au naturale

cry freedom!

monday night:

i got myself all packed up, and went through to ramat hasharon. due to a faulty decision making procedure, i ended up getting there an hour later than anticipated. i met a couple of south african girls of my eldest niece's age, one of them is in the army, and one of them is the sister of one of my youth-movement guides (from way back when). what bothered me most of all is that i didn't recognize their accent at first :$

i got to yogi's, we sat and chilled for a bit, and then SxS and grootbek arrived.
"oh. i see you brought grootbek."

just then, lucky called me to say she was outside. on my way out i ran into mmf, so all we had to say was a quick "hi", and then lucky and i went to get some food. thank you, pizza slice! hawaiian is still my favourite.

we went back to lucky's, and i managed to annoy her mother even more. it's not *my* fault i didn't see her, she was sitting behind the stairs!

i spent the night - that didn't impress her mom too much either...

in the morning, i walked through to yogi's, to wake up his fiancee and mmf, and we had a great coffee session.

yogi arrived, and the two of us went shopping. rather serious shopping. then we went back to pack (it took forever!), and we finally left around 4.30pm... instead of 2pm... nevermind. we picked up SxS, and then we were off.

the drive was looooong, and i got confused with the directions - we ended up getting there by the LONG way around the lake. fortunately, there weren't too many cars waiting at the entrance, and we got sorted out fairly quickly.

we found ourselves a perfect camping spot: right next to the entrance to the beach, about 30m from the dancefloor, about 40m from the toilets, and about the same distance to the food stalls. and the excitement from the previous couple of weeks, amplified with the excitement over my first trance party since new year's, made me a very happy person.

highlights:

1) amazing music, dancing myself silly
2) great people
3) the whole camping-under-the-stars thing
4) running into a girl from the vortex, who has more new year pictures!
5) passing out for half an hour on the beach
6) warming up to 5000 bpm (only slightly exaggerated)
7) as usual, waking up early with a pounding beat
8) swimming in the lake, then bouncing on the shore to dry off
9) i'm a child when in possesion of a watermelon and a spoon
10) great frisbee (even if i did make a few embarrassing mistakes)
11) going for a swim with hundreds of crazies lining the beach and fooling around in the water
12) using our neighbours to slow down the process of striking camp

lowlights:

1) a bunch of arsim breaking into the party via a hole next to our tent. none of the security were interested, and aside from being violent, these kids don't exactly have respect for other people's property. the last thing we wanted was to have to guard our area the whole night
2) yogi and SxS wanted to leave as soon as they woke up, it was a real mission to get them to change their minds
3) getting sunburned. i was being careful! the weirdest bit is that my chest is burned where my overalls were open. that makes sense. but how in blazes did my back get burned?!?!

i decided i didn't wanted to stay there by myself, so i went back with them. i stayed at SxS's for a few hours, to shower and chill (and eat like a pig). around 9pm we went off to the mall to get his car from his sister, then we went through to black steer to meet yogi and his fiancee.

a good s'effrican restaurant

to quote the magic pudding: "Eat away, chew away, munch and bolt and guzzle,
Never leave the table till you're full up to the muzzle."

we ate so much food, that by the end i was literally forcing the food down. the boerewors was okay, the monkey-gland burger was fantastic, and the dessert was dangerous.

after fighting over the bill, as usual (;)), SxS gave me a ride home. and complicated my weekend: i was going to spend it on the kibbutz, but he's leaving on saturday. so i'll just have to spend it in ra'anana.

lucky woke me up around 11am - good thing, because i'd already slept too much. and now the day begins - err... as soon as she calls back...