Finale

Ok, so. Finally finishing what happened with Bonnaroo trip. Yes.

Ok, so we left Bonnaroo with the plan of driving for a few hours, sleeping in the car for a bit and then making it to Virginia to camp for the next night. The night is pretty fuzzy for me, so I don't really know where we stopped. Dylan and Clair tell me that it was in a parking lot, but can't really tell me more than that. Oop, ok, so I was driving at this point. That has to have been safe. it was behind a shopping center! And I pulled off the highway because I was looking for somewhere to stop and there was a sign for Fuddrucker and I didn't think those existed anymore. I couldn't find it, but Dylan was still way too sleepy to drive, so we stopped and slept. Then we woke up, drove for a while and stopped for breakfast at Subway/gas station where the gas attendant was freakishly nice and we ended up talking to the Subway guy for quite a long time. He was adorable. I don't think he had ever really left Tennessee, said that he didn't think that most of the States were worth seeing, but that he would like to visit Canada sometime. And that Bonnaroo would be fun to go to sometime. There was also a mean truck driver who rolled his eyes when we told him that we were from Canada and accused Canadians of all disliking Americans. Drove for a while through until we got to Virginia and stopped for lunch/dinner at the Waffle House. Cutest restaurant ever. Well, mainly just the cutest waitress ever and the food was decent. Lots of processed cheese and that sort of thing. None of us had waffles. Eww, and Southern Sweet Tea is the grossest thing in the world.

Drove for a while, until we finally found a KOA kampground outside of Lexington. Dylan stayed in one on his Sasquatch trip and thought they were great. And they were. They had camp sites that were not right on top of other ones, clean showers, running water, a flush toilet, and a fire pit. Aww, it was paradise. There was even ping pong, but the pool closed early. Sadness. We ate, slept, and were merry.

Morning, woke up, showered again (ahh, the luxury), and decided to see this Natural Bridge we kept hearing so much about. But, in true American style, they had put a big fence up around it and were charging $18 to go and look at it. They added a bunch of random crap to try and justify it, but I really had no desire to see their wax museum or whatever. Drove through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey at which point we realized that New York City was a mere two hours away. Took that detour and made our way to the George Washington Bridge. Crossed that, got really, really lost, took a few wrong turns, almost caused a horrible accident, and broke a law or two. This resulted in a police officer whipping around the block and pulling up in front of us. Asked us what was up, you know. We told him we were a bit lost, look for Manhattan... He told us that we were in Harlem - at around 11 or 12 at night. Was super nice and pointed us in the right direction. We parked for the cheap cheap price of $16 or so for an hour and a half. Saw Times Square (where I had pepperoni pizza!! In New York! How cool am I?), walked past Rockefeller Center, drove past Ground Zero, and saw the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park.

Our plan from there was to drive enough to get out of the New York surrounding areas and find a nice rest stop to sleep (we left NYC at about 3 a.m.). This took a lot longer than we anticipated and took us through the terrifying Blairstown. There were ghosts. But we ended up finding a swanky rest stop with an underground parking lot that was nice and dark. Ate, and then more or less made our way back into Montreal. The border guard was pretty nice, passed back in no prob.

The End (oh my gosh, finally)!

So, since we got into Bonnaroo so late, we had missed a few of the bands we had hoped to see. But, luckily, the organizers had thought ahead and not booked anyone huge to play on the first day. Regardless, we parked our car in our spot and headed out to catch a few bands. First band of the festival (that we saw): Need to Breath. After them, a few others, and some delicious samosas, we went back to the campsite (read: tiny square in a sea of cars and tents) to set up our tent and then collapse. Woke up in the morning way earlier than planned due to crazy heat that turned our little tent into an oven.

Got up, lazed around and spent the day watching people and stuff. Noteworthy bands: Ok Go, Kings of Lion, and LCD Soundsystem. Oh, and Dylan and I both cleaned ourselves off in the centre fountain, aka the mud fountain. I'm pretty sure the water in this fountain started off clean at least every morning and was just reused throughout the day. Since there were people in constantly, it got really dirty really quickly. However, it seemed like a better option than paying $7 for a shower. Since LCD Soundsystem finished up at 4am, we were completely exhausted by the end and crawled back to our tent.

Saturday, our morning started off more or less the same. Except we went to the bathrooms earlier since the day before was unfortunate. Wanted to see Conan O'Brian, but were pissed to find out that you were supposed to get ticket way earlier that day and couldn't get in without one, but no one had told us this. Highlights of the day: Norah Jones, the Avett Brothers, and Stevie Wonder. Laying on the grass, drinking copious amounts of water and relaxing to Norah was actually a personal favourite moment in life. Other than those forced moments that are supposed to mean a lot to you, like graduating high school and whatnot. We decided not to stick around and watch Jay-Z and wandered back to our campsite so that we could actually get some sleep. Well, our dear Dylan stayed up and went back to listen to some of the late night bands. He's a crazy man. But a sweet crazy man, since he slept in the car that night as to not disturb us when he came back.

Sunday was the last day of the festival, so we decided that our need for gas was now pressing. We figured we had about a quarter of a gallon left, so most likely not enough to make it out. Especially since we had no idea how busy the roads would be and had heard that it could be quite bad. So we took some hose (that Dylan had acquired the night before...) and asked (or more so re-asked since we had asked them earlier) our dear neighbours (from Nebraska!) if we could siphon some of their gas. Unfortunately, they had a huge SUV whose gas tank was really far away from the fill cap and our hose wasn't long enough. So, on we went, asking kind strangers if we could siphon out some of their gas and people were really nice. Except that most people who owned cars didn't know if they had enough gas to make it out and very apologetically said no, and we had the same problem with other people's SUVs as we'd had with the first one. Enter a nice man with a car who did have gas and was willing to let us steal some. Our initial tube was too wide to make it to the tank, but we duct taped it to another more narrow one. And finally Dylan got a mouthful of gas instead of just fumes (we had a few concerns about the long term consequences to his health), but that was pretty much it. We probably got about a cup of gas, but it just would not flow. We think because of the difference in diameter of the two hoses. So, defeated, we pulled out the hose. Ooops. Duct tape doesn't handle getting wet real well. There is, in fact, a man driving around somewhere in the States who has a piece of hose stuck in his car put there by us. He took it really well. After that, we decided to cave and call a local towing company that had been coming around to the festival and picking people's locks for them, giving them boosts, and selling them gas at the low, low price of $10 a gallon (normally costs about $2.75 a gallon in that area). WIth a 5 gallon minimum. Sucked, but at least we didn't have to worry anymore. Packed up our tent and off we went to enjoy the last day of fun in the sun. Remarkable acts of the day: Regina Spektor and Phoenix. None of us were ridiculously crazy about seeing all of the headliner for that day, Dave Matthews Band, so we stuck around for a few songs and then headed to the car and said goodbye to Bonnaroo.

I do deClair!

Things I learned at Bonnaroo (and on the way there/back):

-Being a dirty hippy is fun. It would, however, potentially be more enjoyable if it were in a place that was somewhat cooler (i.e. not mid to high 30s). And it would be infinitely more enjoyable if it weren't for the dirty part (we totally showered while we were there...yah...)

-You can drink an incredibly large amount of water and not pee at all if all you are doing is sweating.

-Only putting sunscreen on once in a day = getting a sunburn. Putting sunscreen on three times in one day = somehow getting a worse sunburn, this time with ear-blistering consequences. My tan/burn lines are ridiculous.

-All sorts of slang the cool kids use for drugs. There was frequently people standing on the side of walkways calling out for "Lucy" or "Molly." Oh, and lots of people were selling "ice" from their campsite.

-That a LOT of people smoke pot. A LOT.

-And drink beer, which is just gross. Because beer is gross.

-Misting tents are the best thing in the world. They don't really help with the being dirty thing though, since you end up standing in a giant mud pit.

-Our car is awesome. Still running just fine, thank you!

-Siphoning gas is a lot harder than it looks. Even though there were plenty of lovely people who were willing to let us try, and even more people who would have been willing if they had been at all confident that they would be able to leave with enough gas.

So, we left for Tennessee Tuesday evening. Hit New York after talking to a lovely border guard who seemed to think we were weird for going to a music festival when none of us had jobs. The jerk. Drove down through New York, and stayed in Eerie, Pennsylvania for the night. It was a fairly long drive and was the first in a series of late nights for us. In the morning, we lazily got up, Dylan had waffles from a machine and we headed out. Went through Ohio and into Kentucky. We stopped in Columbus for gas and, all of a sudden, there were, seriously, no caucasians. No, wait, there was one guy. After, we went across the street to KFC (the entire staff was African American) and Dylan got a sandwich made of chicken, with some bacon. Oh, and when we drove through Cincinnati and a guy randomly swerved into my lane and scared me. Dylan leaned over and honked at him for me. Stopped for the night in Bowling Green. I was pretty excited for Little Put-Put, aka Big Red, who got to re-visit her ol' stomping grounds. Woke up in the morning with the plan of stopping at the Walmart in Bowling Green, picking up groceries, and making the quick two hour drive to Bonnaroo. Did not turn out that way. Apparently the Walmart website and Google Maps are both liars, because the Walmart was not where it was supposed to be. There was, howevere, a very cute dog. So, we drove around for a while and decided to go to the Walmart in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Did that and headed out to get to Bonnaroo with plenty of time to get our tent set up before the first concert we wanted to see started. And then we hit the interstate. Met both some really nice and really jerkish people in line. Seriously, who cuts ahead of someone who they are going to be in line with for who knows how long?! What should have been a two hour drive, max, ended up taking 8 hours of us crawling along the highway and then side roads. Hence being really low on gas - starting and stopping for that long is hard on a car. We did make it there on our own steam though, thanks to our trusted jerrycan. Actually being able to leave isn't important, right?

Anyway, this is going to have to be a three part installment, because this is already long and I haven't even gotten to the specifics of the festival yet.

We've arrived!

Well, we actually arrived Friday night. But that's not the point. Not to mention that a four day drive turned into a seven day one.

Why did it take twice a long to get across the country, you ask? Well, first of all, it is one heck of a big country!! Driving across Ontario took freakin' forever. Second of all, cars were involved in this process. Cars break down. We (read: Dylan's dad) figured that the ball joints in the front end of the Honda needed replacing, so we took it into a mechanic in Weyburn. He told us that they did in fact need replacing, that they were quite worn and that we shouldn't drive with them because they could break if we went over too big of a pothole and that that would result in the tire falling off. But that Weyburn didn't have what we needed. So we drive three hours further to Brandon. But got it fixed there no prob. and that mechanic told us that the Honda was in great shape. Then Ontario was quite cruel to the truck. It sprung a fairly serious fuel leak that took Dylan's dad about three or so hours to fix, and then later on him and Dylan had to replace the fan belt. Add to that the fact that we spent longer than we'd planned visiting with family friends in Calgary, Dylan's grandma in Weyburn, and Dylan's brother in Shilo (just outside of Brandon). Not a bad thing, we just like to pretend that these things don't take time when in the planning stage.

Now that we are here, however, things are pretty cool. Montreal is OLD. Lots of cool buildings and whatnot. I think our apartment building was built before electricity was readily available. Definitely before elevators... Have I mentioned that we live on the fourth floor? It would be even cooler if we would have had time to do or look at anything. We spent all of Saturday dealing with U-Haul storage and trailer returns and hauling stuff up four flights of stairs. And Dylan talked to customer service people and filed a formal complaint. We are hoping to get another free month storage and a day truck rental for our troubles. Yesterday, we were trying to get some errands done for Dylan's parents so that the two of them could actually get some time to see Montreal, but we ended up getting horribly lost for almost an hour. They are really not keen on you turning left on this here island. But last night we did go out for poutine; it made us feel like true Montreal-ers and it was pretty darn tasty. Today was even more thrilling - we went and tried to figure out how to stop getting 50$ (aren't I so french?) parking tickets, since most of our street is residential parking and we arrived here Friday night, too late to try and get that dealt with, even if we could. It is kinda hard to prove you are a resident when your car has B.C. plates and you have no proof that you do, in fact, live in the city you say you do. No rent agreement, no bills, no nothing. We failed at that endeavor, but a block away there is a bit of non-restricted parking.

Today is also Dylan's parents last day with us here. Sadness. They are leaving tonight, pretty much as soon as they get packed up. It will be weird not sharing a two bedroom apartment with four other people and a parrot anymore. Not that that is terribly important in the short term, since Dylan, Clair and I are leaving for Bonaroo tomorrow!! It should be amazingly awesome, I do deClair!