coachella, take one.

well it's been nearly two weeks, but i finally have time to blog about the magic of Coachella. it's hard for me to accurately describe it, because it was so amazing. like, easily one of the best weekends of my whole life. (maybe that's overdramatic, but i'm serious. also, welcome to me..)


day 1 - road tripping
the majority of our first day was spent driving, driving. we stopped in vegas for an h&m/fro-yo break. (i have a love/hate relationship with the phrase fro-yo...) we knew we were close when we saw the windmills.





we had to wait in a pretty epic line to get into the car-camping area. they searched every car to make sure no one went over the "case of beer per person" limit. this turned out to mean that everyone got drunk off their ass in line, so as not to be over that limit. we watched drunk people do shadow-puppet shows, dance around, and yell a lot. this got us preeeetty excited to see everyone try to set up their tents and it turned out to be an excellent prequel for the rest of the night.





i didn't actually get a picture of our campsite (fail) but these were our neighbors...with ashley's car on the left.





and here's our "street"





we set up our camp in record time and spent the next little while patting ourselves on the back. we ventured around the campgrounds and familiarized ourselves with the general store, showers, food vendors, and roller-rink.





we decided to set up our camp chairs in the "street" to watch the extreme partying that was quickly escalating all around us. one set of neighbors had the same idea and we bonded over mocking everyone else. we were thusly dubbed the "porch people" by the canadians across the street. 


highlights of the day included:

• "it seems like they'll pretty much kick you in the face if you get it wrong" me, concerned about putting my wristband on incorrectly.
• changing into shorts.
• a girl getting pissed when we couldn't locate her friend carlos.
• "this is no place for a turtle..." shroomed-out canadian.
• another canadian playing the same note on a melodica for probably an hour
• the guy who kept walking past doing a chewy impression.
• being offered shrooms (guess who from?)
• walking in on a drunk guy peeing...and he didn't even notice.
• everyone being so joyful about the impending weekend. 

day 2 - it begins.

acts seen - the drums, cee lo green, cold war kids, sleigh bells, brandon flowers, black keys, kings of leon

the first real day of the festival is kind of a blur. it was probably a combination of the heat and the very minimal amount of sleep we got (tents provide a surprisingly low amount of noise blockage.) all the bands we saw were really good, with the exception of cee lo, who was angry about being late, and ended up getting cut off in the middle of a song. also, i'm just guessing the kings of leon were good, because i was in some sort of coma by then. i was later informed they had fireworks during their set...and i hadn't even noticed.

highlights included

• the black key's set, which was amazing.
• the girl wearing a thong bikini and charging $1 a spank. yeeep. we got to see one lucky customer. i would have taken a picture, but i didn't think i'd ever want to look at it again.
• "COACHELLA!" "it's SIX in the morning" (a conversation heard outside our tent)
• trying to fall asleep during the chemical brothers, during which there were inexplicable horse whinnies. (this was acted out the next afternoon by a still-drunk canadian neighbor. he danced around in his underwear)
• these guys

ummm. wow. this is getting really long. i think i'll do the rest of a weekend in a separate post. if you made it to the end of this one...congrats! i'll give you some shrooms later.