Lollapalooza Post #1

Oh my God.
What a weekend!
It was amazing, wonderful, delicious, emotional, fun, gorgeous, sexy, incredible, awesome. Just awesome.

I am so tired today. And so sore. Not only did we have 3 full days of walking, standing and dancing in the sun, we also biked each day to and from the concert, 9 miles each way. So after a full day of concerts, we biked home an hour. 56 miles total in one weekend. Biking was the best choice, though--we avoided the crowd of the trains, and instead had a relaxing ride home. There was even a free guarded bike valet provided by the Active Transportation Alliance. Those guys were awesome.

A few brief thoughts on the weekend:
I am really proud of Fuzzy and I. We did not get sunburned, we stayed hydrated, and we wore earplugs, so we didn't have ringing ears. We are very adult concertgoers!

It is impossible to see all the bands that you want to see at Lolla. We would have a full schedule set, but then that day would arrive, and we would opt to go later so we could rest more, or we would skip a set to watch another or get food, etc. There is a lot to see at Lolla and half the fun is going to the vendors and walking around. There's a million more bands I would have loved to have seen, but we needed to rest.

There were 95,000 people there Sat and Sun, yet we kept seeing the same people. Crazy.

They had 8 different water bottle refilling stations on the grounds, therefore saving hundreds of thousands of water bottles. These refill stations were a Godsend. Also, it meant that we could just use our nalgene bottle all weekend and not worry about running out of water. Also, powdered Gatorade packets were a great thing to have, too. Electrolytes!

There were a lot more people there on Saturday and Sunday than on Friday.

It is possible to have a million completely different experiences at Lollapalooza. You can see all bands that you know and love (which was basically what we did.) You can see all new stuff you've never heard of. You can spend the day at the DJ stage and go to an all day rave. You can see soul, you can see hard rock, you can see indie rock. It is pretty amazing.

Teenage Erica and adult Erica kept colliding all weekend. I thought my head was going to explode. Soundgarden for one, but then also Green Day. Green Day was the first band that played when we went to Lollapalooza in New Orleans in '94, when Dookie had only been out a little while. On Saturday, they headlined the night. A lot has happened in those 16 years.

I am amazed at how smoothly the festival ran. They had everything scheduled by the hour, and as soon as one band ended, the band on the stage across the way from them would start up. It was a very well oiled machine. Similarly, I am really impressed at the cleanliness and ease of the fest. We never had to wait long at the bar or food court, and the bathrooms were almost always clean (we even found a hardly used bank of port-o-potties that was our fave place to go.) Also, the fest planners were BRILLIANT in that they had a Rock-and-Recycle program. If you filled up a bag of recycling, you got a free Lolla t-shirt with the band listing on it and everything, thereby turning concertgoers into cleaning crews! We saw people all weekend picking up cans to fill their bags--we did it, too! (Fuzzy did it twice) and there was such camaraderie between everyone--we would seek out other rockers filling bags before placing cans in general recycling just to help them get their tshirts.

Camaraderie was a large portion of the weekend. Everyone was in it together. Even up in the pit close to the stage at Soundgarden (more on that later), everyone was so nice and looking out for each other. Love it.

Speaking of love, I fell in love with Fuzzy all over again. I mean, I do every day, but it was so special to share something so important to me (music, outdoor festivals) with him. He is just amazing.

I am so worn out today, but expect more posts all week about this amazing weekend. It was everything I hoped for and more.