BONNAROOOO!
I suppose I should write a Bonnaroo entry, eh?
So, Bonnaroo was pretty awesome as always. Ed and I drove down on Wednesday (the 8th) which was great because I love road trips. We met up with Christine and her group in Georgia and drove in together so we could all camp together. We ended up setting up our EZ-Up right up next to Christine's so we could make one giant campsite, so we were with Christine, her brother Nick, sister Katie, and a friend of Katie's named Jamie. And then we had four other people camped nearby but in separate campsites. So it was really cool getting to camp with Christine and having such a big happy campsite. And we had a totally AWESOME campsite too. We were camped in Dr. Peter Venkman, out in Pod 9, which I know doesn't mean anything to anyone who might read this, but whatever, I wanted to note that for my own purposes. Basically that's pretty far away, but could totally have been farther. So not bad.
It barely rained at all this year, so the heat and the dust were pretty rough. I guess the dust wasn't quite as bad as 2007, but if anything I think it might have bothered me more than it did then. And the heat I guess wasn't even as bad as last year, but I think the heat bothered me more too. I don't know, it was kinda weird. There were multiple occasions where we had to leave or skip a certain show because there wasn't anywhere we could get out of the sun and I just could not stand in the sun any longer.
I'm not sure how well I can list all the shows that we saw, but I'll give it my best shot. Definitely only saw parts of some of these though. Let's see...on Thursday, we caught part of either Wavves or Freelance Whales or both, I honestly don't remember, and then some of Karen Elson. Then a little bit of Best Coast, I believe, and then we headed over to try to get tickets to see Henry Rollins in the comedy tent because Ed was really interested in that. We did manage to get in, which was awesome, and it was actually a very enjoyable show. And by then we were so exhausted from being up for over 36 hours that we just went to bed.
On Friday, I don't think we managed to catch anything up until the Decemberists, which is kinda sad because they weren't on till 5:30. But we didn't manage to get into Centeroo in time for Bela Fleck, and I wanted a good spot for the Decemberists so by the time we did get in we decided to just go stake out a spot then. After that we caught some of Florence + the Machine, although we were sitting in the shade rather far away so we didn't have the best sound. And then we went over to My Morning Jacket, followed by Arcade Fire. And then we BRIEFLY stopped in at Big Boi latenight before heading back to camp.
Saturday I believe we caught a LITTLE of Old Crow Medicine Show, and a little bit of the Rolling Stone battle thing between Lelia Broussard and the Sheepdogs, followed by !!! on the Sonic Stage, but after that I'm not quite sure. We may have been at Portugal. The Man briefly. Not sure. Anyway, after that it was time for Mumford and Sons, followed by the latter part of !!!'s main show. Then Buffalo Springfield, although we went back to camp inbetween so I could get my tutu and glowsticks and fiberoptic barrettes and LED finger-lights and all that jazz, so we missed some of Buffalo Springfield. After that it was time for Eminem. And then late night...we checked out both Scissor Sisters and String Cheese Incident briefly, and then headed over to Gogol Bordello, which was kind of a bust. I'd been really looking forward to seeing them, but we were so exhausted that I just did not have the energy to really get in the middle of the crowd. And from way in back where we were...eh. Wasn't really doing anything for us, so we left, probably well before it ended.
And then on Sunday, I know we caught all of Neon Trees, not sure if we saw anything before that. Caught some of Iron and Wine and some of Cold War Kids. A little of the Strokes and then the tail end of Robert Plant. And then Widespread Panic.
Overall, as far as the music goes, I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to see more shows and then so many of the ones we DID check out we either were only at briefly or were so far away that we couldn't see and could barely hear, etc. But I didn't miss anything that I REALLY wanted to see, and for the most part the stuff that we did miss was because of the heat and not anything I could have controlled.
The Decemberists were of course my favorite show. !!! and Neon Trees were also both REALLY good. And we were up really close for all of those shows, which was awesome. Mumford and Sons were great too. I had really intended to familiarize myself more with their music beforehand and never got around to doing that, which I regret, but it was still a good show. For their last song they brought out a ton of guests (including Old Crow Medicine Show) and sang "Amazing Grace." AWESOME.
After My Morning Jacket, while we were waiting for Arcade Fire, a handful of hang-gliders swooped over the main stage trailing blinking LEDs on little plastic whirlybird things. It was pretty much the most awesome thing EVER, the whole sky was just glittering. SO PRETTY. And Ed managed to snag one of the blinkies for me!
Inforoo brunch was much fun, and I survived the embarrassment of having to perform a Happy Dance. Ed danced with me and did a much better job than I did. We got a huge goodie bag of additional prizes, including two Camelbaks, which was awesome. And it was great to see everyone. A couple different people remarked to me how excited they were when it was announced that I had won the contest, or how much they thought I deserved it, or things along those lines, which was really really sweet.
We ate a TON of awesome food over the weekend. I fully went into the weekend planning to eat as much delicious food as we could manage and not worry at all about the money since so much of the trip was covered for us. And oh man did we succeed at eating awesome foods. We got a few samosas, of course. Ed had gator on three different occasions. I had jalapeno hush puppies which were FANTASTIC. And Ed got a jalapeno corn dog, also really good. Ribbon chips. Ed got a couple burgers which were actually super tasty. We managed to try a lot of the food truck foods - tacos from the Taco Bus, pineapple water which I think was also from there, dirty chips and an arepa from Gastropod, hibiscus lemonade which I think was from there, chili and chips from Petro's, meatballs from Eat Box. All of the food truck foods were SUPER TASTY. The hibiscus lemonade was sooo good. The tacos were delicious. The Petro's chili and chips were fantastic. And the meatballs - OH MAN. We chose meatloaf meat balls topped with hash browns, bacon, and bacon sauce. SO FREAKING GOOD. And let's see, what else? Ed got a breakfast burrito that he seemed quite happy with. He also got a pork chop on a stick which was was very happy with. He got a funnel cake on Sunday night and I got a cone of Cherry Garcia from Ben and Jerry's. Nom. And perhaps the best thing I ate all weekend (with the probable exception of samosas) - an Imayamadilla. A quesadilla stuffed with roasted sweet potatoes, mango salsa, black beans, and cheddar cheese. HOLY. WOW. SO. GOOD. I am determined to try to cook one myself at some point, or something similar. It was incredible.
Favorite Roo quotes are mostly from Ed: "I'm not eating another one of those unless I start hallucinating!" in regards to a Sheetz energy strip he tried. "I look like a gay bandit!" when he saw what he looked like in his pink and yellow bandanas. "Those guys weren't very good actors" - his opinion of Eminem's show. We were also amused when we were bouncing around on the spongy ground and a few other people stopped to bounce with us, and then after a few moments of bouncing, one guy suddenly stopped and went "Wait, what the fuck?" And I was quite amused by the conversation I had with Julie in the midst of our kazoo parade:
Julie: Whose idea was this, anyway?
Me: I don't know...you mean it wasn't yours?
Julie: No, I thought it was yours!
But don't get me wrong, I had SO MUCH FUN leading that kazoo parade. Hahaha. We got so many weird looks. I feel like we must have had about 30 people in our parade, too. I think we may have actually had between 150-200 at brunch, which is ridiculous.
What else should I mention? The drive back home was fairly awful. We were tired and Ed caught a bad case of the Bonnaflu which was starting to manifest at that point, so he was feeling crappy and even more tired than he would have been. It basically took about 24 hours for what should have been a 15 hour drive, because we had to stop for naps a few times. Poor Ed was just too tired to keep driving without sleep, and I was way too sleepy to be able to take over for him. But oh well, we got home eventually.
All in all, a very fun time as always! I can't think of anything else I want to mention, so I'll wrap this up here and just mention other things later if I think of them.
So, Bonnaroo was pretty awesome as always. Ed and I drove down on Wednesday (the 8th) which was great because I love road trips. We met up with Christine and her group in Georgia and drove in together so we could all camp together. We ended up setting up our EZ-Up right up next to Christine's so we could make one giant campsite, so we were with Christine, her brother Nick, sister Katie, and a friend of Katie's named Jamie. And then we had four other people camped nearby but in separate campsites. So it was really cool getting to camp with Christine and having such a big happy campsite. And we had a totally AWESOME campsite too. We were camped in Dr. Peter Venkman, out in Pod 9, which I know doesn't mean anything to anyone who might read this, but whatever, I wanted to note that for my own purposes. Basically that's pretty far away, but could totally have been farther. So not bad.
It barely rained at all this year, so the heat and the dust were pretty rough. I guess the dust wasn't quite as bad as 2007, but if anything I think it might have bothered me more than it did then. And the heat I guess wasn't even as bad as last year, but I think the heat bothered me more too. I don't know, it was kinda weird. There were multiple occasions where we had to leave or skip a certain show because there wasn't anywhere we could get out of the sun and I just could not stand in the sun any longer.
I'm not sure how well I can list all the shows that we saw, but I'll give it my best shot. Definitely only saw parts of some of these though. Let's see...on Thursday, we caught part of either Wavves or Freelance Whales or both, I honestly don't remember, and then some of Karen Elson. Then a little bit of Best Coast, I believe, and then we headed over to try to get tickets to see Henry Rollins in the comedy tent because Ed was really interested in that. We did manage to get in, which was awesome, and it was actually a very enjoyable show. And by then we were so exhausted from being up for over 36 hours that we just went to bed.
On Friday, I don't think we managed to catch anything up until the Decemberists, which is kinda sad because they weren't on till 5:30. But we didn't manage to get into Centeroo in time for Bela Fleck, and I wanted a good spot for the Decemberists so by the time we did get in we decided to just go stake out a spot then. After that we caught some of Florence + the Machine, although we were sitting in the shade rather far away so we didn't have the best sound. And then we went over to My Morning Jacket, followed by Arcade Fire. And then we BRIEFLY stopped in at Big Boi latenight before heading back to camp.
Saturday I believe we caught a LITTLE of Old Crow Medicine Show, and a little bit of the Rolling Stone battle thing between Lelia Broussard and the Sheepdogs, followed by !!! on the Sonic Stage, but after that I'm not quite sure. We may have been at Portugal. The Man briefly. Not sure. Anyway, after that it was time for Mumford and Sons, followed by the latter part of !!!'s main show. Then Buffalo Springfield, although we went back to camp inbetween so I could get my tutu and glowsticks and fiberoptic barrettes and LED finger-lights and all that jazz, so we missed some of Buffalo Springfield. After that it was time for Eminem. And then late night...we checked out both Scissor Sisters and String Cheese Incident briefly, and then headed over to Gogol Bordello, which was kind of a bust. I'd been really looking forward to seeing them, but we were so exhausted that I just did not have the energy to really get in the middle of the crowd. And from way in back where we were...eh. Wasn't really doing anything for us, so we left, probably well before it ended.
And then on Sunday, I know we caught all of Neon Trees, not sure if we saw anything before that. Caught some of Iron and Wine and some of Cold War Kids. A little of the Strokes and then the tail end of Robert Plant. And then Widespread Panic.
Overall, as far as the music goes, I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to see more shows and then so many of the ones we DID check out we either were only at briefly or were so far away that we couldn't see and could barely hear, etc. But I didn't miss anything that I REALLY wanted to see, and for the most part the stuff that we did miss was because of the heat and not anything I could have controlled.
The Decemberists were of course my favorite show. !!! and Neon Trees were also both REALLY good. And we were up really close for all of those shows, which was awesome. Mumford and Sons were great too. I had really intended to familiarize myself more with their music beforehand and never got around to doing that, which I regret, but it was still a good show. For their last song they brought out a ton of guests (including Old Crow Medicine Show) and sang "Amazing Grace." AWESOME.
After My Morning Jacket, while we were waiting for Arcade Fire, a handful of hang-gliders swooped over the main stage trailing blinking LEDs on little plastic whirlybird things. It was pretty much the most awesome thing EVER, the whole sky was just glittering. SO PRETTY. And Ed managed to snag one of the blinkies for me!
Inforoo brunch was much fun, and I survived the embarrassment of having to perform a Happy Dance. Ed danced with me and did a much better job than I did. We got a huge goodie bag of additional prizes, including two Camelbaks, which was awesome. And it was great to see everyone. A couple different people remarked to me how excited they were when it was announced that I had won the contest, or how much they thought I deserved it, or things along those lines, which was really really sweet.
We ate a TON of awesome food over the weekend. I fully went into the weekend planning to eat as much delicious food as we could manage and not worry at all about the money since so much of the trip was covered for us. And oh man did we succeed at eating awesome foods. We got a few samosas, of course. Ed had gator on three different occasions. I had jalapeno hush puppies which were FANTASTIC. And Ed got a jalapeno corn dog, also really good. Ribbon chips. Ed got a couple burgers which were actually super tasty. We managed to try a lot of the food truck foods - tacos from the Taco Bus, pineapple water which I think was also from there, dirty chips and an arepa from Gastropod, hibiscus lemonade which I think was from there, chili and chips from Petro's, meatballs from Eat Box. All of the food truck foods were SUPER TASTY. The hibiscus lemonade was sooo good. The tacos were delicious. The Petro's chili and chips were fantastic. And the meatballs - OH MAN. We chose meatloaf meat balls topped with hash browns, bacon, and bacon sauce. SO FREAKING GOOD. And let's see, what else? Ed got a breakfast burrito that he seemed quite happy with. He also got a pork chop on a stick which was was very happy with. He got a funnel cake on Sunday night and I got a cone of Cherry Garcia from Ben and Jerry's. Nom. And perhaps the best thing I ate all weekend (with the probable exception of samosas) - an Imayamadilla. A quesadilla stuffed with roasted sweet potatoes, mango salsa, black beans, and cheddar cheese. HOLY. WOW. SO. GOOD. I am determined to try to cook one myself at some point, or something similar. It was incredible.
Favorite Roo quotes are mostly from Ed: "I'm not eating another one of those unless I start hallucinating!" in regards to a Sheetz energy strip he tried. "I look like a gay bandit!" when he saw what he looked like in his pink and yellow bandanas. "Those guys weren't very good actors" - his opinion of Eminem's show. We were also amused when we were bouncing around on the spongy ground and a few other people stopped to bounce with us, and then after a few moments of bouncing, one guy suddenly stopped and went "Wait, what the fuck?" And I was quite amused by the conversation I had with Julie in the midst of our kazoo parade:
Julie: Whose idea was this, anyway?
Me: I don't know...you mean it wasn't yours?
Julie: No, I thought it was yours!
But don't get me wrong, I had SO MUCH FUN leading that kazoo parade. Hahaha. We got so many weird looks. I feel like we must have had about 30 people in our parade, too. I think we may have actually had between 150-200 at brunch, which is ridiculous.
What else should I mention? The drive back home was fairly awful. We were tired and Ed caught a bad case of the Bonnaflu which was starting to manifest at that point, so he was feeling crappy and even more tired than he would have been. It basically took about 24 hours for what should have been a 15 hour drive, because we had to stop for naps a few times. Poor Ed was just too tired to keep driving without sleep, and I was way too sleepy to be able to take over for him. But oh well, we got home eventually.
All in all, a very fun time as always! I can't think of anything else I want to mention, so I'll wrap this up here and just mention other things later if I think of them.