What a great weekend.

Saturday my boyfriend Stew and I went back up to Bethel, home of Woodstock, to see Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band which includes Edgar Winter, Gary Wright, Richard Page, Wally Palmar, Rick Derringer and Gregg Bissonette. It was hot and muggy with a chance of t-storms as always, so we geared up not with umbrellas but for some weird, giddy reason, with Kit Kats, Raisinettes and these:   (The fake blueberry and grape are pretty good.)

So we're winding along some gorgeous backroad through the woods talking, laughing and eating candy, when there, sitting right on the edge of the road, is a big, fat, ginger-colored bunny. I mean, right there. I yell, "A rabbit! Wait, wait, a rabbit!" as we go by slowing, and the rabbit doesn't move, thank God, but now I'm freaked because someone is bound to hit it. Plus, it's a house rabbit, not a wild one.

The road is narrow but we find a place to turn around because I have to go back and get that rabbit, and try to find its owner. Stew parks and I jump out and trot back up the road toward the rabbit, parallelling it so it doesn't dart onto the pavement, using my "Hello, pretty bunny," voice. The rabbit gives me a sideways look but its ears are up and it's not panicking. I cross the road (after a truck and trailer barrel by at fifty, right past the rabbit) and get within three feet of it. That's when it turned and disappeared back down a tangled slope into the woods, and I couldn't get it. (What was I going to do with it if I did get it? Knock on doors, I guess. I don't know.)

So I turn to head back to the truck and there's two guys standing on a porch across the road watching this whole thing.  I yell, "Do you know whose rabbit that is?" And one says No and the other says Yes. Sigh.  They say it's a wild rabbit. I say it's a domestic rabbit. They say yeah but the owner let it go a while ago, and now it's a wild rabbit.

Okay. I'm trumped. Back to the truck.

We get to Bethel Woods with enough time to re-visit the Museum, where Stew surprises me with a very funky and beautiful, semi-psychedelic bag (Jersey Girl Diane Barcelowsky's One World Sakroot bag) I'd admired in the gift shop which is going to be perfect for vacation.

So we wandered around, and took some more pics overlooking the original Woodstock concert site.

  

and there was a beautiful, exuberant little girl there in a bright blue tutu dancing and spinning around in the grass, just for the sheer joy of it.

The concert was great. Ringo was funny and chatty and personable. A delight. Edgar Winter was fabulous and Free Ride live, for me, was one of the highlights.

 Edgar Winter and Rick Derringer.

My pictures aren't that great but the music was:

  



I won't tell you about the end, which was really cool, but be prepared to enjoy Free Ride, Rock and Roll Hootchie Koo, What I Like About You, Kyrie, Dream Weaver, even more, and of course, the best of Ringo. Fun, fun, fun.


Now, we hung out a little afterwards, eating french fries and getting yelled at by security (irritating and unnecessary), and then hung out another hour on the tailgate, laughing, eating licorice and watching the endless trillions of cars inch their way out. All in all, it took us almost FIVE HOURS from the end of the concert to actually walking back home into the door, including a detour round a mountain on some really deserted wooded roads, a quirky little convenience store stop where we brewed up a fresh pot of coffee and bought bananas, thirteen deer by the sides of the roads and one raccoon, passed the rabbit-spot where there was no body (YAY!) and finally got home to find five feral cats waiting patiently on the stoop for their dinner.

It was a blast.  

Sunday was lovely, relaxed and lazy, so of course we had to cure that by going fishing down at the river. Now, I've never gone fishing at the river so I'm thinking you park the truck, get out, set up your beach chair and I read while he casts.

HA.

We drove through no man's land, through a corn field to a stand of underbrush and woods, sprayed citronella bug spray from head to toe, gathered our gear (mine was a beach chair, a book, a notebook, a camera, a bottle of the worst green tea with honey that I've ever tasted but it was cold so it was necessary, and a purse) and then hacked our way through the waist-high greenery down the steepest hill with the most treacherous dirt path I've ever slid down to get to the river bank, where we slogged through ankle-deep mud to get to a gorgeous river stone beach where I got to relax in the shade with my book and the video camera while he went waist-deep into the river to woo the fish.  It was pretty, peaceful and soothing, the view was spectacular, herons and an eagle flew by, and the sound of the water flowing was lovely. It smelled like a hot, wet dog for a while because the water was low and the stones baking in the sun but I got used to it fast, so it was no big deal. Plus, there were the most enchanting little frogs no bigger than crickets hopping around the stones, and that was really cool.

It was fun. I'd do it again.  We used to crash through woods, muck around in mud and scrabble down precipes all the time when we were kids, and it was good to do it again.

Even carrying a purse and a beach chair.