Rothbury 2008 (or These Rothburys Taste Like Rothburys): Tuesday & Wednesday

Although the Rothbury festival did not begin until Thursday for most, it started on Tuesday for me. For those of you who don't know this, this Summer I am part of the smoothie-slinging brain-trust known as Hippie Dips, and we had ourselves a booth at the festival. For some laughs, check out our misadventures at this year's Summer Camp Festival (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4).

Our trip to Rothbury, Michigan started where it usually does: good old Lexington, Kentucky. After loading up the cargo van, picking someone up in Louisville, and backing the van into a tree, we were on our way. 8 hours later we had finally arrived. We did not rent anything from the retards at Oasis Tents in Paris, Kentucky this time so instead of 6 hours it only took 1 hour to set up the tent. Wednesday morning rolled around and we passed the health inspection without any problems. Everything was going smooth; too smooth actually.

Then it came. The skies turned pitch black at 2:00 P.M. and a monstrous thunderstorm with tornado-force winds came down on us. Hard. So hard that it cracked our tent in half, nearly flooded the whole site, and even knocked over a row of porta-potty's in the campground.

Our Tent: Totally Destroyed

Although we were hit hard, other booths got it worse. The French bread pizza folks forgot to tie their tent down before the storm which meant their tent got blown up into the trees. Strawberry Fields (our biggest competition) also had all of their stuff destroyed, and I was kind of hoping that they would just call it quits and go home.

The Tent Would Never Make it Back Down

A side note for those of you who are interested: if you want to sneak into a festival without paying just show up on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. None of the security will be there yet, no one is checking credentials, and the only people out there are food and craft vendors who don't know you, don't know that you're not another vendor, and wouldn't tell anyone even if they did. This might not be true for every festival, but it is something that seems painfully obvious that I had never thought of before doing this vending thing. With festival tickets ranging from $150-$300, this might not be the worst idea in the world. Once inside the grounds, there isn't anything between you and the music that a little duct tape and scissors could not fix.

Back to Rothbury. After the storm we had to buy a new tent and wait for a few hours before setting back up. We hung out in the nearly empty campgrounds, cleaned up all of the mud that had caked on all of our shit, and prayed that the weather would clear up. The music hadn't even started yet and I was exhausted from our battle with mother nature.