Tuesday, October 9, 2007

hardly strictly

This past weekend I spent two and a half days in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco with about 50,000 other people at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. You can see some of my new friends in the picture above. We listened to the sweet sounds of bluegrass and other beautiful music. I loved it. Neko Case, Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, Ricky Scaggs, Earl Scruggs...I could go on and on. Charlie Louvin is an 80 year old man who is apparently a giant in the bluegrass world. The guy still has stage presence. The Sadies are from Toronto and the lead guys are two brothers. For the last half of their set their mom and dad sang with them. I kept wishing I could get invited for Christmas. The sing alongs would be fun! The entire festival was unbelievable and it was all FREE!!
Eight of us travelled down to San Fran in two vehicles. Me, Kenton, Kathleen, Chris, Tim, Patrick, Lorraine and Brett. My car and Kenton's parents van made their way down 1600km of the I-5 overnight on Thursday. This picture was a common sight when I would look out the front window. And the picture below is driving into the city. This is the Bay Bridge. If you haven't been to San Fran you should go. It's great. The people of San Fran are incredibly friendly and helpful. It's pretty easy to get lost in San Fran but someone will kindly help you get on the right track again.

On Sunday evening our group split. 3 of us drove home overnight and 5 stayed behind. My new friends Patrick and Tim and I all wanted to get home for thanksgiving dinner. So off we went on the 16 hour drive home. Inadvertently we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge which we were not supposed to do but we did, much to Tim's delight. It is a pretty impressive structure. Even though our diversion took us in the wrong direction we quickly fixed it and found ourselves on the I-5 heading north. The crazy thing is I can get onto to the I-5 at any point between here and Mexico and drive straight north without having to turn until I get to the street I live on. When you cross the border at Peace Arch the I-5 turns into the 99 which turns into Oak Street. One right hand turn off of the street and you're at my house. This was a weekend for the history books. I will never be the same again.

1 comment:

d said...

dude! all that music...I think I'm a bit jealous...