It's Bonnapoo, not Bonnaroo!

The trip to Bonnaroo and back again was full of little adventures. Sitting in traffic for three hours trying to get into Bonnaroo was not the least interesting of them all. As we waited people were running out of their cars down the banks of the highway into the woods to pee. Men and women, up and down the hill; and then sometimes a roadside “pee”er would get left behind as the cars suddenly started to speed ahead. We would watch the ensuing run with much amusement as the cars would continue to surge ahead, the runner would sprint, then get tired and walk when the cars were stopped and then get left behind again. We watched one girl walk for miles carrying a huge water cooler. I finally saw her with her van when we were waiting in line to get our tickets checked.

The adventure surrounding getting everything from the car to the camp site was exciting. We had too much stuff for all of us to carry, so our friend Evan (who knows no stranger) negotiated with some folks to borrow their wagon so we could load everything up and roll it to the site. They gave him a t-shirt.

The adventure of getting into Centeroo everyday was interesting. Everyone was searched, and anything like open water bottles and glow sticks were confiscated. We had to wait in line forever. See a pattern here yet?

The adventure of enduring the blazing heat everyday kept me very aware of how comfortable my life is normally. 95 degrees in the shade and there was no where to go to get cool. We would jut lie under the canopy and spray water on each other until the evening when it would get cooler. As a result of the heat I didn’t get to see as many bands as I wanted to see. It was too hot to take Bronwen out until the late afternoon. But I did get to see the following (when I say “see” I actually mean I stood at the back of a crowd of thousands and listened to the music and tried to see something): Paolo Niruti, Gillian Welch (who played with John Paul Jones from Led Zepplin), Hot Chips, Lily Allen, The Police, The White Stripes. Other bands that were playing on the main stage I listened to from my tent: Tool, Widespread Panic, The John Butler Trio.

All of those things, the heat, the camping, Centeroo, the great company, the music and the dust will remain as part of my Bonnaroo memories. But the one thing that will overshadow it all, and remain as the main memory (unfortunately) will have to be the porta-potties. By the end of the four days, almost all of our talk revolved about our body functions and the state of the last porta-potty we entered. It is amazing how all conversation (especially when camping) all boils down to what came out, how and when. The porta-potties were kept relatively clean over the four days. Trucks would come in periodically and clean everything out, but when 50,000 people are all using the same toilets, you can imagine…well, you don’t want to imagine, actually.

When we left Bonnaroo, I can’t tell you how excited I was to use a real toilet. I planned on stopping at a gas station, and possibly sitting for awhile in a nice cool gas station toilet. Imagine that, I wanted to go to a gas station toilet? So, I finally had to go and we pulled over somewhere between Chattanooga and Knoxville, and I happily skipped into the gas station to inquire about the bathroom. The very friendly and polite attendant smiled and said,

“Ma’am, just go outside, and around to the back”

Heady with anticipation, I thanked him and headed around the back of the station looking for the door to the toilet. There, to my utter chagrin were two brown and tan porta-potties. I stood there in shock, and I swear the toilets started to laugh at me. I was being mocked by two dirty portable toilets. Argh! An older couple was standing there debating about whether it was sanitary to enter it. I, however, had to go, and resigned to my fate, entered the porta-potty for one last time.