Woe is Team Crusty!

Team Crusty made a valiant attempt at the High Trek Adventure a couple of weeks ago, but got thoroughly stumped on one of the clues in the first set. Having headed to two incorrect locations and lost a great deal of time, we were unable to get to 5 of the 6 locations in the second set of clues.

We drowned our sorrow in a free beer (always good for drowning sorrows!) after the event. And amusement over the "Mouse Cake" on offer at the fine establishment serving as the base for the event.

You can see our great pictures here.

Next up for Team Crusty: the Boulevard Lakefront Tour (BLT) and the Apple Cider Century!

Lollapalooza 2007

I actually attended 3 days of Lollapalooza and survived! Okay, so I went to bed at 9:30 pm on the third day, but hey - I squeezed a lot in before that! - despite the heat & humidity, which was so bad on Sunday that I was soaked the entire day.

The bands I saw:

The Fratellis
Soulive
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
The Polyphonic Spree
M.I.A.
Blonde Redhead
The Black Keys
Femi Kuti & the Positive Force
Daft Punk
Tokyo Police Club
Pete Yorn
Motion City Soundtrack
Matt & Kim
Regina Spektor
Heartless Bastards
Amy Winehouse
Blue October
Kings of Leon
!!!
Modest Mouse

Seeing all of these bands involved a lot of running from one end of Lolla to the other, as for some reason, no two successive bands I wanted to see were on the same end of the park.

Of all the acts I saw, these were the most amazing: the Fratellis were one of the first bands on the first day but still got a decent crowd and were a lot of fun; Daft Punk turned Grant Park into a huge nightclub; Pete Yorn - when you can sing along to almost every song, how can it be bad?; and Amy Winehouse, who is incredibly talented and whose voice just blew me away even more live than recorded.

I also caught bits of bands here and there - Stephen Marley, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the Wailers. All good stuff. It was easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of music happening all around, but that's a great problem to have!

All in all, it was a great experience, and I can't wait for Lolla 2008!

What happened to July?

No, this is not a lament about how quickly summer is passing (although it is speeding by!). This is an admission that I failed to have a grand adventure in July. (Unless you count thoroughly cleaning my apartment twice in two weeks. That's more a rarity than an adventure, though.)




As the month drew to a close I looked into a few things - trapeze classes, skydiving, a helicopter ride - but there just wasn't enough time. I was just too busy! Between guests and zipping up to Summerfest in Milwaukee and exploring the fun that is Chicago in the summer, I had a full schedule.




So I'm not feeling bad about the lack of a big adventure this month - I had enough little ones. And August is a biggie, with Lollapalooza and the High Trek Adventure!