Manchester, Tennessee
Unplanned & Utterly random parts of Kentucky
York, Pennsylvania
The Bonnaroo music festival combines the dirtiest and grimiest atmospheres with some of the most fun and entertaining atmospheres on one gigantic private farm in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee. I will start by saying no showers were taking during this entire stretch of the trip. Yes…no showers were taken for 6 days of cooking burgers and frying curly fries. I witnessed drugs being taken I didn’t even know existed, and saw the consequences of them on some of the 80,000 people present. Likewise, some 150 bands and musical artists played some of the most incredible shows I’ve ever seen, and even though we were working we got to see a lot. It was a scenario unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed, but somehow it functioned; somehow it worked, and has worked for 6 years.
Lots of funny things happened throughout the festival and lots of funny interactions with stoned hippies occurred. On the same note we got to meet a lot of great people and we had a great time. In any 8 hour period on any night we could count on seeing several of our favorite bands playing just hundreds of feet apart from each other which was pretty surreal. Here are the acts we were able to get to, in addition to the many we could just hear from our food stand:
MGMT
Vampire Weekend
The Raconteurs
M.I.A.
State Radio (backstage)
Metallica
Gogol Bordello
Cat Power
B.B. King
Ben Folds
Iron & Wine
Jack Johnson
Pearl Jam
Sigur Ros
Lupe Fiasco
Talib Kweli
Chali 2na of Jurassic 5 w/ Galactic
Ourstage.com
Deathcab for a Cutie
We spent the majority of the day after the festival ended cleaning up our 4 different stands. We enjoyed some showers and a hearty dinner and hit the road around 6:00P.M. with high hopes of pushing through back to Philly, with our beds anxiously awaiting. It was sometime around 11:30P.M. though when I started seeing signs for the Kentucky School of Music. Funny I thought to myself, knowing we weren’t supposed to be in Kentucky.
I awoke Kim, my navigator, and we quickly determined that we were indeed in Kentucky and had missed a crucial turnoff in the midst of a construction detour. As we worshipped the atlas we decided it wouldn’t take much longer to just continue north and swing east at a later time. This seemed like a great idea but as the night progressed, and our bodies, exhausted from 6 days of abuse and minimal sleep, began to catch up to us. By 5:00A.M. we unexpectedly reached West Virginia University, and knowing this was still 5 hours from our destination, cursed a lot. Except for the mostly negative realizations like this that happened throughout the trip, it was mostly a blur. We ended up crossing right through York, Pennsylvania, Dan and my hometown around 9:30A.M. and called it quits…finally.
After 27 days on the road, I’d made it home. Not exactly to the home I’d anticipated, but hell…it was a bed and good food. I had 40 day’s worth of a beard on my face and my sister literally yelped when getting on of the car to pick me up. In all, the trip had been flawless. A few minor setbacks like nearly dying in a mid-western tornado or exposing my back to a whirlwind of long term damage from sleeping in an overloaded Jetta, but overall an incredible run. From big mountains to big cities we saw more than anticipated and met a slew of different personalities and friends along the road, and that was what it was all about.
The masses awaiting the first shows to start. There were said to have been 80,000 people in attendance.
Vampire Weekend performing.
One of the four french fry and burger stands we worked in.
By the end of the entire road trip I was looking a little rough around the edges.
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