This afternoon, on my way to work, a kid zoomed by me on a skateboard. I recognized his t-shirt and he wore a wristband just like me, a wristband from Hillside Festival 2007. Yeah, I was a Guelph Lake for the weekend music, arts, and peace, a local hippy fest.

I volunteered for Chuck at the lake stage beer tent, which means I got to attend the festival for free. I saw loads of people, saw bands, ate food, sat in the sun, swam in the lake, and got the ultimate haircut.

The primary reason I attend the festival is to volunteer, other things are good too, but I see the hassle and price of a ticket as too great a cost. Volunteering, which I enjoy and gives me something to do, is a joy, so my benefit accumulates. Notwithstanding that, I do want to do other things at the festival, so I try to pack my shifts in early to be free for the rest of the time.

I came into the island in the early afternoon to do some training and then relaxed until my security shift started. I did security, then served beer until closing time. Then the next morning I did security from opening until the afternoon. Then I was free. I enjoyed it though. Serving was good. We served beers from Mill Street, F&M, and Wellington. While I kept the area secure, I got to listen to music.

While I was at the back stage gate, this band of young kids, Dancehall Free For All played. They are two guitars, keyboard, sax, trumpet and drums and played kind of jazzy funk or soemthing. They were great. They had real showmanship. When the guy was introducing them as soon as he said there band name, they busted into their first song. In their last song the drummer jumped up and started dancing while he beat the skins. There was a crowd of kids up front plus one older looking grey-haired guy dancing and bopping to their music.

For music, I also saw So Called, That 1 Guy, Dya Singh, Vieux Farka Toure, Sexsmith, and Ani.

I saw many people at the festival too. I served beer to Joe Dv the big little brother of a friend, I saw PilarH a girl from high school (which is long ago and far away), I saw Zara (who said “long time no see” I said “yeah about a year” since last Hillside), I saw NikiW,

I saw loads of people who were working security under Landry. On Friday I talked to Darren, Cake, and Madeline. Cake was excited when I told them that in our training they were referred to as professional security. I also later saw Sergeant, Mike Mkhnk, Amon, Fedy, etc.
I met people I volunteered with like: Megan, Adrian, Nadine, Dan, etc.

While checking ID I met a hapa dude who had several names Wee Armour was his mixed family name.

I also met a bunch of other people through people, John, Amanda, and Finn; Liz; Andrew and Sandra; Shannon and Harmony, Emily, John and Zanelli, Cynthia, etc.

So, it was a good fun weekend. There were plenty of children (good), plenty of music and food (good), unlike the performers, it was pretty white (weird), and there was loads of smoke, both legal and still criminal (bad).

Oh yeah, and I got the ultimate haircut.