First moments, first 'roo memories

Not my first roo, but in 04 I drove down solo and parked my van in BFE. I then proceeded to walk closer in and meet friends at various camps and eventually head to centeroo for the evening. In the wee hours I hoofed it back up to BFE to get my van and move it to another camp with friends, but upon my return I found that the camp was now PACKED with cars and I had no point of reference. It took me until saturday to find the van doing periodic searches early morn and late night. I would stop at peoples camps for sustanence and water, completely exhausted. When I finally saw my vehicle it was like a light from heaven exploded and a choir of angels rang out!

I remember sitting in insane traffic to get in back in 2003. After many hours (dont remember the total wait) we wound up being in one of the furthest campsites possible, but it turned out to be one best weekends ever. My only real complaint was I did not plan well enough for the insane TN sun. I have never been so sun burnt in my life.

Roo 02 I rolled in late on Friday evening. The line was non-existent to get in, the check was minimal to say the least, and there was no-one to direct me where to park. I slowly drove in through the masses closer and closer to centeroo and found a place to park next to some trash cans. I got out, climbed on top of the van, and could see/hear Widespread Panic playing on the main stage.
My first thoughts: 'This looks like Big Cypress. It's is going to be a good weekend'

First day of my first year, 06, was spent getting accustomed to the "atmosphere."

We get in line at, like, 5:30 am on Thursday, get to our spots at 6:45, and when we got out of the vehicle, before we could even get out our tents, we began our journey.

Maneuvering through a sea of tents to find a helpful new friend. Once we found who we were looking for, we went back to our car and set up camp. The next 6 hours consisted of us wandering around the campgrounds, looking at all the vendors, observing all the people, and just taking it all in.

Maybe the first vivid memory I have of Roo is meeting our neighbors who had a kiddie pool and some water guns... wooks, but kind folks. They were just so happy and goofy. We fit right in.

Let's see...

Running into the huge line of traffic was sort of awesome. Not that being stuck in traffic is fun, but there's a certain excitement when you see all the people. We had some chicken fingers with us and we set the tray on top of the dashboard and heated them up in the sun while we were in line.

I'm sure walking around in Centeroo for the first time was the most amazing feeling, but I can't honestly remember anything specific about it. What I do remember is going to see Lewis Black - he was the first show in 07 and we were so excited about our first Bonnaroo show...and then we saw the LINE. We couldn't believe how long the line was, and it was sort of awesome...although it also sucked because we didn't quite make it in to the first show and we ended up sitting in line waiting through it for the second one.

Here are my first two blog posts from last year's (also our first) Roo:




We've been waiting months for this day, and it's finally here... Wednesday June 13, the day that King B and I set off on our journey to Manchester, TN from Bear, DE (right outside of Philadelphia)... Stay true to our insanity, we decided to finish up our last minute shopping at the Elkton, MD Walmart (at around 1am). Picking up some last minute supplies, we were feeling good about our preparedness for the festival. All of our camping supplies seemed to be in check, as did our miscellaneous festival fare. However, leave it up to the "party guys" to forget the essentials. (More on that later)For some reason (vanity), I decided to do a little cleansing and detoxing fast before heading off to Bonnaroo... So, I didn't really eat anything for almost four nights prior to leaving. On our way back to King B's house, the golden arches grabbed me by the balls and summoned me for some late night fattening goodness. If we didn't stop at that moment, I probably would have completely lost my mind, as well as consciousness. Nine pieces of Chicken McNuggets, five packs of honey mustard and a small fry later, I was back on the scene, and rarin' to go! Unfortunately, I got an energy burst at 3am but screw it.

After King B went to class at The University of Delaware the next morning, we headed out. B had a big jar of coins on the floor that he wanted to change for Roo, but it seemed as if every single Coinstar was broken in the tri-state area, so he was screwed. Oh well... On our way! His Honda Accord was packed to the gills with our bags, tables, random hats and crowns, and about everything else you could think of. We packed so much stuff that we couldn't have missed anything, right? (Yeah right.)Hours pass, and we're feeling good about the time we're making... That is, until we took at look at Mapquest, and saw that we were LESS THAN HALFWAY there! Oh man. Our faces dropped. "We're f$*!ing less than half way there?" Sweet Virginia, we're screwed. Speaking of Virginia... I don't know how many of you have taken a trip on I-81 through Virginia and West Virginia. Some people call it scenic... I call it a PAIN IN THE ASS.

Sure, I love great scenery, and new places, but driving through this stretch was pure hell. To make things worse, it felt like we were driving through hell at one point, when the heavens opened, and gave us a storm like I haven't seen in years! Golf ball sized hail pelted the car (B did NOT like that), and we could barely see a few feet in front of us! The rain and hail was so loud that it truly was deafening! To make things worse, I get a call from someone working with Ziggy Marley's TuffGong. It's hard to be professional when I could barely hear King B talk to me from a few feet away! Something about that phone call had me really worried. It sounded if they were weeding out interviewers for Ziggy at Bonnaroo, but I really couldn't tell for sure, due to the deafening hail and rain! I admit that I started to freak out a bit, and B said for me to call them back to confirm about the interview. I had to wait 15-20 minutes until everything slowed down enough that I could hear everything on the phone call clearly. I called one of his managers and TuffGong just to make sure everything was ok. Luckily everything was on the up and up, and they were just re-confirming all interviews. After getting the comforting news, I blurted out the mantra for the weekend...

"EXCELSIOR (King B and I) DOES NOT F*CKING LOSE!!!"


That got a good laugh from the both of us, and definitely eased the tension. Hey... We didn't want to lose the interview that I was most looking for to doing for months! It also assured my recent realizations that you just can't take no for an answer. Before Bonnaroo, I was a bit more of a procrastinator and a "free spirit." Let's see where the day takes us, and we'll go from there. I have to admit, that I'm not so much like that anymore... I've become much more structured and focused, which certainly is a good thing.

Let's zoom ahead a few rest stops, and a bunch of hours later to Tennessee... We decide to crank up the Zoom H4 and do a little commentary while driving. Damn, did we sound like two sorry individuals! Although we may have only been an hour or two away from the Manchester Walmart (our pre-Roo party destination... Odd but true), we just couldn't muster up the energy to express it on the mic. Instead, we sounded as if we'd been dragged across the desert by our cajones, and deprived of water for weeks. I'll be posting that audio fairly soon.

Two hours later when we finally got into some sort of civilization, we tried to find some good radio stations, but everything sounded the same! (We're NOT country boys by any stretch of the imagination) All of a sudden, we came across this thumping... deep bass... This HAD to be a Bonnaroo station. Surely enough, it was Roo Radio, and we were DAMN close to our destination. I couldn't help but to get a late night energy boost (3am), but B just wasn't feeling it. But in his defense, he was driving the entire way down. Finally, we pulled off the highway, and into the Walmart parking lot.

My first thought? 'Let's get some booze out of the trunk and celebrate our arrival!'

King B's first thought? 'I'm going to sleep.'

People have always said that my spiky hair hides my devil horns, and that night was no different. I sprung out of the car, put my feet down on the hot Tennessee pavement, thrust my fists into the air, and breathed in the insanity that we'd be experiencing for the next four days. The Manchester Walmart parking lot was pure insanity. There were so many people tailgating... just waiting for the moment that the gates would be opening. We popped open the trunk, and out came a bottle of wine, that I promptly proceeded to spill all over my white T-shirt. Another omen of things to come. 'Screw it! I may look like an asshole, but it's Bonnaroo!' That also seemed to be a bit of a mantra for the weekend as well.

We finally were able to relax a bit, but were just bombarded by so many different sights and smells. (The smokers were out in full force... just like they would be for the next four days at Roo.) I reached in my bag of recording equipment, and thought that it was time to start our audio coverage of the weekend. There were a few cars to our left that had been partying for a few hours, so I stopped over to talk to them first. They came about the same distance as us from Ohio, but they got to Manchester in about 4 less hours! How in the hell does that happen?! After a few minutes, we decided to break out the Seagrams 7 for a round (or 5) of shots. Yeah... The first of MANY shots for the weekend. GOOD TIMES!

A few shots later, I head off to get some more audio (which is basically unusable... people are just to f'd up... NO, I wasn't THAT bad!) I walk around checking out the scenes, and it's pure insanity. That parking lot was so trashed, that it would take a day or 2 just to clean it up! There were people sprawled out all over the parking lot, nitrous tanks going off, shots and joints being passed around... I talked to a few people, but eh... It just wasn't the best of audio, so I headed back.

"B! LET'S GO! WE'RE GOING SHOPPING!"

He was standing there talking to a girl who was selling "brownies" and "cookies" to get enough money to get into Roo. There was an interesting interview topic! I handed B the mics, and they chatted for a bit. I was drunk and restless, so I was happy when they were done their interview, so we could head on into Walmart.

Damn, Walmart is an interesting place when you've got tons of inebriated Bonnaroonians walking around doing their last minute shopping! OK, the lines sucked, but it was interesting. We picked up a ton of random crap that we didn't even use, and then realized that it was almost time where they could start selling beer! (PA, get with the times! Put beer in your Walmarts!) We waited about a half hour, and then picked up an old college "favorite," Natty Light. Yeah. I know. Moe Train's Tracks is slummin' it. F*ck it! It's Bonnaroo!

We then swung over to the local SMALL radio station where we picked up our tickets and media bracelets. Ah... We're now official. Not that we weren't official before, but this made us super-official... I guess. There were ticket wookies passed out in front of the station (including our very own King B), but the scene cleaned up very quickly once everyone got their tickets from will call. Moments after people got their tickets, they flew out of the parking lots, and headed right over to Roo.

Not us. We needed to get our liquor! We pulled up to the first LQ store that we saw, and I must say... The Manchester people were EXTREMELY hospitable. The owner of the liquor store saw our media bracelets, and we had a little talk with them about Bonnaroo, and the impact that the festival has on Manchester. They really did seem to be very gracious about the incoming barrage of people. (THEY DID raise the prices of liquor before everyone got there... F*ckers.)

Food? Check.

Camping Stuff? Check.

Beer, Ice and Liquor? Check... Double Check.

So we get in line to get into Roo... It started off on the highway, and took us quite a while to get in. All of a sudden, I got this horrible sinking feeling... 'WHERE DID I PUT THE RECORDING EQUIPMENT?!" I jumped out of the car on an overpass and started to look through the trunk. 'Oh doodie... where is the bag?' (Yeah, I was still pretty drunk when I put the stuff back in the car.) The line started to move, and B moved the car up about 60 yards! So here I am, half-lit, running behind a car with an open trunk in sandals.

Welcome to Bonnaroo, jackass!

So I'm sprinting behind the car, and there's people cheering as I get closer to the car. All of a sudden, stuff starts to fall out of the back of the car! So I've got a car behind me that's laughing, people cheering me on, B's yelling "Come on," and I've gotta pick boxes of wine and other random stuff up as I run towards the back of the car. The cop directing traffic was half laughing at me, but still trying to maintain some semblance of professionalism.

"Come on! Get in your car," he yelled to me.

"I'm trying, but the traffic keeps moving! Look at all the stuff I have in my hands!"

I finally make it to the back of the car... throw all the stuff in the trunk that had fallen out on the road... Jump back into the moving car, and we're on our way... AGAIN. We had a good laugh about that... then it hit us....

"DO YOU KNOW WHAT WE FORGOT!?!?!" I yelled.

"WHAT?"

"ONLY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT WE NEEDED FOR A FESTIVAL THAT'S GOING TO BE A HUNDRED DEGREES EVERY DAY!!!!

"WATER!!!"

Yes, in a festival where alcohol isn't the "party favor" of choice... two of the biggest party dudes forget the most essential ingredient to staying ALIVE... Water. Damn... What idiots we were. "We can just drink the melted water from the cooler!" Sure! Easy solution. One problem. We have HOT DOGS sitting in that ice! Hot dog water does NOT equal the best drinking water. Hot dogs have sodium! It's a virtual Dietz and Watson Gatorade! (How f*cking disgusting does that sound?) Then we said... Eh, screw it. We'll figure something out.

There were a bunch of people on the sides of the roads trying to scalp tickets. They all LOOKED legit. We had our red and silver comp tickets, so we were good to go. Maybe "brownie girl" got her tickets that way. Shortly after, I fell asleep... I awoke to a sea of cars all at the gate. Some were getting checked, some weren't. We didn't have anything that would get us in trouble besides a BIG bottle of Jagermeister and some Moe-jito (it turns into a Moe-jito when I make it!) mix. (Hey, I NEED my Jager!) I really didn't even think about it when we bought them, since we bought some cheap ass bottles of liquor in plastic bottles. Thankfully, we didn't get searched and we got our 2 bottles in. (Next year, we'll go all plastic.)

Once we got past the checkpoint and got our booklets and maps, we were separated into four different lines. We were stuck in the line all the way to the right, which seemed to not move for an hour! What was going on? We were getting a bit restless as were the tons of cars behind us. Someone actually went up to the traffic people and mentioned about our line. That got us moving thankfully.

Finally, we were on our way. There were a few ladies passing out calendars... I remember thinking, 'Cool! Bonnaroo calendars!' Cordially, I took a calendar, thanked them, and we continued on our way. "Yo! Check this doodie out!" I said to King B. I couldn't stop laughing. It was some calendar advertisement for some detoxifying product! But, for each month, there was some topless chick! Free boobs! But as we scanned through the pages, our smiles turned to frowns. "This is the shittiest topless calendar I've ever seen! Were these pictures taken by a Polaroid? Haven't they ever heard of a thing called Photoshop??" OK, I admit... There was ONE girl in there who was pretty smokin' hot. Come to think of it, she may have been handing out the calendars. But one out of twelve? ha.... Screw it. Good for them. They got some semi-free press. I think a ton of other people thought the same thing about the calendars as we did... They were strewn all over the grounds.

So, almost 24 hours after we left Bear, DE, we arrive at our campsite... Thus starts the weekend!