They were the second to last act at the Rocky Grass festival in Lyons, Colorado this past weekend.  They were also the final act.  That is a piece of bluegrass trivia and a Country Western vaudeville act you should really see for yourself. There were about 4500 of us in the crowd, enjoying Hot Rize close out the show after three days of good natured camping, food, sunstroke, tubing on the river, people watching, beer swillin', rain, mud, music, and four sleepness nights because the locals were jamming right next to my tent.  They started as soon as the main stage emptied and played every night until some time after daylight.  The music barely stopped.  

Hot Rize brought the Yonder Mountain String Band up on stage again, and I took pictures, but the OS photo editor informs me that the file size of my pic is too large and I can't post it.  So here's a complimentary video of the band from Boulder (more precisely, Nederland) that wasn't ever supposed to make it.

Actually, I took scads of photos; all of them too large unless I ask the administrator to increase the allowable size of the file being uploaded.  Nothing like higher technology.  I have pics of Sam Bush and Del McCoury and the Wilders and Darrell Scott and Three Ring Circle and Sarah Jarosz and many more, including the locals jamming all night in the pavilion next to my tent.   I have pics of the drive from Colorado en route to Las Vegas, where I stayed with some old friends who actually live there and rarely go down to the strip.  Too much neon will poison you. 

As you doubtless know, the OS Vegas peeps met under a cabana at Bally's poolside, thanks to Verbal's dysfunctional (not unlike my own) family gathering; and the now famous fuck you party that progressed grandly, far into the night(s).  Too many pics were taken of Cartouche and Lonnie, who probably bought all those panties on sale at WalMart and then laid them out on his own bed in San Francisco for those suggestive photos in his second to last puddin' schmuddin' blog.   I inhaled too much smoke in that cabana, just so you know you really missed something.  I am amazed at how many OS peeps smoke cigarettes.  Gah...!  And some people act like they've never seen a camera before.  Point a lens anywhere near 'em and they act like a dog smellin' bacon. 

 At one point, someone in our party was so classy they actually used the word "fuck" (or fucking) seven times in one sentence while we were seated in a very swanky French restuarant in the Paris section of the strip.  That was when Emma and I had our photo (the only known photo of us) snapped mid discussion at the table, our ears smarting despite the white linen and silver.  It was not, as the caption stated, such a somber moment between us so much as a solemn reaction to the torrent of invective to my left.  Our waiter was so embarrassed for us that he was momentarily speechless, and my wine order suffered accordingly.  OS conventioneer peeps are rarely speechless; but thinking fast, (and obviously more accustomed to showgirls than I am) the waiter upsold me a slightly better pinot noir that cost $13 a glass rather than the whole bottle, which sells for $9 at Trader Joe's.   

I have pics of roadside hills that look like pachyderm skin.  Sand mountains.  Rock mountains.  Sand and rock.  Desert scrubland you'd never want to get stranded in; not in a million years.  Some of the pics feature the Mercedes peace sign on the hood of my car, identifying me as a standard bearer of OS peepdom and classic antiquity on the great American highway.  Some guy from Rhode Island slowed his SUV long enough to point at his rear plates and marvel at another Rhode Island car (we're fairly rare) in the middle of Utah's barren wastelands along I70, which looks like this:

Oh, yeah. 

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I have pictures of my Las Vegas hosts, my friends who live in Henderson, just East of the strip and look nothing like OS peeps; who look nothing like you'd mebbe think they look, because they're real people, not avatars.  I didn't meet anyone in Vegas who doesn't put their skirt on two legs at a time if they're sitting down.

I have pics of Red Rocks.  I have pics of Black Dragon Canyon in South Central Utah, which is kinda near where I broke down on the side of Interstate 70 because my radiator resevoir ruptured from the 110 degree heat and spewed all my coolant in a fecundant green puddle on the boiling highway.   Tiny l'l holes but no stopping it.  The sedimentary layers of Black Dragon Canyon were deposited before the Permian extinction 250 million years ago, when more than 95% of all species living on Earth were wiped out.   I nearly expired myself.  No cell signal out there.  A Utah state trooper stopped and radioed AAA for me, and then a trucker pulled over.  We had a mechanic's pow wow and I threw a rag over the damned thing so I wouldn't burn myself and popped off the top, waited a while for it to cool; unbolted the resevoir, took off the hoses, flipped the resevoir over, dried it off, and applied a strip of duct tape to the l'l holes.  

I didn't get a picture of the tow truck coming to get me; but I saw it in the other lane, driving East as I was driving farther West.  I used ice water from my cooler to top off the radiator fluid and saw no need to hang out waiting for the vultures, who wouldn't be there for a few hours anyway.  Too hot for vultures to bother flying when the road kill will still be there after it cools down.  Nothing like duct tape.

I have pics of the first casino you see when you're driving into Vegas from the East after you've been to Hoover Dam, which is quite a site.  We went to Willow Beach too, on Lake Mead, where we saw a particularly lovely sunset.  Then we drove back over the dam and got to see it again at night.  It was all lit up pretty as hell, and the new bridge construction is quite impressive.  Big crane.  The arch of the suspension bridge coming together overhead like a giant steel rainbow.   I have pics.  The power lines stretch all the way to L.A.   There were some great photos of me, your humble conventioneer, but I can't post 'em in this blog.  The files are too large.

I took most of these pics with my little Sony cybershot, which I stuck out of the sunroof of the moving car.   Nice l'l camera.  We got out and walked around at Willow Beach, where we saw the sunset.  The night shots are a little squirrelly, owing to the motion of Earth as we are driving at 85 mph.  I have some really nice shots of the desert all lit up as we're coming into Las Vegas.  Complete and utter desert blackness all around us and then the neon glow of Vegas rising up like the mother of all headlights.  Two and a half million residents and 37 million visitors a year.  $6.1 billion a year in official gaming revenue.  22,000 conventions per year.  Bally's OS peeps frolickin' poolside with wild abandon wearing Dakini commemmorative sunglasses. 

I even have some pics of Joan Baez performing here in Boulder at Chautauqua.  She brought me to tears just before I left for Vegas and the rarified company of the other famous OS peep fuck you conventioneers.  I have pics.  But here's Sam Bush.

And we can't leave out Del McCoury.  Can we...?

Darrell Scott.

If not for that strip of duct tape I might not 'a made it.  That one strip held in the sweltering 115 degree heat the whole time I was sitting in the traffic jam on Flamingo, trying to get to Bally's before my car blows up.  I have pics.