Delfest report

As you might recall, this weekend we were planning to head out to Delfest to see Sam Bush and Old Crow Medicine Show in Cumberland, MD. We were also going to stay the night at Tari's Inn in West Virginia, but after talking about it we realized that we've been so busy the past few weeks that what really sounded like a restful vacation was just...staying home. So we planned to drive back to Reston after the show.

Saturday morning my work called and offered some tempting overtime, so I ended up going in for four hours to offset the cost of the weekend. Meanwhile, Matt ran around and packed up a cooler for us, a change of clothes for me, and ran a few other errands. He picked me up around 11 and we headed out out to Maryland--about a 3-hour drive, with lovely scenery and nice weather.

Here we are shortly after getting to Delfest, while Sam Bush was onstage:

Some of our fellow concertgoers:
Here's the baby enjoying a little bluegrass:

About 20 minutes after those pictures were taken, big fat raindrops started to fall. At one point rain had been predicted for the day, but last we had checked it was supposed to be sunny. Bummer. But we pulled out our umbrella, huddled in close, and waited for it to stop.

But instead, the next thing we knew, it looked like this:

Not only was it pouring rain and the wind (we later discovered) whipping around at up to 80mph, but nickel-sized hail was pelting us HARD. After sitting there wet for 15-20 minutes and realizing it wasn't going to stop, we made a run for it, but weren't able to make it to the car, so we ended up huddled in one of the concession tent with a bunch of other people, who were literally holding it down as there were other tents being upended and blown around the concert and campsites. (We felt VERY thankful that we'd decided I was too pregnant and it was too hot to camp...)

Finally, there was enough of a break for us to make it to the car. On the way there, though, I had to pee incredibly badly (of course), there wasn't a Port-o-Potty in sight, and even if there had been, it wasn't where I wanted to be in high winds. (For the curious: I did have my jar in the car, and had already used it before we went in, but knew that was going to be considerably trickier wearing soaking wet clothes.) So I weighed my options and decided that with the rate at which I was being doused with fresh rainwater, my best option was probably just to do like the marathoners do and pee my pants while running. So I did.

Having finally made it to the car:

As a side note: on the way out to Maryland, we'd stopped to grab some lunch at one of our new favorite restaurants: Ted's Montana Grill. Everybody there is always very friendly, the atmosphere is classy but not fancy, they're committed to the environment, and they're generous with coupons. We had a $10 off of 2 entrees coupon they'd sent us (which you can get by clicking on their homepage right now) and with each burger running about that much, it was basically a buy one/get one free. We had them pack up half of each of our burgers and fries for dinner, which we'd planned to eat at the festival. Around $15 with a tip--not bad for feeding two meals to each of us!

Here's Matt working on his while we waited out the storm:

The welts Matt sustained in the hail:The aftermath (this picture, and the one of the rain and hail, came from the DelFest Facebook group--we were incredibly worried that in all this we would ruin our camera, but it was safe and sound and dry inside of Matt's old Jansport backpack):

As for my clothes--having urinated in them, I went ahead and, well, took them off. And headed back without them. What else could we do?!

So when all was said and done--it wasn't exactly the $100 worth of music we'd paid for and were hoping to hear. On the other hand, we were mainly grateful to make it out safely, and we certainly had a few laughs and made some memories. Though as my mom suggested--this next weekend, we're going to try to do less peeing in pants and driving around naked.