Advertisement
Published: July 27th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Dinner in Fresno
Super meal after the Rainbow Gathering! Lasagna, Artichoke Dip, Lemonaide, and Salad. Yuuuummmm We left the Rainbow Gathering in New Mexico on July 6th and headed back to California until our flight out to the East Coast (Hopefully I'll have a blog about the Gathering sometime soon). Our first stop in California was back in Fresno to unpack, say bye to some of Phoenix' family and friends, and then of course repack.
The first two nights back "in Babylon" our beautiful Rainbow crew - Sherie, Conor, Phoenix and I spent the night reminiscing and creating some very excellent food together. It's always a little strange to come back into society after being in the woods for a few weeks - totally engulfed in a different culture. It's always the goal to bring the love and openness that we gain from the Gathering back to the world.
A few nights later we had such a great time at Phoenix' long time friend Anton's birthday party. He's really a tremendous cook so we chowed on some Tri-tip while another friend Erik spun some excellent music all night. It was about 110*F out so most of the dancing didn't start until the sun started going down. It was a pretty significant gathering of friends too
because Anton and his family is moving back to Russia for at least a year.
After those festivities and saying one last bye-bye to her Papa, we caught a ride back to Santa Cruz with our Santa Cruz roomy, Ashley (Pum). Her and her wife Crystal let us come back to the house for a few nights to have our big ol' going away Soiree. It was SO nice to be back in Santa Cruz and feel the fresh Ocean air. The culture in Santa Cruz is so open and beautiful, I really think of it as my home and am proud of it. So on Sunday (the 19th), Phoenix, Jackie, and I went and collected as much firewood as we could up in the Redwoods. That was such a fun time - sliding down steep dirt hills and then trying to climb back UP with armfulls of wood. But we filled the trunk of the car as much as possible to fuel the mega bonfire we planned on having that night when all our friends arrived.
Around 7:30ish it seemed like everyone started to show up for the Soiree. Friends from Fresno, Santa Cruz, and our old
work. We did a pizza and beer run - having a ridiculous run-in with some LEOs. They pulled us over as we drove out of the Savemart parking lot saying that they "got a call about some Rims...?" They seemed as confused as we were, and after showing them the trunk and our IDs they let us go. When we got back to the house we shared the story and then got to the soiree-ing. Music and fun out in the back yard, which Pum and Crystal had made pretty with prayer flags and lights. My lovely ex-ladyfriend Michelle even showed up from San Jose! It was so great to spend some time with her, and I even got to sing her the song I wrote for her by the end of the night. And she gave me the wonderful necklace she made for me with her last Euro from her trip to Paris!
At around 10ish we walked the Soiree to the beach to begin the bonfire portion of our night. I'm so glad we got the wood because there is pretty much NO wood in Santa Cruz. At one point in the night we decided to do
a wood hunt and ended up having to pull the poles used to hold up sapplings to burn *no worries they were actually really big and could stand on their own now). The night was full of magical friends coming and going, tons of music and drumming, and of course so much love! A few skinny dippers braved the frigid Pacific, led by Sherie the Warrior. Her incredible roommate (and our lovely friend), Chris played one of the most enthusiastic jams on my guitar...but with no pick - so ended up exploding his poor fingernail! Candy-Rain Johnson (my guitar) is now splattered with his blood of musical devotion...and there it shall stay. It was AWESOME!
Our loves, Annette and Azza came all the way down from Arcata to Soiree with us - always such a blessing when they come to hang with us. Constantly they remind me of the most deep, pure love you can have with your friends.
Eventually, we ran out of wood and were too tired to try and make it to the sunrise. So at about 5am the remaining beach troopers headed back to the house and then went our separate ways. Trying to
brush off as much sand as possible, we crawled blissfully into bed...but honestly you can never get all the sand off and that is one thing I love about Santa Cruz. You pretty much carry the beach with you wherever you go.
The next day was a more intimate setting of friends. We figured since we were flying out on Tuesday the 21st, we would spend that day showing our Fresno friends around downtown Santa Cruz. One of the last To-Do list things we had to do was to make sure that Bella (Phoenix' dog) could get on the plane, since my Dad and Momish had so kindly agreed to watching her while we're in Europe. So I called my Daddio to get our flight confirmation number for Tuesday. He looked it up and said "well this says you're flying out Today! (Monday)" OOPS! So we had to rush and repack our bags to get to the airport in 3 hours! It's SUCH a good thing we called or else we would have missed our first BLAST OFF flight!
We quickly packed and cleaned, then spend the rest of the time hanging out with our lovely friends iin
the back yard. Pum made us some special oils to bring with us and we shared some with all of our friends. Was a beautiful last gathering of loves. Then Annette and Azza, who were headed to San Fransisco perfectly, drove us to the San Jose Airport.
We of course caught our plane, Bella and all. Our first plane was a short hop to Long Beach and then an Overnighter to Washington DC that arrived at 5am East Coast time.
Ahhh, what a beautiful leg on our Blast Off trip!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.089s; Tpl: 0.029s; cc: 11; qc: 32; dbt: 0.0312s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb