// July 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
After winning Seeker passes to Wanderlust Festival from Yoga Dork (thank you!), my wife scored us media passes to the event. We covered all 3 days for Yoga Dork (through email) and for Ossumniss and ourselves (through our twitter feeds, @Ossumniss, @tcabeen, and @mrscabeen). The weekend was nothing short of complete Ossumniss. It was amazing, insightful, exciting, and possibly even life-changing. Well, it was life-changing for a few people, at least. I might even be one of those people.
Roadtrip
The old and the new meet on the Wyoming Plains
We drove from Boulder, CO to Squaw Valley, near Lake Tahoe, CA. The journey took us up the I-25 to around Cheyenne, WY, where we caught the I-80 west, all the way to Lake Tahoe. A quick stop in Salt Lake City, UT to visit my wife’s father for lunch was awesome. He’s such a great guy. That night, we made a brief slumber a little shy of Reno. Breakfast the next morning was made as planned at the Circus Circus buffet. Campy? Cheesy? Silly? Whatever, it was fun, and the omelette station was surprisingly fantastic. For 8.99 you get fresh omelettes, real fruit juice, only-slightly-overripe fruit (my favorite stage of ripeness!), corn on the cob (WTF?), Chinese Porridge, a whole random assortment of other stuff, and some really greasy, nasty donuts. If you’re a bit selective in your selection, it’s one helluva breakfast for one heckuva price. This was not a paid promotion. I just enjoyed the meal, dammit. 
Leaving the craziness of Reno, and trying to put the previous day’s running-out-of-gas-10-miles-from-a-gas-station-on-the-Salt-Flats problem behind me, we motored across NV to the CA border, where they stole our cherries to prevent the spread of some damned fruit fly. What? I didn’t mention in more detail my failure to get gas before the barren 66-mile stretch? Let me tell you all about it: I got a lift from a nice LDS family and it worked out. Never speak of it again. More importantly, those were good cherries and we were looking forward to enjoying them and whatever evil fruit fly eggs they probably didn’t contain (but could have!)
It’s also important to surrender anything that is being looked for at a check point. Sometimes it’s good to just consume it right then, but if we’d scarfed an entire bag of cherries that fast, at least one of us probably would’ve pooped some pants in the car. Likely me. So we let the cherries go. Ok, I slept through most of it, but that’s not the point. I was tired. And they weren’t Raniers, anyway.
Food
The waste containers were bearproof, except the one containing edibles. AWESOME. (Unfair comparison!)
We were both tired, actually. A lot to pack into a few days. We also got a bit hungry from time to time. Actually, it was mostly me. And it was more than a bit. I was hungry a lot, and I’m trying to eat better. The food options at Wanderlust Festival were clearly geared to the music crowd. The yoga crowd had severely limited options. Pita and hummus? NO. Rice and beans? NO. Veggie burger? Actually, yes, but at one place that was really out of the way for many people. I found it on the last day. But anyone with a food allergy probably couldn’t eat it. Vegetarians had trouble. Vegans, Celiacs, and people with other severe food allergies were also screwed. The ONE saving grace was Alice’s Mountain Market, which had a pretty substantial selection of quite nice things at mind-bogglingly reasonable prices. They beat our local Safeway grocery by about 20% on some items. And the guy that was always at the register was cool. I recommended it to several people. Beyond that, though… good luck. Fortunately, we took a bunch of food with us. It got us through most meals, but I’m a piggy. So I ended up getting a piece of pizza one night, and grabbing a few Luna Bars here and there. On the last day there, I got fish tacos from the Arc at Gold Coast, and they were awful. Thickly breaded fish, on super processed white flour tortillas, with a side of probably-cabbage just BATHED in some beige sauce. Dripping. Messy. Barely-nutritious. Far greasier and processed than I was looking for. To close on another very positive note, though, the guy running the stir fry station at the Arc was AWESOME. With food allergies himself, he was extremely understanding, patient, and helpful to myself and the celiac in front of me. He washed his pans and utensils before preparing her meal, and was very careful with the ingredients. She didn’t get a very round meal out of the deal, but he did what he could for her. Meeting him was actually one of the many highlights of the weekend for me.
Some lovely accommodations and a sculpture
On the Gondola to high camp, where there is a pool and hot tub. And showers.
Parking was abundant, but haphazard, Friday. Haphazard every day, actually.
White people like oversize things
Music
In case you brought E, The LED Toys Cart is ready!
There was a bit of a glitch with the headline act, Michael Franti & Spearhead, in that Franti had been performing with a ruptured appendix (complete with great abdominal pain and all!) and needed surgery to remove that problematic organ, abscess, and all the infection in his abdomen. How can I make THIS paragraph about me? Well, when I was 2, the same thing happened to me. I was performing with my band at all sorts of awesome shows when my appendix ruptured, but I was an inarticulate baby, so it was difficult to diagnose the problem. By the time they went in for exploratory surgery (because my concerts had gone from folk to punk to japanese scream punk metal shit), my appendix was ruptured, and I had some abscess all filled up with gangrene. If that had ruptured, I would’ve died. So I assume Franti had a bunch of gangrene up in there, too. You should be glad we’re both still around. Anyway, his surgery was a hugely awesome success, and the festival organizers were able to book Common in a last second coup. The fans were pleased. Franti got painkillers. Everybody wins.
Mutaytor Hearts Burlesque
There were three(3) stages. Gold Coast stage was at high camp, and was the largest. On the base level, there was the Globetrotter stage, which was quite large. Then there was the Casbah stage, which was small and in the middle of everything, so the up-and-coming musicians got great exposure. I passed several artists “rocking the casbah” as it were, and didn’t really pay attention to any of them.
We got to see The Mutaytor’s night set on both Friday and Saturday. They were less impressive than I had expected, but still quite enjoyable. (I’ve listened to some older tracks, and the sound was ENTIRELY different.) Three horns, three drummers, a guitarist, a bassist, and some guy playing synth and macbook. But they were the background. The foreground consisted of a rotating stock of interestingly dressed men and women who spun fire poi, flaming staff, flaming sword, LED wand thing, LED hula hoops, or just danced. Belly dancing and Burlesque were both featured. Adolescent boys were shifting and giggling all through that bit.
Common pulled a fan on stage. She swooned.
We also caught part of Common’s set. I like a couple of his songs. He didn’t perform those ones. He did flex the skill (and balls) required to do a complete live freestyle on the stage, though. Women were swooning throughout the set. Lots of people were sparking up. Common gave them props. They returned the props in a most mellow fashion.
Yoga
The yoga sessions were.
Hah, how yogic was that? They simply were. Actually, there were just as many yogic artists (yogis, yoginis, instructors, masters, whatever term you like) as there were musical artists. And they were equally, if not more, skilled in their respective craft. A VAST range of styles were represented, from pretty straight-practicing yogis to the more “fusion” crowd, with their acrobatics, dancing, and whatnot. Furtheremore, there was much chanting, misic, singing, laughing, fun, sharing, and simply being present. I’m not going to try to sound like I know waht I’m talking about here, because you’ll see through it. It was just awesome, diverse, and chock-full of incredibly talented instructors.
Kia meditating on the Salt Flats in Utah
John Friend, one of the better known names in yoga, taught a few classes at the high camp, above even the Gold Coast area, where the VIPs (and the media) were able to hit the pool and hot tub, practice yoga, and chill. In one of his classes, I saw a woman absolutely racked with tears. As John went to her, his expression of compassionate sympathy melted to pure joy when he realized that she was just overcome. She quietly sobbed through the last few minutes of the session, and redoubled her sobs after it had ended. And at the end, she was surrounded by people laughing, crying, laying their hands on her in interconnectedness, and just sharing experiences. It was, from all appearances, a pure religious experience, like any other.
Duncan Wong was the embodiment of wild fun in the class we were able to attend. He had apparently done Thai Massage in other sessions, but this was some insane melding of yoga, dance, and martial arts. And I mean this very literally. He would pause, mid-pose, and shake his thang, like he was in the middle of tha club, then immediately erupt into Bruce Lee outbursts of shouting, kicking, and punching. He translated some Warrior postures into their purpose in war, demonstrating strikes from a pose in hand-to-hand combat, or how to effectively shoot a bow from another Warrior posture. It was eye-opening to very literally see how the limbs of yoga have grown from very different roots.
Vendors
There were a large number of vendors present, mostly clothing and accessories, and other gear, but also food, nutritional vendors, and things like that. Few of these were very interesting to me (like the beer and margarita tents at Gold Coast), but I did very much like the offerings at the Dude Girl tent. Especially the $10 bin, where I picked up some yoga pants. Yay, bargains!
Non-Profits
Yoga World Reach
Among the vendor tents were the non-profits. I didn’t get a chance to speak with the non-profits at the Gold Coast area, but base camp featured some really awesome goups. Two were promoting health and wellness in Africa, through teaching yoga, building schools, and making sure people had a bite to eat.
Working with at-risk youth through yoga
