Turning of the Tide

Something was still bugging me. I guess I really started to zero in on it when I told Ike that I'd had "only about six times today that I've wanted to get the hell out of Bonnaroo." And as I trudged back down the bumpy path with my $3.50 bag of ice, my head beginning to hurt, my toes starting to get too familiar with each other, I began to realize that I really wasn't having that good a time.

I was enduring more than I was enjoying.

Ike had said that this was about the best weather he'd ever seen at 'Roo. It was well into the 90s and overcast. The forecast for the next two days indicated a rise in temperature and more sun.

I stopped and sat by the side of Main Street, near Second or Third. (When I first sat down, I immediately had to get up and move across the street because a platoon of mounted police came trotting by.) I called my husband. He went online and found me a possible room at the Hampton Inn in Murfreesboro for under $120 per night, starting Saturday night. I had him book it. (I called from the hillside because I didn't want the people back at my camp overhearing the call. Why? I dunno. I guess I was embarrassed for living up to every stereotype of a middle-aged woman I feared they had.)

Then I began plotting my escape. The folks in the information "pod" weren't very much help: Essentially I was told that they couldn't do anything like go in and try and enforce the clearing of the fire lanes (on which several tents had gone up); basically, I was on my own. But "people were cool" and I just had to get them to move. I dunno: I felt like I should be visibly bleeding to go up to people and say, "Excuse me, but would you please disassemble your temporary domicile for me?"

I went to "bed" early--possibly before 10. This cot, which I thought was gonna be so great? Big and unwieldy, and it still wasn't comfortable. I heard the Superjam from my resting place. Someone (?uestlove, possibly) yelled, "Let me hear you make some muthafuckin' noise!" and huge numbers of people shouted back. I was thinking how weird this was--like sleeping in the parking lot of Prince George's Community College and hearing a concert at the Capitol Centre up the way. It didn't bother me, the music and noise. My immediate area was very peaceful.

I awoke at about 6 a.m., when the sun started coming up. Regretting what seemed to be an overnight reversal of six weeks of physical therapy on my neck, I began, once again, to think of leaving. I got out to use the loo, and when I saw the mobs of people waiting, I hopped from foot to foot and wished I'd left earlier.

I walked all the way to the end of Main Street and up around the perimeter of our camping sector. I found I was able to plot out a path that disrupted only about three groups of campers--assuming I could really drive across the sandy desertlike plain, with the "Danger High Voltage" signs, just north of Camp Bender. I was desperate enough to try.

I chatted with the very nice fellows next door, who just a half-hour earlier had been trading tales of various substances they'd consumed the previous evening and the effects of said substances on sundry bodily functions which they had then had to experience in diverse areas of the campground. You can fill in your own blanks: "I never thought I'd be ______ing right in front of ______, bro." I was beginning to understand why 'Roo-goers prefer closed shoes. The guys had no interest in my offerings of beer but were still happy to offer their advice on decamping. One of them, who was from Tullahoma (the next town over), sympathized with my concerns about the heat. He pointed out that the company that runs Bonnaroo has bought much of the land, which it had previously leased, and was going to be putting in permanent amenities; maybe this would mean better facilities next year?

Those guys had to move their car, and the people next to them had to move theirs, and that was it. I had to abandon the car once in the minefield/sandbar to get out and find the proper path again, but that was it.

I was giddy as I called my husband. Yeah, I got stuck waiting for the people at the portaloos to disperse--I even had to go off the road to try and get around both them and some kind of truck that was coming in--but I was moving. "I better hang up," I said. A middle-aged lady in a Grand Prix, talking on the cell phone...I really wanted to put on the air conditioning, but something had to give, lest I become a stereotype.

I drove around the local roads chanting "Free! Free!" to myself as Etta James sang on Radio Bonnaroo. I pulled down some side road--I don't even remember why--and into the main drive of some McMansion community. There I changed clothes, in my car, just to feel fresh--and maybe to remind myself of the gulf between Bonnaroo and Chelsea Ridge Towne Estates, and to attempt to bolster my position on the correct side of that gulf. Yeah, that was as close to public nudity as I got at 'Roo.