I’m back at work wishing I was still in Wisconsin. That was a great weekend, and we may just have to head back up that way next year when DMB returns. Here’s a recap of what happened:

My hockey bag weighed 48.5 pounds on the airport scales! The lady at check-in said I was lucky. After an uneventful flight, I met up with Weeba at the airport in Chicago and we headed over to Tracey’s apartment. Our friend Pat was already there and the rest of the clan was already out at a bar. We quickly got ready and took a cab over to meet up with everyone. A friend of a friend was having a $20 wristband party. I guess these are a popular thing in Chicago. Basically you and your friends pay $20 a piece to drink whatever you want for a certain amount of time. I think we got our money’s worth even though we only had an hour and a half of drinking time. From there we went and checked out a little bit of the Greenstreet show but we didn’t stay out too late since we wanted to get up to Wisconsin fairly early.

We woke up at 7 AM or so, Tracey said that we looked like kids on Christmas. We were way too excited to sleep anymore. After some breakfast and showers we packed the rental SUV (aka the urban assault vehicle) to the roof and headed off. I’m not sure why, but we hit some traffic that never seemed to end. We ditched the highway route and headed on the back roads to the campsite. It probably should have taken an hour and half to get there but it took us over three hours. Not the best way to start off the weekend, but oh well. We finally got our site, setup our camp and waited for the rest of our group to get in. One problem with the setup, I forgot the tent poles for my tent. Ooops. We did have 3 other tents though and there were only six of us so it was alright. Once everyone got there we ate some food and drank some beers until a very scary storm quickly approached our camp. At the front of this storm were some rotating clouds right above us. We were in the middle of a field with a tornado forming above our heads. It was fairly frightening and it almost canceled the show. We didn’t know this at the time, but when this all was blowing over the venue they closed the gates to the lot. We left really soon after the storm passed and were then stuck in traffic for awhile waiting for the gates to open again. Unfortunately we didn’t get into the lot until around 6 and OAR was starting at 7. As we found out the next day we should have arrived earlier, the party scene in the lot is incredible. The show was great, the seats were great, everything was great. After the show we sat in our seats for awhile and when everyone was gathered we exited the venue. We quickly saw the insane amount of traffic trying to get out and the large number of people who were giving up for now and carrying on with the party. We joined in for an hour or two after the show and then ventured back to camp. We did stop at some local country bar on the way back for a drink and on the way out had a little fun with their sign (see the pictures). When back at camp we hung out some more and before we knew it the sky was getting lighter and lighter. Three or four of us managed to stay around the fire for awhile and I don’t think any of us managed to keep our eyes closed for longer than ten minutes.

Later that morning everyone else decided to get up around eight. Later on I took a pretty nice nap under the canopy and was ready to go again. We took everyone back to the bar we visited the night before for some lunch. From there we headed into the lot to take full advantage this time. We brought along our cornhole boards and beer and had a blast despite it being about 110 degrees with the cars packed together, people everywhere, grills going, etc. It was worth it though, the partying was great! The show was of course excellent again and we were all pretty much in the same 5 rows of the same section. After the show we hung out like the night before and headed back to camp. We tried to keep the party going but you could tell everyone was dead.

The next morning it was time to pack everything up and head back to Chicago. We stopped back by Tracey’s to clean ourselves up and were off to the airport. Sarnovsky and AP were also flying out around the same time we were. We soon found out that all of our flights were being delayed though. We had some lunch and a few drinks to kill the time and then we were all on our separate ways, thus ending a great weekend. The nice thing is that most all of us will get back together again in a few weeks at Pig-Fest!