Dust-a-roo-roo-roo
I tell you evry-tang.
I think I'm gonna have to break my story into 2-3 different posts, because my experience at Bonnaroo was so fucking awesome, and I need to go into explicit detail about some of the performances, but before the music starts, we have to get to the Festival, don't we?
I fucked up first and foremost. I thought the Festival grounds opened last Wednesday night, but in reality, they opened Thursday morning. So me and Grant had to drive into Tennessee and find a place to stay for the night, and then drive into the festival site the next morning. I had some certificates for a free night at any Extended Stay Suites, so our options were either Knoxville or Chattanooga. We chose the latter since it's alot closer to Manchester, which is where Bonnaroo is held.
Our drive down was quick and uneventful up until we got within 50 miles of Chattanooga, wherein we got stuck in a 3 hour back up. It was a huge fucking accident, and forced us to inch forward for 3 hours just to go 5 miles. End of story, we got to Chattanooga after about 7 hours, whereas it should've only taken us about 5. Oh well. The hotel was in the middle of nowhere near Chattanooga's airport, kind of in the ghetto. We noticed this, because the hotel gave us a list of restaurants to eat at, and they were all strategically located far away from the hotel in the nicer areas... We ate at a Pizza Hut, and I ended up with the worst heartburn of my entire life, so bad that I didn't even sleep.
The next morning, we got up at 5am, in order to get what we thought would be a head start, and get into the concert site early. The concert site opened at 7:00am, and we came to find out that 20,000 people got even more of a head start than us. Hence we ended up waiting in line for 5 hours to get in and get a campsite. Man, that was a long ass wait though, so bad that as we neared the security checkpoint, I had to jump out and sprint to a fucking port-au-potty, leaving Grant driving duties to our site.
We parked the car and got our spot around 1:00pm on Thursday. When we got there though, this one redneck who was driving behind us, got into a vicious argument with one of the parking attendents, who was pissed at him because he had been recklessly driving through the field... so me and Grant strategically placed the opening of our tent facing away from that douchebag, and toward a nicer neighbors, a group of really nice kids from Pennsylvania, all of whom seemed to have an affinity for Aviator sunglasses. Odd, but whatever works for them I guess.
The first thing that struck us when we got there, it was hot, my god it was fucking hot as hell. Tennessee was in the middle of its worst drought ever as well, so not only was it hot, but it was incredibly dusty, and with well over 80,000 people there, the dust was constantly kicked up into the air. It looked like a picture out of the 1930's dust bowl period. The entire length of the festival, me and Grant were just breathing in straight dirt, and have since been coughing up a storm to get it out of our systems. We also discovered that staying in the tent was hotter than it was outside. Our tent was a goddam incubator, so on Thursday, we didn't spend long in it, before we headed off to Centeroo, (the location of all the tents, stages, vendors, activities, etc...)
Our only big screw up came Thursday night. Me and Grant had been wanting to see David Cross that night, who went on at 10:00pm. So we got in line at 8:00pm for the comedy tent, or so we thought. Cause you see, we hadn't realized that we had actually crossed just into the Central time zone, so it was actually 7:00pm, and we were actually in line to see Lewis Black, which wasn't bad, he was funny, it just wasn't David Cross. Oh well. The rest of the Festival would make up for it, as you will see in my coming posts.
That ends Thursday night. Basically we got to the Festival, got settled in, saw some Lewis Black, felt out Centeroo, and then caught up on some much needed sleep. the real festival would begin the next day.
To be continued...
I think I'm gonna have to break my story into 2-3 different posts, because my experience at Bonnaroo was so fucking awesome, and I need to go into explicit detail about some of the performances, but before the music starts, we have to get to the Festival, don't we?
I fucked up first and foremost. I thought the Festival grounds opened last Wednesday night, but in reality, they opened Thursday morning. So me and Grant had to drive into Tennessee and find a place to stay for the night, and then drive into the festival site the next morning. I had some certificates for a free night at any Extended Stay Suites, so our options were either Knoxville or Chattanooga. We chose the latter since it's alot closer to Manchester, which is where Bonnaroo is held.
Our drive down was quick and uneventful up until we got within 50 miles of Chattanooga, wherein we got stuck in a 3 hour back up. It was a huge fucking accident, and forced us to inch forward for 3 hours just to go 5 miles. End of story, we got to Chattanooga after about 7 hours, whereas it should've only taken us about 5. Oh well. The hotel was in the middle of nowhere near Chattanooga's airport, kind of in the ghetto. We noticed this, because the hotel gave us a list of restaurants to eat at, and they were all strategically located far away from the hotel in the nicer areas... We ate at a Pizza Hut, and I ended up with the worst heartburn of my entire life, so bad that I didn't even sleep.
The next morning, we got up at 5am, in order to get what we thought would be a head start, and get into the concert site early. The concert site opened at 7:00am, and we came to find out that 20,000 people got even more of a head start than us. Hence we ended up waiting in line for 5 hours to get in and get a campsite. Man, that was a long ass wait though, so bad that as we neared the security checkpoint, I had to jump out and sprint to a fucking port-au-potty, leaving Grant driving duties to our site.
We parked the car and got our spot around 1:00pm on Thursday. When we got there though, this one redneck who was driving behind us, got into a vicious argument with one of the parking attendents, who was pissed at him because he had been recklessly driving through the field... so me and Grant strategically placed the opening of our tent facing away from that douchebag, and toward a nicer neighbors, a group of really nice kids from Pennsylvania, all of whom seemed to have an affinity for Aviator sunglasses. Odd, but whatever works for them I guess.
The first thing that struck us when we got there, it was hot, my god it was fucking hot as hell. Tennessee was in the middle of its worst drought ever as well, so not only was it hot, but it was incredibly dusty, and with well over 80,000 people there, the dust was constantly kicked up into the air. It looked like a picture out of the 1930's dust bowl period. The entire length of the festival, me and Grant were just breathing in straight dirt, and have since been coughing up a storm to get it out of our systems. We also discovered that staying in the tent was hotter than it was outside. Our tent was a goddam incubator, so on Thursday, we didn't spend long in it, before we headed off to Centeroo, (the location of all the tents, stages, vendors, activities, etc...)
Our only big screw up came Thursday night. Me and Grant had been wanting to see David Cross that night, who went on at 10:00pm. So we got in line at 8:00pm for the comedy tent, or so we thought. Cause you see, we hadn't realized that we had actually crossed just into the Central time zone, so it was actually 7:00pm, and we were actually in line to see Lewis Black, which wasn't bad, he was funny, it just wasn't David Cross. Oh well. The rest of the Festival would make up for it, as you will see in my coming posts.
That ends Thursday night. Basically we got to the Festival, got settled in, saw some Lewis Black, felt out Centeroo, and then caught up on some much needed sleep. the real festival would begin the next day.
To be continued...