COACHELLA

After driving most of the night, we pulled into our Super 8 in Santa Clarita (north L.A.) we had reserved online, to find out the 24 hour desk had no one there to check us in, and the door was locked. We stood outside for 15 minutes knocking and trying to call, and finally decided, since we still had energy, to just pull an all-niter and keep on driving to get breakfast and play some frisbee golf at the course by Coachella. (The earliest we could check into our cottage in 29 Palms was 1:00). It ended out working out okay, since 9:00 in the morning is the only time it is tolerable to be playing folf in the desert, but it screwed it out of us getting to see Luke and Ben in LA, which really sucked.


So... here is the desert sunrise, just outside of Los Angeles. The beauty of the sunrise was nice to see in contrast to the disgusting thick layer of smog coating the valley.


A cool palm tree in downtown Palm Springs (the first of many pics of the local foliage)


Palm Springs is a lot more "desertee" then we thought it would be


Folfing in Palm Desert. They had outdoor showers by the b-ball courts we all got wet in. It in the 90's by 10:00.


This is at the folf course at the soccer park in Palm Desert. It was around the corner from the civic center which was a really nice, massive park the size of a small city.


Eric was there. Wootwoo! :)


We stayed at 29 Palms, which is around the backside of Joshua Tree National Park from the Palm Springs area. Here is our drive through the park.....


A Joshua tree.


Another one.


Some huge cactuses, (cacti actually, you know you call them cactuses too!)


A restaurant we ate at in Palm Springs.


We sat outdoors, they had misters all around the fence to keep cool. It was over 100 degrees at this point, but the misters and the shade of the palm trees kept it decent.



This was right after we left the restaurant. The gauge started at 122 parked on the blacktop until we got going.


Tons of windmills creating power for the Coachella Valley.


More windmills.


These next pics are of the Cholla gardens...


These grow in the middle of Joshua Tree National Park, in one area, maybe a couple times the size of a football field. Pretty crazy lookin...


The light-colored tops kinda glow in the sunlight.


One last picture before they ended.


Crazy groups of rocks, just in the middle of the desert, kinda like moab, but not as many and not as pretty.


More rocks.


Some Joshua trees.


A view point. Before the days of smog, you could see all the way to Mexico.


Another one.


Me, Avi and Mat walking to the viewpoint. Mat with water in hand, its too freakin hot!!



Here we are at Coachella!!


Another one, unfortunately our camera batteries we bought were really cheep and we didn't get as many pics of the concert as we would have liked.


Here's Willie!


We took a wrong turn and missed half of Willie Nelson's set :( What we got to hear was great though.


Who the hell is the dude behind us?? Weird close stander.


Another one of Willie. Eric was blazing down.


A great picture some kind soul and his girlfriend took of the Mann famm.


Matrim wearing his favorite shirt (The Doors), and dad's had, and his fanny pack full of goodies. Notice the marker on the arm paranoid mom wrote our phone numbers on him.


Mat making a funny face in the background and Avi.


Another one of Aviendha, with her big-girl cup.


Enjoying Placebo.


This is one at night of the sahara tent.


Dad and Mat enjoying Placebo.


Placebo.


We haven't ever listened to much Placebo, but have always enjoyed what we had heard.


They put on a really good show.


Eating some food. There was about 25 stands to choose from. Really a huge concert.


There was several art displays, this is some sort of flame throwing art. Could have done without added heat in the desert, but it looked pretty cool.


Here it goes. Not sure about the fuel efficiency of this though...


Here's a trippy light show.


It was going crazy and doing alot of cool stuff, cool colors in motion, really trippy-- until we busted out the camera. Makes me have flashbacks ;)

Heres the rave tent... this brings me back...


Paul Van Dyke was spinning... a little too pretty for me. Mat thought it was really weird, and got bored with it surprisingly fast.


Heres another one of the stages.


Another art display, my personal favorite- a giant lightning machine, once again not sure about the power consumption but pretty cool. It was like standing right next to lightning striking minus the thunder-- pretty crazy.



And now finally the main reason we're here: RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE!!


Very hard to get a good picture since they were constantly in motion, jumping and jamming.


Zach De La Rocha.


The Bassist, can't remember his name off the top of my head



The show was rockin and from what Eric says they hardley missed a beat from 2000 til tonight. Tom Morello shredded it up and Zach was sounding good, and everyone was in sync. They rocked it for an hour and a half playing almost all of their best songs off of their 4 albums, especially the first, which is our favorite. (Nothing new... yet) Zach had a few cool things along the way to say and we weren't disappointed at all-- A fine show, and a fun vacation.