Spinsterz Road Blog

May 7th - Wow, what a great trip is has been so far,we couldn't be traveling with two better people. After building a bazillion fire hoop spines

building our yurt, making our wagon and fitting it all in the van, we hit the road. The first night we made it down to Ashland and found a great camp spot called Jackson Wellspring. We got to soak in hot mineral baths and enjoy the rising of the full moon, that's a pretty good start to a road trip in my book. After a nice morning soak we headed south to Fire Drums , directions could have been better to say the least. Fire drums was a lot of fun, camping, cooking, spinning, taking workshops and finally connecting with so many people that I have only known through email, made it all a very enjoyable experience.

May 15th - On the way south to Santa Barbara we stopped at Sunset State Park to spend the night amongst acres and acres of organic strawberry fields! We helped ourselves to just a few :) mmmmmmm......yummy.

Lightning in a Bottle was rad. We had so much fun vending and getting to play with our toys all day long and turn people on to this great art of playing with circles. We got into LIB a day earlier than most people and got to pick out a nice shady camp spot that was only a few minute walk to our booth. It was nice to have a day to just hangout before all the masses arrived. The festival went well and we got to see a few good music acts.....FreQ Nasty was WOW! The only thing disappointing about the festival was the lack of drinkable FREE water and the lack of recycling/compost/trash bins....pretty much none. It was billed as a "Green Festival", but lacked the necessities to really pull it off. All in all it was a good festival and we will be back next year.

June 3rd - We are back on the road again and heading to Wakarusa in Lawrence Kansas. We started off my visiting our good friends from Jackson, Wy and going on a hike to some great hot springs. The creek was still too high and the hot springs were under water, it was still real beautiful tough. Then it was off to Colorado

We went to my favorite burrito joint in all the land, "Big City Burritos" in downtown Fort Collins. After filling our bellies and hitting up some thrift stores, we went to Lyons Colorado and had some tasty beers at the brewery Oskar Blues. Up Up to Estes Park we went, I have never been there before and I loved it. It is so beautiful there and the mountains are big and still have lots of snow on them. The drive from Estes Park to Boulder is now one of my top 3 favorite drives, the others you ask? (the road from Randall, WA to Cougar on the east side of Mt. St. Helens and the other is the "going to the sun" road in Glacier National Park.)

We stayed with our friend Michael in Boulder, (he runs cosmicfiredance.com) and walked around the town and played by the creek. I have also never been to Boulder before and definitely liked it, can't wait to go back and explore the town and surrounding mountains. It turns out that the house Michael is living at is where Kan'Nal lived up until about a month ago. Then we hear that Kan'Nal, Ganga Giri and Ooah of the glitch mob are all playing the next two nights in Denver! We thought about going for all of 2 seconds, then it was off to Denver and Colfax Ave. no less. If you have never been to Denver, Colfax Ave is not the nicest place (sorry Denver). They played at a small venue called the Blue Bird Theatre, it was a great show, there was hardly anybody there and we danced our asses off. I got to meet Kan'Nal as well and that was a treat.

There just happen to be a street fair going on downtown saturday morning so we checked it out and hooped it up to a band called "Cocktail Revolution", unfortunately there were no free cocktails involved :( We hooped on some government buildings and random sculptures,
then drove to Kansas. Which brings me to where we are now.......in the middle of nowhere, flat, wheatfield, farmer occupied, beautiful clouds Kansas.

June 13th - Sitting at the KOA campground in Manchester, TN

waiting for the gates to open for Bonnaroo. Wakarusa was full of cops, but it was lots of fun. We got into Lawrence Kansas the day before they were going to start letting vendors in and walked around the town. I really have no desire to live in Kansas, but if I had to I would pick Lawrence. It is a pretty cool town with a a good vibe and nice people. We rolled up to the local brewery and it just happened to be $1.75 pint night, yeah! I love yummy cheap beers. We heard that Wakarusa was letting vendors in early so we checked it out and ended up getting in early Tuesday evening. It was pretty fun to be camped out for 6 straight days. The town was super close so it was easy to run back in to get more supplies. Like when the roof of our yurt canopy collapsed. All vendors were supposed to be set up by Wednesday at 6, but the wind was so strong that nobody set-up until thursday, we were one of only about 5 people that had there structures up. The wind was scary, we though it was going to pick up our yurt and blow it away, it almost did, if it wasn't for the long rebar that we got to borrow and stake down our booth. We had some rebar stakes made for us, so now we are more prepared for the wind.

Wakarusa seemed a lot slower than I was expecting. Everyone that attended last year said that the cops killed the festival, by the amount of cops that were there this year, I can see what they mean. They were everywhere and all had golf carts, actually everyone had golf carts, I have never been to a festival where there were so many golf carts.

Our glowing wagon was a hit, it is kind of like a giant "tripper catcher", you know, like a fly catcher, but only this one attracts trippers to the crazy blinking glowing "tripper toys." Not many people knew what poi was and just wanted to by single glow balls to play with. We turned a few people on to the art though. We noticed that the majority of hooper all wanted really big hoops also, not the smaller performance style ones that we were selling.

Did I mention we met Kanal, Broc from Kan'Nal, Michael Franti, Bill Nershi , Jilian and their daughter Lauren. Lauren was great and was always hanging out at our booth hooping it up and spinning poi.....she's pretty darn good. Hey Lauren if you happen to read this, sorry if I mis-spelled your name and if you want an LED hoop I could sure use some tickets to Hornings :)

---

Random observations from our trip
People from L.A. want there products right now, they can't wait for shipping
Colorado has lots of Liquor stores
People from Tennessee don't know the difference between "liquor" and "beer"
Hoopers in Kansas like really big hula hoops
It's really hard to by organic and find bulk items around the midwest
Wal-mart sux
Tennessee and Kansas have a ton of billboards
Never ever take E-470 road in Colorado, we had to pay $10 in tolls to drive 15 miles!

---

This is our booth all lit up at night

This is our wagon at night

June 20th - Bonnarooooooo. Bonnaroo was hot, real real HOT, crowded, strict, great foods and lots of fun. We got in real quick compared to the 6 - 8 hours that some people were waiting, set up our yurt underneath the sweltering sun, then kicked back and slung some cocktails. We were not "officially" vending at Bonnarro because they were charging $2500 for a booth space in main vendor area or $1500 for campground vending. So we set up our yurt in the campground (everyone that saw it said we had the best set-up they had ever seen!)

and sold bloody mary's and pancakes in the morning and ran a cocktail bar through the afternoon. I also hung a bunch of my poi and hoops in my friends booth (lightupwire.com), so my products were still available for people to buy and they bought a bunch!

The Bonnaroo "mounties" and golf cart patrol were damn strict and were cracking down on all illegal vending. We went out the first night just in the campground with our glow wagon/tripper catcher/hoopoi wagon......we need a good name for it, please send us your thoughts............we were not even vending anything from it, we just went out with it all lit up to show it off and we were told that we could not have it there, we asked why and they wouldn't give us an answer. Damn the Man!

Saturday night we decided to be brave and took our wagon inside and straight to the Tool show. As we got to the security checkpoint, they told us we cannot come in with it, because it was too tall. Again we had no products for sale on us, we were just using to carry all our gear and personal toys. We told them that this was our mobile visual art piece, which it is and they told us to turn around and take it out. We waited by the sid of the gate until the security wasn't looking then turned off all the lights and booked it until we were out of sight. We ended up rolling around with it all night, people absolutely loved it and constantly were drawn to it, asking questions and saying how cool it was. We made it back to our camp really late at night, then heard stories of 5 of our friends that went in to sell there lights and got all there goods confiscated, wrist bands cut off and kicked out of the venue. All I have to say is that we got real lucky and the gods were smiling down on us. Long live the glow wagon! We had a few glow wagon groupies following us around in awe of the lights.

So I feel pretty bad cuz we spent lots of money at Wal-Mart, I hadn't even stepped foot in a walmart for about 3 years prior to that and then we bought most of our supplies there. Can I feel reconciled for my evil ways?

I met Lara and Barry from SuperHooper and got to perform with them and many other great people at the 'such and such' stage. It was great I got to hoop with there new "SuperWickit" hybrid LED Fire hoop, isolation look so freakin' sweet with that hoop!

This guy bet me $6 and he would buy one of my cocktails against a free cocktail that he could beat me at a game of connect 4, he even tried to raise the odds part way through the game, that he would now give me $20 if I won. Guess what? HE BEAT ME......then I saw another connect 4 guy....I think they run a connect 4 gambling ring ;)

We are now on our way back home to stock up on supplies then we are off to Electric Daisy Carnival in L.A. on the 30th of June, then to High Sierra. Until next time, here is some pics for your enjoyment. Trip Photos