean of course I am great at doing that, but it doens't hurt to have a little divine power behind you ;-)

It was a great relaxing peaceful day and drive. By the time we were done walking around for a little it was time for us to go to the airport. There we decided to have some drinks and just recap on how great the weeked had been. How great our frist trip together was. How great our first festival was!!!!

It was worth every penny we saved & spent to get out there. We were so tired though. So happy I decided to take off the next day to recover and sleep.

Ciao

Abril