Kehoe Eastern Migration - Journal 3


8am MST, June 18, 1999 The first day of the festival, it was amazing. The best way to put it was the rain barely stopped. Thunder, lightning, the works. There were still people out there listening to the music. The local community radio station, KOTO, is carrying the festival live, so we listened from the comfort of the condo. The schedule for the first day was, in order:

The music started at 11 am and ended at 11:30pm. All we really saw was Junior Brown and Willie Nelson. Emmylou Harris came out (she has amazing silver hair) and sang with Willie, which made the cold, wet festivarians extremely happy. Willie must have dozens of hats and bandanas...he'd wear one, then fling it out to the audience, replacing it with a new one.

As mentioned earlier, was pouring during Willie's set. E's stepbrother Brendan (nice name :-) ) mentioned that it would be worth the price of admission to be there when God struck down Willie. Hmmm... Town Park, where the festival is held, turned into a mud pit. Bales of hay were spread out to try to make the paths passable. It helped, but all of our shoes are covered in mud.

It was announced that the CDs, shirts, et al., advertising Willie would be leaving with him that evening, and not in fact staying in the ``country store'' tent. Coupled with the fact that the local radio station KOTO reportedly wasn't broadcasting Willie's performance, one has to be curious as to whether or not he or his manager have concerns about the control of his merchandise.

We discovered that our calling card got canceled today. E called after dialing up with the laptop failed, and found that the number wasn't working at all. A call to Sprint clarified it a bit---PacBell had contacted them to confirm that our entry was disabled (perhaps as part of confirming that we'd been successfully shut down?). After waiting on hold for a full half hour for a supervisor (Maria), E was able to get a promise that the account would be active within the hour. Maria came through for us. :)

3:30pm MST, June 18, 1999 Dried our laundry at the town laundromat. The dryer here appears to be broken (washer is fine, maybe). We got a call from the next door neighbor complaining that our dryer was causing some sort of a water leak in his place. (Dunno how that could be.)

Anyway, while walking to the laundromat, we went by a bakery that Jill (E's sister) tells us she worked 18 years ago. There was a large crowd of folks hanging out there, drinking coffee or munching on toast or, just hangin'. One guy was sitting down on the sidewalk with a cute little labrador puppy next to him. In front of them was a handwritten sign reading, ``Pet the puppy: 25 cents.''

We spent a long time in the field listening to the music today. (Got a pic of the group at one point.) Actually it may be more accurate to say we were listening to the music but certainly paying more attention to the crowd itself. A broad sampling of society was in attendance: teenagers, parents, lawyers (you can just tell...), you name it. There were in fact a lot of examples of entire families going; a dad dancing in the mud pit with his six month old daughter, parents coming with both of their kids, others dancing who look like they may be on a list of runaways in a state far away, or three middle-aged single guys who in all likelihood work together and set out for a weekend of festival fun. (New term we've learned: festivarian: one who attends a bluegrass festival.) There's even a neat pond right next to the field, where kids can go fishing if they want to.

Bob got us an amazing spot right at the front of the field, where we could see everything really clearly. We tried taking a couple of pictures (pic1 and pic2) but they didn't end up looking that great. (We also didn't necessarily remember who was in the picture. hehe) We did get one decent yet blurry one with the duet of Mary Chapin Carpenter and Shawn Colvin, and another that's only slightly discernable of both of them along with Emmylou Harris.

Joke told by the emcee: ``Did you hear about the cannibal backpacker who passed his wife on the trail?'' (Pause ... Pause ... Groan.)

It was really a bright sunny day for the most part. No matter how much sun block we put on, we knew we'd get a little cooked. (Not too much of a sunburn tho, luckily enough.) And now in the late afternoon clouds are crawling in, threatening another dramatic storm.

The rain last night was intense. Everyone either stood with parkas and rain gear on, or raised their tarp so it was over their heads. You could see the core of the storm slowly approaching you, consuming all of the trees on its way. All you saw was a dense fog growing. Couple that with the frequent bolts of lightening, and you couldn't really avoid the distraction.

On Friday, the rain stopped. For a while. It was clear and sunny, with a few sprinkles in the afternoon. At 8,000 something feet altitude, the sun is a little different. People are just red. We learned our lesson after a painful trip to Hawaii. We are covered in sun block and only spending small amounts of time outside. By noon, we saw some baked lobsters out on the tarps that were being used as blankets.

10pm MST, June 18, 1999 The line up today was excellent...

We saw more of these groups. E came down with a sore throat, so she took it easy, but B had a blast. We stayed out for Crucial Smith (only liked them medium), Donna the Buffalo (*excellent*) and left so E could take a nap right before John Cowan (no relation, no matter what my parents say). Altan is a group from Co. Donegal, Ireland, and E really wanted to see them, but slept through it since she was feeling off. Woke up right after they played. B was out at the festival, though, and loved them---the lead singer's voice was beautiful. We wanted to get their CD, but when we went on Saturday, they were sold out. Which is good, but not for us :-). So we took it easy Friday night and watched The Screen Savers on ZDTV, and hung out with my brother in law Jeff.

We sat in a tent construction made of a tarp and some wood, a distance away from the stage. It was just as good, since we found that getting to hear the music clearly is great, regardless of whether or not you can clearly see the performer.

Brendan (the other one), Nina, and David went hiking today. Looking more than a little worked when they returned, they plopped down on the couch with airs of contentment as they read a book or magazine, and work their way down bowls of ice cream.

One really funny sight: while Altan was playing, a guy went up to the fence in front of the stage, talked briefly on a cell phone, and then held it up in the air. For a good five minutes, the folks on the other end of the phone got a free sampling of the music. :)

7:40pm MDT, June 19, 1999 Telluride is so beautiful...

On Saturday, we had to make breakfast for 13 people! Pancakes are easy for that, if you ever need to do that sort of thing. While we are eating breakfast, we see the line to get into the festival starting to move. It's a problem, because even though Mom and Terry went out earlier and left a chair in line to say that we were there (really...it's a very respectful place), we needed to be inline to choose a spot in the park to sit. Terry ran out and met up with brother in law Bob, and each staked out a nice place.

This morning, we found something interesting about the set of walkee-talkies(sp?) that we gave Terry for Father's Day. There are two channels on it, A or B. The company that manufactured them apparently reserved with the FCC (or just uses) precisely two frequencies for them. Thus, we'd periodically hear other folks talking on them. For the most part this was fine---we'd just ignore them. But at one point Saturday morning there were two people just going crazy with them. ``bleep hi! bleep bleep are you there? bleep bleep yeah, where are you? bleep'' We all got impatient with them, and then Jeff (the husband of Stacy, Terry's daughter) had a brilliant idea. He picked up one of the walkee-talkies and went up to the stereo speaker, which at the time was playing a 40's tune (that's what ``Adult Favorites'' apparently represents with the satellite provider set up here). He stood there for a few minutes holding the button in, and then stopped and set it down. A voice came over the radio, ``Thanks for the music!''

We saw Shawn Colvin and Emmylou Harris (plus four guys we didn't recognize) at one of the park ``workshops''. These are settings usually in park fields or in the local opera house where performers and others will do a workshop on the forms of music, or just play for a while. (Apparently when the workshop schedule has "TBA" listed instead of a specific name, it often means a big-name performer will be appearing.)

Elana won a big battle, and got Brendan to go up for a gondola ride. (Used to get around the ski resort, at very steep heights.) The end result was us at 10533 feet, the highest yet. An absolutely fantastic view, though! (Warning, the image for that link is kinda big.)

10:30am MDT, June 20, 1999 Watched Dallas win the Stanley Cup last night. This morning B dropped Brendan and Nina off at the Telluride airport. Tiny place! You come around a curve and you think you see another street, then realize it's in fact a landing strip. Hmm.

Along the way, we passed by a ranch---the Aldesoro Ranches---owned by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Like nine miles of fences on this twisty mountain road that basically ends at the airport. (Must be convenient having an airport near you so you can just drop in and go right onto your land. :) )

9am MDT, June 21, 1999 A large part of yesterday was spent sorting our stuff and trying to re-pack everything to a smaller quantity; it looks like it worked! We went back to the field in the afternoon and watched something called the Thunder Jam, where four guys (including Bela Flek, a star banjo player) did some really cool music. They were followed by Mary Chapin Carpenter, one of the two folks that B was really looking forward to seeing. (The other was Shawn Colvin, for whom I tried a second picture, but neither came out very well.) At any rate, Mary Chapin Carpenter did a great job, and sounded awesome.

After both Elana and Stacy did some cool work with some hoola hoops that were owned by someone else but open for anyone to use, E was able to get Brendan to try to do it. Almost worked for more than four turns, before it consistently opted to fall to the ground. :)

We're now on our way towards Oklahoma, after reloading the car. Lois and Terry were nice enough to take one of our bags with them, with all the stuff we figured out we won't in fact need in the next week and a bit. That's gonna really help us with the ``can't see out of the rear window'' problem. :-) The goal is to hit Oklahoma City by the evening; lots of driving, tho. We'll see!

10:30pm MDT, June 21, 1999 Nope, didn't make it to Oklahoma City. It took us forever to make it to Cortez from Telluride, in part cuz we were stuck behind a truck seemingly forever. It took us far longer than we'd thought it would.

CDs For This Leg:
  • Harry Connick Jr., Blue Light Red Light
  • Beth Nielsen Chapman, Sand and Water
  • soundtrack from Jurassic Park
  • Donna the Buffalo, Rockin' in the Weary Land
  • soundtrack from The Big Chill
  • Best of Howard Jones

The Ride the Rockies biking competition was coming into time as we were leaving. There were so many people! Tons and tons of bicyclists were going up 145 into Telluride...we counted one hundred of them in 1.4 miles. We saw bikes that were: recumbent, tandem, and tandem recumbent, along with ``normal'' bikes. In addition, a funky bike where the legs are actually stretched out and the person's arms were in fact making it move. Unfortunately we didn't see enough of them to get a picture.

Our goal was to end up in Oklahoma City, but instead we ended up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at about 8pm. We figured out that it was better than 400 miles for us to get to Oklahoma City; we calculated this at about 2:30 in the afternoon. We adjusted our route a little bit, and came directly down to Santa Fe, since it's very close to Route 40, the one we'll start in the morning heading East at a great pace.

Oh, at the festival, the port-a-potties were emptied by this large truck we termed the ``Shit-Vac 2000''. The driver has to take a long vacuum hose into each of the forty or so stalls, and manually empty them. Ewww...that job sucks. (Boooo...)

Wonder if there's a Web site pinpointing the location of Norad? (We looked on our map; should probably be happy we couldn't find it. :) )

We tried to check our voice mail, but couldn't get through. Worse, we couldn't get through to anything---any call on our cell phone was met with the response, ``The number you dialed is not a working number. Please check that number and dial again.'' It ended up that the only number we could in fact dial was 611, to get to the customer service department of the local cellular provider, AllTel (sp?).

It took about half an hour total, and six phone calls (including one where we got transferred to the Cellular One San Francisco office) to find out what was going on. It turns out this past weekend all of the major cellular carriers did some large update of their systems that handle roving and the like. They said that something went wrong with the update, and that some systems successfully updated everything, while others---including AllTel---did not.) A wonderful support person with AllTel named Valerie (my grandmother's name, coincidentally) sought the help of ``her engineer'', and found out what was going on. The basic result was that we had to stop at a pay phone to check for messages, since they didn't expect to have it fixed for at least a couple of hours. (At which point we'd be out of the area they cover anyway.)

The roads in Colorado and New Mexico are markedly different: when you cross into NM, the road is far smoother and well-kept.

Scratch that...a ways into the state, the road gets a little crappy. Oh well!

Sign seen while heading into Espanola, New Mexico: ``Jake Brake Use Prohibited''. Anyone know what a ``jake brake'' is? Also, we passed a store on the way to Santa Fe that said, ``Movie Rentals and Country Flame Stoves!!'' Accommodating to the market's demand, I guess.

Just after entering New Mexico, we stopped at the continental divide, which blatantly restated what Elana had already mentioned about how it works. :) We also went through a pretty nasty storm, but afterwards were met with a really nice image of sun beaming down through the clouds.

Next update will be later this week, hopefully!


Brendan Kehoe
Last modified: Tue Jun 29 09:38:59 EDT 1999