Be sure to wear flowers in your hair....

This past weekend was a whirlwind. It had lots of ups and downs. It was the Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate park. A three day music festival, featuring Tom Petty, Regina Spektor, Cake, Beck, Radiohead, etc. So, our flight was scheduled to leave at 1:21 pm on Friday afternoon and of course we are running behind and traffic is horrendous and unfortunately we were not checked in 45 minutes before take-off so we missed it. The four of us (Ash, George, Larry and myself) were then put on standby for the next San Fran flight. There were a ton of San Fran flights, but also a ton of people on standby so our names kept getting pushed down the list. We were basically screwed until 10:30pm when they could guarantee us a flight out. Not gonna work for us if we want to be able to check into our hotel room. So think-on-his-toes George came up with the idea of flying into Oakland and taking public transportation to San Francisco, which is what we ended up doing for $75 a person. We got to our hotel at around 9pm ish. Needless to say goodbye Beck, Manu Chau, and Radiohead. :tear, tear: Not a good start to our weekend. Word of advice be to the airport early!!! Never again, I swear.

Saturday-No major snags. Took hotel shuttle to CalTrain stop, rode CalTrain to Muni and Muni to Kate's Kitchen in Haight-Ashbury for some breakfast/lunch. Good food, too long of a wait. Got back on the Muni where we were literally crammed in like sardines to go to Golden Gate Park. Once we walked into that festival though, it made everything else disappear. The vibe and excitement in the air made me forget all the problems that had occured. It was my first music festival and I was so excited to finally be there. And it was an amazing time. We ended up seeing Steve Winwood, Regina Spektor, Ben Harper, Cake and Tom Petty. Some were longer than others, but all were great. Tom Petty can put on a concert. It was my second time seeing him, first time was in 7th grade, and I was much more appreciative this time. The show freakin rocked. Even Larry who is not a huge Petty fan was having a good time (though he would prolly deny it).

I tell you what though. That was one exhausting day. All of the walking involved at a huge festival, as well as the walking around hilly San Fran, and the long walk home from the CalTrain stop to our hotel at 11:30pm took it's toll and Sunday morning we were all feeling it. Achey and tired. I was still up for the festival though so we headed off. Sunday was much more of a chill day. We just laid our sheet down on the ground and took in the music laying down and relaxing, only getting up to move to another stage. Unfortunately we had to leave early to catch our flights home so we missed Jack Johnson, another bummer.

When we got to the airport our flights had been overbooked and they were looking for volunteers to give up their seats for a nice pay out. So we took them up on it. We got meal vouchers, a night's hotel stay, first class tickets for the next morning and round trip to tickets for anywhere in the US to be used in a year. Sweet. Free plane tickets are def worth alll the trouble we went through this weekend...and a first class flight home wasn't bad either.

All in all, an amazing weekend. I cannot wait until next year. As soon as I can I will upload the pics and videos I took, unfortunately I have no room on my POS 'puter so who knows when that will be.

xoxo