CStone 2009
My third year there (Cornerstone, that is). For those of you who have no idea, it is a Christian Music Festival in Illinois. Many of my favorite bands play there and its the funnest thing i do all year.
The thing that gets me every year is the car ride. It's really long; around 14-15 hours usually. we left about 2:00am on sunday night (well, monday morning i guess). we didn't get there until about 4:00 that afternoon. We never seem to be able to get the camping spot we want. Its a good spot between two trees, so we gets lots of shade on hot days. we settles for a spot out in the field. it wasn't bad since this year was very kind with the weather (except fot the last day. more on that later).
My sister's band "Hand Drawn Mountains" won a slot in the New Band Showcase, so they were able to go and rock the faces of people from all over the country. They played four times (i think?) over the course of the week. This picture is from they're first show at the Texas stage. They got a lot of response during this first show and they're merch sold like hotcakes. Devin C. was in chage of the merch during this show. I hope they become popular. It'd be nice to be the brother of a rockstar xDD
Over the week i took on two rubik's cube students. Eli Harvey and Matt Neyman. Matt came first and started learning. I never got to finish teaching him, but he had the determination and the mind to do it. Eli was a VERY fast learner. He was able to solve it on his own in 2 DAYS!!! t took me about a week to do that. I tried using a differant teaching method on them. Instead of teaching them the code for the algorithms like RUR'U'RU2R, i taught them the moves and how they worked to put each peice in place. It seemed to work well for them.
This year for me was all about getting more music. I found a new favorite band called SPOKEN. They are a Punk Rock/Hardcore genre and do cover songs. I heard them do "Time After Time" and "Livin' on a Prayer" at they're show. I also got Don't wake Aislin, Jonezetta, Flatfoot 56, the new Emery cd, and...the two spoken cds "Last hance to breath" and "Spoken." i alos got another Dont wake aislin cd for heidi and a little bag for her yarn if she just wants to grab a scane and go. Holly was patient and waited for the last day to buy her music for a cheap deal. as a result, she got as many cd's as i did for $20 while i spent $60. I gotta try doing that. i mean 3 dollars a cd is not bad at all.
Relient k was FINALLY at CStone!! I never saw them before because two years ago (my first year), their van caught fire and they couldn't make it. Then last year, they played Warped Tout instead of CStone. I was really happy to see them. And they played The Office theme!! I always wanted to hear that live. I took a video that is located here. They also did a rap song cover that i wasn't too fond of. I'm told that i am very picky with the music that i like. This is true.
Toward the end of the week, we needed to clean off the van of all the paint that we'd put on to decorate it. It was paint made specifically for cars. We got it off of the windows easy enough but it wasn't coming off of the paint. turns out its not intended to be used on paint, and we were in trouble. we tried a bunch of stuff to try to get it off. Hand Sanitizer, Coke, spit and water didn't work at all. We finally thought that we would try tooth paste but nobody thought it would work, but to our surprise it came right off. We cleaned the paint off the best we could with it and just gave up eventually. Jordan Harvey decided to keep going and scrub it off of the parts that we couldn't get it off of. she alone got the entire car completely clean! I was VERY impressed with her. OCD can be a blessing sometimes, eh? xD
The last day was the most miserable day ever. It rained. A lot. between that day and night we got around 5 inches of rain, i think i heard. Worse the Fox's den (my tent) was leaking on my side and eventually caved in on my side. Tyler, Jordan, Josh and I ended up sleeping in the van that night while Dustin and Jared took the tent all to themselves. Yes, there were six people in our tent for most of the week. It was cramped. Next year we'll split into 2 or 3 tents.
The morning that we were to leave and come home, we woke around 5:00am and leaned up everything that remained from the night before (we'd cleaned up everythig that we could beforehand) in about an hour. We went to leave and got stuck in the diarrhea-like mud. We tried to work ourselves out by puching, but we always got stuck again. Eventually, some kind soul came with his 4-wheele drive monster and helped us out. It was another hour after cleanup that we finally got back on the road. I didn't take any pictures of this. I really should have.
The return trips always feel so much shorter than the going to trips. I wonder why?
Now, i appreciate showers, percelain toilets and fresh water a lot more and feel so much closer to everyone. I pray they feel the same. I love my friends from the bottom of my heart and i dont know what i'd do without them. Thanks, everyone.
End
The thing that gets me every year is the car ride. It's really long; around 14-15 hours usually. we left about 2:00am on sunday night (well, monday morning i guess). we didn't get there until about 4:00 that afternoon. We never seem to be able to get the camping spot we want. Its a good spot between two trees, so we gets lots of shade on hot days. we settles for a spot out in the field. it wasn't bad since this year was very kind with the weather (except fot the last day. more on that later).
My sister's band "Hand Drawn Mountains" won a slot in the New Band Showcase, so they were able to go and rock the faces of people from all over the country. They played four times (i think?) over the course of the week. This picture is from they're first show at the Texas stage. They got a lot of response during this first show and they're merch sold like hotcakes. Devin C. was in chage of the merch during this show. I hope they become popular. It'd be nice to be the brother of a rockstar xDD
Over the week i took on two rubik's cube students. Eli Harvey and Matt Neyman. Matt came first and started learning. I never got to finish teaching him, but he had the determination and the mind to do it. Eli was a VERY fast learner. He was able to solve it on his own in 2 DAYS!!! t took me about a week to do that. I tried using a differant teaching method on them. Instead of teaching them the code for the algorithms like RUR'U'RU2R, i taught them the moves and how they worked to put each peice in place. It seemed to work well for them.
This year for me was all about getting more music. I found a new favorite band called SPOKEN. They are a Punk Rock/Hardcore genre and do cover songs. I heard them do "Time After Time" and "Livin' on a Prayer" at they're show. I also got Don't wake Aislin, Jonezetta, Flatfoot 56, the new Emery cd, and...the two spoken cds "Last hance to breath" and "Spoken." i alos got another Dont wake aislin cd for heidi and a little bag for her yarn if she just wants to grab a scane and go. Holly was patient and waited for the last day to buy her music for a cheap deal. as a result, she got as many cd's as i did for $20 while i spent $60. I gotta try doing that. i mean 3 dollars a cd is not bad at all.
Relient k was FINALLY at CStone!! I never saw them before because two years ago (my first year), their van caught fire and they couldn't make it. Then last year, they played Warped Tout instead of CStone. I was really happy to see them. And they played The Office theme!! I always wanted to hear that live. I took a video that is located here. They also did a rap song cover that i wasn't too fond of. I'm told that i am very picky with the music that i like. This is true.
Toward the end of the week, we needed to clean off the van of all the paint that we'd put on to decorate it. It was paint made specifically for cars. We got it off of the windows easy enough but it wasn't coming off of the paint. turns out its not intended to be used on paint, and we were in trouble. we tried a bunch of stuff to try to get it off. Hand Sanitizer, Coke, spit and water didn't work at all. We finally thought that we would try tooth paste but nobody thought it would work, but to our surprise it came right off. We cleaned the paint off the best we could with it and just gave up eventually. Jordan Harvey decided to keep going and scrub it off of the parts that we couldn't get it off of. she alone got the entire car completely clean! I was VERY impressed with her. OCD can be a blessing sometimes, eh? xD
The last day was the most miserable day ever. It rained. A lot. between that day and night we got around 5 inches of rain, i think i heard. Worse the Fox's den (my tent) was leaking on my side and eventually caved in on my side. Tyler, Jordan, Josh and I ended up sleeping in the van that night while Dustin and Jared took the tent all to themselves. Yes, there were six people in our tent for most of the week. It was cramped. Next year we'll split into 2 or 3 tents.
The morning that we were to leave and come home, we woke around 5:00am and leaned up everything that remained from the night before (we'd cleaned up everythig that we could beforehand) in about an hour. We went to leave and got stuck in the diarrhea-like mud. We tried to work ourselves out by puching, but we always got stuck again. Eventually, some kind soul came with his 4-wheele drive monster and helped us out. It was another hour after cleanup that we finally got back on the road. I didn't take any pictures of this. I really should have.
The return trips always feel so much shorter than the going to trips. I wonder why?
Now, i appreciate showers, percelain toilets and fresh water a lot more and feel so much closer to everyone. I pray they feel the same. I love my friends from the bottom of my heart and i dont know what i'd do without them. Thanks, everyone.
End
