Hello! As most of you know, I went to see the Dave Matthews Band at the Gorge Amphitheater (below) last weekend. There were concerts Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. The short story is this: Dude, it was fucking awesome!

But here's the long story for you too....

Melinda (my friend from grad school) came with me this year, because Spencer didn't want to go anymore. I was in Portland after my trip to California, then I drove to Seattle and picked Melinda up at the airport there. We drove over to just south of Moses Lake a little, and set up our camp at a state park. Then we went to our first show!

On Friday night we got to sit in row 8 since Wayne let me use his account to buy tickets and he always gets good seats. It was really really cool being up that close. Very loud. They opened the concert with "Bartender", which is my second favorite song, and it made me weepy when they got to the parts where Leroi was supposed to play, particularly at the end when they did a little "If I only had a brain" like he did on his whistle (as you know from my previous posting, Leroi, the saxophone player, died on August 19). It was so weird and not right that the sounds were the same (for the most part), but he wasn't there making them. Carter (the drummer who has a fabulous smile and almost always looks like he's having a total blast) was teary throughout that song, which was hard to watch too. Then after "Help Myself", the band stood there, like they were figuring out what to do next, how they do, but they didn't talk, and some of them were perfectly still. Then a picture of Leroi came on the screen (more tears now), and the people cheered, of course, and then I turned around because Dave was watching the crowd, and there were THOUSANDS of glowsticks flying through the air. Thousands. People were throwing them all around. It was the most incredible thing I've ever seen. We were kinda down in the corner, so there weren't really any coming down there, but it made for a great view. And the band just stood there quiet and watched it. I think it went on for almost five minutes. It was incredibly moving. I decided that they were all little thoughts for Roi. The next song was #41-- my favorite song. At the intermission (before the encore), a show of photos of Roi was came on the screen, with the song #34 (an instrumental one with lots of him). Photos of him all through his life. It was a very emotional and touching time. So that was the best concert ever. It wasn't all sad, though. They did play well and upbeat and rocked out really good. And Dave did quite a bit of dancing, which is always fun, of course. And our seats were great! I had the annoyance of a girl came to squish into the seat next to me with her boyfriend, and then of course tried to nudge me out of the way, but I asked her to return to her seat, and she moved over the other way instead, so it mostly worked out. I wouldn't even have been so annoyed, but they talked for about the first half and she wasn't even into it. She got into it toward the end, so that was better. But, no one pushed us around or banged the seats around or anything. Oh, and at one point a guy showed up, totally stoned off his ass, and just stopped in the row right by Melinda and her neighbor. They told him to keep moving, but he shrugged them off. He said he didn't know what he was doing. So I talked to him and took his ticket from his hand. He said he was "just going where they told me". His seat was in the next row but a little ways down, so I told him in a very motherly voice what to do, and he went on. That was kindof funny. Like talking to a 4-year-old, but apparently that's what he needed.

Saturday's show was good, of course, but not like Friday's. The band did lots of jamming songs. We sat up in the lawn, and it was totally freezing! Oh my god, so cold. It was really windy. Melinda and I took turns wearing the blanket. I was shivering before the show even started, and lots of people up there didn't last the whole thing. And we had some pretty awful neighbors up there, but we tolerated them for the most part. They were drunk and talking loudly. But since we were up there and the wind was blowing, loudly-talking drunk people made it a little hard to hear, so it was more annoying than when that happens on the floor in the reserved seats. Anyhow, we were doing a pretty good job being patient with them, and then all of a sudden the friends kinda cleared a little area next to us, and the biggest, drunkest dude in the group was peeing! I was seriously disgusted, and I grabbed Melinda and moved away at that point. There were people sitting on the ground, and it's a hill and stuff! It was pretty awful. But we rocked out anyways. Even though it was so cold out, I wore my light capilene thermal underwear to bed, and was totally warm. I didn't even have to wear socks! It was no problem.

Polli is meowing at me. Mrow!

Anyhow, Sunday night's show was totally rocking too (L-R above: Carter, Dave, Stefan, Rashawn, and Jeff)! Awesome. We had nice seats in the center section, row 29. We sat next to all sorts of cool people, and once again, no one smashed the seats around! We sat next to my parents, which was fun too. So that's the story of this year's Gorge experience. Those were my 27-29th Dave concerts. I was laughing the other day at a memory I had of back in high school about 11 years ago, when I had only two DMB cds, had never been to a DMB concert, and this guy in the journalism club with me made fun of me liking them so much (though in a nice way). Look where I am now, Russ!

Melinda and I had a great time hanging out together. She had lots of fun at the shows and it was good for her to have a break from studying too. Our campground was great! It was a little far from the concerts, but the crowd there was awesome! No drunk or loud people, everyone asleep when we returned after the shows. There was tons of space, and lots of shade. On Friday afternoon we were napping on our thermarests under the trees in the shade of the hot afternoon, and a squirrel pooped on me! Right on my neck! That's a first.

Since we knew other people who went (my parents, and Chris and Mary), we were able to visit them at their hotel for showers. That was a camping luxury. We also went out to lunch one day. We had ordered our lunch from this waitress who was pretty cool, and then she came back. She told Mary: "I was typing in your table's order, and I typed in 'lickle' rather than 'pickle', and that made me laugh, and then I forgot what you wanted." That made us laugh so hard! It was pretty funny.

Yesterday Melinda and I packed up our camp and went back to the city. Melinda had never been to Seattle before. We had lunch at the cool place in Seattle that we had found with my parents back in April, and then we had a look around and searched for a coffee shop (but parking was very hard to find), and then I took Melinda back to Seatac and then I drove back to Portland. Then it was back to work today.

I had such a great weekend. The concerts were awesome, the weather was nice, the people were nice, and it was pretty damn fun to hang out with Melinda all weekend.

Ok, I posted more photos in my photo gallery, if you'd like to see a few more. I'll talk to you later!