Friday, August 30th 2013
Courtney and I traveled to Troy, Ohio to attend the Gentleman of the Road Music Festival. This is the second year of GOTR that is put on by Mumford and Sons. They go to small towns around the world and basically take over the town and have a great music festival. We were lucky that one of their stops this year was in Troy that is a small town 1/2 hour north of Dayton – about a 2 1/2 hour drive for us. We took off Friday morning and arrived in Troy around 1:00. We were camping with the hordes so parking was about 1/2 mile away and we brought our wagon and walked to the camping spot. 
The camping area where we were assigned was already pretty packed but we were able to find a spot and get everything set up with no problems. It was HOT HOT HOT out. We were happy we brought our sport umbrella that we just bought so we had some shade. We walked around the venue and then walked into town whose main square was all blocked off and had two stages playing music. Troy was totally into it and it was a great place to be. The concerts started at 5:00. We hung out in the shade for most of the early acts, people watching, drinking beer and taking in the scene. They had great beer and great food in the grounds. The headliner was Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros who were great. Kind of trippy, happy music. We went on the field for their whole show which was fun to be with the masses. We were pretty exhausted after the concert and crawled into our tent.
Saturday, August 31st
Somehow we managed to sleep – a little bit. People were up all night but we expected that so no worries. We scoped out the shower trailers right away as we were feeling mighty nasty. Happily they were just opening up, not crowded at all and there is nothing like a hot shower to get you moving. We walked over to town to find something to eat. We ended up at The Caroline, a nice little place right off the square and they had a really good 
brunch buffet going on. It was nice to hang out in the air conditioning. We walked around some more, walked to the car to get some more water and hung out around the campground until the concert started back up at noon. We hung out for the first couple of acts and then walked into town again which was getting packed. Their were hordes of people crossing the bridge the other way and lots of people in town also. We had some more beer, watched a couple more bands and then headed back. It rained for about 30 minutes when the Vaccines were playing, but we were lucky in that is all that it rained as the skies were threatening the entire day. The stadium was getting packed. We headed onto the field to watch Old Crowed Medicine Show who were great and everybody loved. We then scopes out are spot for Mumford and Sons. Their show was really great. The entire place was jam packed, rocking, on their feet the whole time. Great stuff.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
After a great nights sleep (yeah right) we were up at 8:00, packed up by 9:00 and on the road. A fun weekend that we would (and hopefully will) do again.
Set during the onset of WW1, a young woman recently married is on her way to NYC but the ship sinks and she finds herself in an overcrowded lifeboat. The dynamics of the group constantly shift as the situation shifts in tragic ways. A terrific first novel that is hard to put down.
Two 20 something New York City designers document their 40 day experiment of dating each other. While I ended up disliking both participants immensely, and wondering if really was all true, it is an interesting read and I loved the design and blog format. Great on an ipad. The future of publishing? I doubt it, but pretty cool nonetheless and definitely worth checking out.
Born in Colorado in 1899, a young man moves back to Austria-Hungry with his father who was born and raised there. He quickly becomes involved in WW1 as a sharpshooter and the novel details the horrific war. An interesting historical novel that makes you happy to live in 2013.
A 10 year old girl is abused by her father, orphaned, lives with her evil Grandmother who also dies and eventually finds peace in a foster home. Told from the view point of the 10 year old southern girl, it is a short, interesting, but nothing special novel.
Two young 20 years olds in rural USA get involved in a murder of a homeless man in their dying ex-steel mill town. Told from the viewpoint of the two men and several other characters it is an interesting tale but very bleak and a sad reality for much of our country. It is a well written novel told in an interesting stream of consciousness style. The author has a more recent novel just published that looks good as well.
Different groups of people, families and stories come together in a small midwestern town. The characters and stories are all interesting but the novel could have used a better editor as it seemed a bit verbose. Similar to Kent Haruf novels but not as well written. (I think I’m getting too picky as the reviews for this were outstanding everywhere)
