The Best (and Worst) of Bonnaroo

It's been about three days since I got home and I am just now starting to feel somewhat normal again. After doing this for 5 of the last 6 years, I'm not sure if I'm getting better (preparedness!) or worse (old age!) at it, but either way it is truly the best of times and the worst of times. As I described it to a first time Renegade, it's like childbirth....you forget how terrible it actually is and want to do it again once the memory of the pain recedes. Yes, I just compared a music festival to childbirth. Here are the highlights and lowlights...

The Best of Times

Randy's Renegades Reunited!

In our sweet team shirts. Honestly, these kids are effing awesome/ridiculous/hilarious. It pains me that we are all together only once a year.

ARCADE FIRE

although Kristin and Eddie would disagree

The Flavor Savers

Honestly, what's not to like about these guys?

Riding the Train

The picture doesn't do this late night, campground traveling C'mon Ride It (The Train) party justice. We literally had strangers join in and horse cops were jealous that they couldn't. 

Fish Tacos

Seriously, they were delicious, healthy, and uber cheap.

Old Crow Medicine Show

We spent this set talking about all of the naughty things we'd do to Ketch if we were single ladies. Fiddle playing has never been sexier!

Drinking beer at 11am

And Eric wearing my shorts.

3am Campsite Dance Parties

Slash Backstreet Boys/Ke$ha sing-alongs

The Worst of Times 

Oh Em Gee, the HEAT

I don't think a photo can accurately convey just how hot it was. Drew likened our tent to sleeping in an easy bake oven. We were using 85-100 SPF sunscreen and still got crazy tanned. Without tent fans and a camp shower, we might have died.

The wait to get in

Us in the Walmart parking lot (about a mile or two from the site) waiting for the others to arrive around midnight.

Our fearless leader

The sun rising as we were STILL waiting in traffic to get in

Drinking too much Red Bull and thus getting so nauseous I had to go back to camp instead of seeing Gogol Bordello. I'll never forgive myself.

The Dirt Boogers

Thanks to the dust, unless you wear a bandana like a bandit the whole time, everything that comes out of your nose is black. Unfortunately, it is too hot to be a full time bandit. Drew:"If I picked my nose as much in real life as I do here, I would have no friends."

The Port-A-Potties

(no picture required)

Pottying atop 1000 strangers' poop is never a pleasant experience. Neither is finding a urinal full of vomit. Or opening an unlocked port-a-potty to find a dude pooping/exposed penis.

The drive home

Though the ride there is equidistant to the ride back, you are far dirtier and drained and sad and ready to die on the way back. This is us after making the 10 hour trek back to Virginia. To quote Drew once more, "I'm glad you can't smell this picture." To top it off, she and I still had 3-4 hours of travel ahead of us.

CANKLES!

This was taken roughly 4 hours after the picture above. I twisted my right ankle the night before, but it only hurt all day instead of swelling. Then I took a shower, and, BAM, Cankle City, USA. Don't worry, they're gone now.

Merry Bonnaroo Eve!

RENEGADES!

It's almost here! Tomorrow morning, the husband is driving me to Richmond, where I'll be meeting my friend, Drew, who is taking the train down from DC. From there, James is picking us up and taking us to his dad's house in Charlottesville, where we will meet up with Kristin, load the SUV, and make the journey to Tennessee, converging with three other carloads of friends (including a friend flying in from San Diego) along the way. I was really good this year. Usually I start geeking out long before the festival, but managed to keep it pretty contained until this weekend (most likely due to this crazy PCSing thing  being in the forefront of my brain). But now I have to do this...SQUEEE!!

We packed the car (minus the cooler) this evening and the trunk is full. Though I am not exactly what you would call outdoorsy, I am somehow the one in our car who owns the most camping equipment, so I'm providing the tent, multiple sleeping bags, three air mattresses/sleeping pads, two camp chairs, giant cooler, camping fan, etc. And I must say, our tent is PIMP. It's a nine person tent with a closet and a screen door (you know, like the ones on front porches), and only 3-4 people will be sleeping in it. It shall be luxurious.

I was really hoping to convince the husband to come this year, but, alas, it is not his scene and he has much out-processing going on this week. I'm so excited to be reuniting with the Renegades (partially pictured above) though, as the vast majority of them were unable to attend last year. Also excited to introduce Drew to the madness (she's been talking about coming for years, and my impending move convinced her to actually do it this time). She is not excited to be using port-a-potties, but who ever is? I am mostly hoping to avoid developing the cankles that randomly appeared last year.

Cankle City, USA

I'll be back in a week, sunburnt, tired, (mostly) unwashed, and sad that I'll have to wait at least a year to do it all again. Cheers until then!

Those water bottles on the cooler? Moonshine.

(Pre) Moving is Hard

Confession: I was (am) a pack rat. In under eight years I have lived in nine different apartment/houses in four different cities (plus a month+ stint of couch crashing circa 2006). Despite these frequent moves, I still have Rubbermaid containers of random stuff (including things I had in high school) that I've hauled across that state of Virginia for the past decade. But I am determined NOT to transport it to the other side of the country. I'm turning brutal. I'm sucking it up and tossing/donating things. I will not let our next guest bedroom turn into a room filled with useless junk.

This weekend, we embarked on the task of getting rid of the stuff we never use. Though I remember making a large deposit at the neighborhood Goodwill at least thrice in the past year, we have entirely too much crap to sort through, including: a notebook of doodles dating back to pre-2004, an overflowing binder of college papers and blue books, multiple 80's prom dresses from college costume parties, a giant pile of ultra scratched up cds, old magazines, books that I haven't read since I was a teenager, countless bits of concert paraphernalia (ticket stubs, posters, shirts), and more. And that's not even counting the husband's own assorted collection of gizmos, doodads, and more power, A/V, and ethernet cords/cables than any one person will ever need in a lifetime. We made two trips to Goodwill, filled multiple garbage bags, took a grocery bag of books to the book swap shelf at the base library, and fed so much paper into the shredder that it filled up twice and overheated.

No, we still aren't done. I still need to talk myself into letting go of my (vintage!) My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake sleeping bags. I should probably part with a few more pairs of shoes and more clothes. And we need to find a container big enough to hold all of the husband's Legos...I can't tell you how guilty I felt when I asked him to break down all of his giant Star Wars Legos to try to fit them into an 18 gallon container that turned out to be too small to hold them all. It's going to take forever to put those back together again.