A musical interlude.

It's been a long month, the truck rust thing was weighing on my mind, TradeMe lists were scrutinized  and deliberated over and over. Time for a break.

 I've been going to Sanctuary Sounds Music festival near Waipawa  in Hawkes Bay for the last couple of years, a pleasant little event on a lifestyle farm. They keep ticket numbers to 300 per year, a cunning move in my opinion. I was itching to take M-B but alas...so I tossed some camping gear into the folk's station wagon and kicked off. The drive was nice in early summer sunshine, a couple of hours and I was there. Flash my ticket at the gate and park under some trees. It was only just lunch time, still lots of camp sites, so I grabbed the tent and headed off to get me some real estate.

This looks good! The tent is a milsurp item from the NZ army. No flyleaf or floor and many peg loops and guy ropes as well as neat lil 5 piece ali poles. Quite sturdy and in one of my favorite camos schemes. Once the tent was up I just spread a tarp inside and tossed my therm-a-rest on top, home! It's a good size inside, 3 blokes and all their junk easily. It has a tape running from end to end, so stretching  it into shape is quite safe. Well made!

Tentage achieved, it was time to wander off. A very short stroll brought me to the stage area.

This is the porch/stage at the back of the owner's house with people standing around on his lawn. I'm leaning against the sound booth at the back of the lawn. The quality of the sound is very fair, good gear and a competent sound guy made for good balanced sound. Things were looking good for a noisy night :-)

In one of those cosmic coincidences, I bumped into the chap to whom I sold my furniture truck about 3 years ago. Interesting bloke by the name of Gypsy, he used to own the Shannon second hand store, a place my Mum loved to go to buy books and knicnacs as well as talking up a storm.
It was just a bare luton box body sitting on a Mitsubishi L300. I loved driving that truck, it's lil 1600cc Lancer petrol motor buzzing away at a sedate 85 kph. Sadly tho, the whole deal was a bit ruined by my not being able to stand up straight in the box. I thought about lifting the roof, but sheesh! Too hard for just 4 inches and would look top heavy anyhow. So, that never happened, the truck was sold and I got a Nissan Sentra instead.

Fast forward 3 years.

He's done a solid job of the conversion, not his first.

Very comfortable! Easily my favorite part was the neat lil wood burner stove Gypsy and a mate constructed especially. It's about the size of a shoe box on end and runs of pine cones and small bits. Very cool!

Even a trivet to cook on! I could sooo see something like this in M-B, might have to give that one some thought...nice lil truck.

The afternoon rolled on, the stage and the bar  both opened at 1pm and 1st acts go under way. The ladies singing acapella and being served tequila shots as they sang, funny stuff as they got the 4th or 5th one down.

As the afternoon wore on, I thought I'd get the sleeping bag out of the car and put it in the tent all set for the night in case I was a bit the worse for wear. Got back to the tent and discovered my peace and quiet had turned in to suburbia.

Argh! There goes the neighborhood....oh well. Layed out my sleeping bag and headed back to the stage area.

Eventually got dark, the bands got louder, people drank, danced, hung out and a good time was had by all. As a family event there was a double handful of kids running about the place and having a good time, it's good to see that sort of thing. Even the couple of obvious drunks were well behaved and we partied into the night.


Eventually the stage closed at 1am, most people had quit for the night and it was no struggle to wander off to the tent, crawl into bed and just close my eyes and fade.
Wasn't boozed worth the mention, so work up in the morning feeling like a coffee would set me up to face the morning nicely. Wondered over to the coffee stand and discovered they were out of milk. Oh the horror! So pausing only to roll up the tent and load all my junk back in the car, I flounced off back home, stopping at the 1st coffee cart I came to. Another excellent weekend, would have been better if I had M-B, but there is always next year....