Never have I drank so much beer over the course of a weekend. I drove up early Friday afternoon, the campsite at Lake Casitas was great, the weather was perfect and continued to be that way for the rest of the weekend. Our club, The F.E.R.M., shared a campsite with our sister-club, Crown of the Valley, from Pasadena. It was my first time meeting them, they were a great bunch of guys and incredible brewers as well. After a huge potluck dinner (with beer of course), we headed over to the actual festival grounds to set up shop. The Fest opens unofficially Friday night so we served a few beers as a test run for the big day on Saturday. We finished the night drinking Belgians, sitting around a campfire.

Woke up the next morning and headed back to the festival grounds to finish setting up before they officially opened at 11am. My pale ale and lychee fruit blonde were on tap. The lychee blonde was a big hit. I had a great time serving our beers and thought it might be fun to pick up bartending as a second job. When I wasn’t serving beer at our booth, I was walking around sampling the other great beers from different clubs and watching the live bands play.

Later that night after the fest was over we headed back to camp, ate and hung out in one of the guy’s campers. Three of the Crown of the Valley guys were in there jamming with a harmonica, guitar and banjo. We ended the night drinking more beer and singing Radiohead and Beatles songs.

Driving home the next day I thought a lot about my future. I’ve been sensing for some time now that there’s going to be a lot of changes in my life soon.