“Well I started out, down a dirty road.” --Tom Petty

There are those who say the journey is far more important than the destination itself. Road trips have secured a place in the romanticism of modern America in many ways. Some use them as a vehicle for finding themselves, or as an escape from some overly oppressive upbringing or otherwise inescapable circumstances. Others seek a new home, a better understanding of humanity, a place or thing or person that will align all of the scattered aspects of life into a clear path, like the welcoming lights on an airport runway.

Music and ‘the road’ have gone hand-in-hand for me for many years, dating back all the way to my time growing up in Connecticut when I would drive around the woods, get high, and listen to Pink Floyd. I also just love to drive. I always have. The open road is something I fear to live without. I can’t stand to fly—it makes me incredibly nervous, but also I feel that on plane trips you miss out on the bountiful natural beauty a country so vast and diverse as America has to offer. Plus, you lose that kind of spooky apprehension one feels on the road in the middle of nowhere. It’s invigorating, not terrifying like air travel is.

The actual journey is one of my favorite parts of the Bonnaroo experience.  People come from all over the world to experience this nutty, crazy, kooky world that erupts in the heartland every June. I’ve met people there who have driven all the way from California, and lived to tell the tale; though, to be fair, they had a big group, which drastically cut down on cost, boredom, and the urge to drive headfirst into Bryce Canyon.

Canadians come and wave their maple-flecked flags proudly above their campsites, beacons for free Molson and Labatt if you’ll sit a spell and engage in some pleasant conversation. Brits come to see what has been referred to as ‘American Glastonbury,’ the true vets of Glasto mocking the dramatically smaller crowds (and secretly being grateful for them) but praising our tenacity in being able to withstand the brutal Tennessee heat. Europeans. Australians. South Africans. Japanese. The gravity of this place has touched people all over the world, and for some it’s enough to keep them coming back, year after year.

Those who travel from the various corners of the globe do not, however, get the full experience of arriving at Bonnaroo. Regardless of the distance one has traveled by plane, how many passport controls and layovers one has endured, the true Bonnaroovian traverses great distances by car. It is just the way of it, a pilgrimage of sorts. You have never really experienced Bonnaroo until you’ve packed two-to-four dear, patient friends into a tiny sedan with everything you might possibly need to rough it for an extended weekend—and often more than that—and sat in traffic for hours on end, waiting, waiting, waiting beneath the blazing sun to get ushered in through security. You have also never really experienced Bonnaroo until you stiffen at the sight of every cop car within a 300- mile radius of the festival, hoping beyond hope that those three extra MPH you’re cruising at isn’t enough for the Tennessee State Police to pull you over and find that one gram of weed you brought with you, hidden in the broken stitching around your fold- down sun visor. You haven’t really experienced Bonnaroo until some dumbass in a Challenger almost runs into you on the interstate because the douchebag in their passenger seat can’t hold the damn wheel while the driver hits a bowl. The trek is long, it is perilous, it is full of your annoying friends asking to pee every twenty minutes because they insist on drinking light domestic beer in the backseat even though you have asked them repeatedly to slow the @#$% down because you don’t want to stop at every goddamn Chevron on the way there. But that’s all part of the charm.

Bonnaroo remains one of the only large-scale festivals that has reserved campsites built into the ticket price, which includes a spot for a vehicle¹. It’s extremely convenient to have a car, mostly because that means you can bring everything you need without hauling it all over creation. Ice chests, camping equipment, food, water, booze, and everything in between...they’re much easier to transport if you bring a vehicle. My first year, we didn’t have any of that stuff, and now I wouldn’t dare go without it. All we had was a mattress, a few gallons of water, a bottle of Jägermeister, a 4-pack of energy drinks, some soggy wheat bread and a big-ass box of Cheez-Its. We were stupid, but hey, we were novices. At least we had the car, which acted as pantry, living room, dining room, and bedroom.

The aforementioned backseat douchebag.

A lot of festivals only have limited camping available which must be reserved ahead of time, and often comes at a hefty price (even more so if you plan on bringing a car). These festivals—including the ever-exuberant Coachella—often run out of these spaces rather quickly, so if you don’t jump on them right away, your hopes of drifting off to sleep under the stars as the dwindling tones of far off music dance through your eardrums and into your dreams can be snuffed out in an instant of even the slightest hesitation. But those are the kinds of festivals that usually don’t run very late, or they have yet to build a true community within themselves. The campgrounds at Bonnaroo are constantly teeming with life. Friends are made, aid is given, phone numbers/handshakes/hugs/bodily fluids...they are exchanged like currency. Since the central venue never closes throughout the weekend, there is a constant influx and reflux of curious souls meandering through the grounds. The prismatic forest of colored nylon nurtures a vibrant river of people whose current ebbs and flows throughout each day and night, but never ceases to flow. Those who camp at Bonnaroo capitalize on experience— both shared and solitary—and by the end of each event, we all leave with a vast sum of riches that can never be stolen or foreclosed upon.

Leaving New England during evening rush hour on a Thursday in June is perhaps one of the worst ideas, ever. I-95—especially the stretch between New York and New Haven—is notoriously awful. Even north of New Haven (closer to my hometown) is pretty terrible during the summer, as it is only two lanes each way and is thus not equipped for the throngs of people that come up to our shorelines for beach days during the summer. And the 4th of July? Forget it. You might as well set up your grill on the interstate and have your cookout there.

There were several things that should’ve been on our minds, like said possibility of standstill traffic. Or perhaps the car breaking down in the middle of nowhere, as the Odyssey had been known to do from time to time. Or maybe we would get hopelessly lost somewhere beneath the Mason-Dixon line, which was unfamiliar territory, save for the one time I drove up from Florida to Connecticut with my dad and sister when I was thirteen.

But this time was going to be much different. I was an adult, I was in control. I was a little scared though, because my van was covered with bumper stickers, most of them stupid and harmless, but there were a few that could end up ruffling a few feathers in the Bible Belt. I was not too worried about Jesus is Coming, Everyone Look Busy!, but some, like Hatred is NOT a FAMILY VALUE! and that pesky Kerry/Edwards ’04 sticker that was impossible to remove were sure to get some reactions. However, our excitement for what waited up ahead overshadowed everything else, so we were able to just enjoy the ride.

Things were moving pretty smoothly on the interstate for the first hour or so. I was flabbergasted when we didn’t hit traffic in New Haven, because there is always traffic there. It seemed that fortune was smiling upon us that day, and so I took it as a sign that good things were in store for us.

One way of making an entrance (and avoiding traffic).

Somewhat expectedly, as soon as we crossed the border into New York we hit traffic. There have been very few times in my life that I haven’t hit traffic at least once driving to New York (which I used to do a lot when I lived in Brooklyn), and so I was not surprised at all when I saw the angry eyes of brake lights staring back at us. Until we crossed the George Washington Bridge (a good thirty miles from the border), we were bumper-to-bumper. The Cross-Bronx Expressway—the stretch of I-95 that bisects New York’s northernmost borough, leading up to the bridge—was especially terrible, as was the stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike we stupidly decided to take after crossing the bridge. The silver lining of being stuck in traffic on the GWB is being able to glance over your shoulder to see the towering spires of Manhattan reaching up in the distance. It’s only really something to behold if you’re in the mood to appreciate it, which I wasn’t after being stuck in gridlock for more than an hour. Ben peered over and said cheerily, “Hey man, look! Manhattan is waving at us.”

I glanced over and snorted, already pissed off. “Manhattan is giving us the finger.” I turned to my left and flipped the city off right back. “@#$%in’ bitch.”

Thankfully, as soon as we hit I-78 in Newark, the army of cars retreated, along with my anger. A few miles down, night had fallen and the road opened up like a canyon, and the glaring faces of taillights became more and more sparse as the painted lines of yellow and white beckoned us further.

We stopped for coffee and 24-hour breakfast food at a neon paradise called the Key City Diner at the New Jersey/Pennsylvania border. The place was tiny and cheap, and we could smoke cigarettes inside, which I loved. The waitress came by with our coffees and gave me a suspicious look as I lit up a Marlboro Red.

“Are you even old enough to be smoking?” she asked me.

“Actually, you don’t have to be eighteen to smoke cigarettes,” I replied. “Just to buy them.”

She rolled her eyes and set our coffees down. As she walked away I swear I heard her mutter, “Smartass...”

Ben and I turned to each other and stifled a wave of giggles. “Is that true?” he asked me. “@#$% if I know,” I said, puffing away.

Our food came seconds later, and Ben taught me how to make hurricanes in my coffee mug by adding the sugar first, stirring furiously, and then slowly letting the cream drip in along the side. The clouds of beige overwhelming the brown clarity of the bare coffee started to swirl, mimicking the satellite image of a storm making its way up from the gulf at that very moment; images I only glanced at in passing as we left a gas station down the road.

A side-view sunset.

The New Jersey/Pennsylvania border was only a few miles from the diner, and as we crossed over from the Garden State to the Keystone State, the transition was almost instantaneous. Pennsylvania quickly became my least favorite state to drive in. I had never seen so many semi trucks in my life, and as a cautious teenager, the velocity in which they passed my van every couple of minutes threw me. Especially since Helga was such a broad-sided beast of a car, each time a semi would pass by—going way too fast, mind you—I felt like we had been hit by a gale force wind. Eventually, I got used to it, and as we made the switch from I-78 to I-81 around Harrisburg, the sheer number of trucks managed to decrease, if only a little bit. We drove through the enveloping dark of southern Pennsylvania, past endless acres of farmland that were only illuminated by faint moonlight. “Amish,” Ben said simply, though I’m not sure if he realized he said it out loud. That explains the lack of light in the distance, I thought to myself, and lit up a cigarette. I handed off the iPod to Ben so he could take his turn, and he rather appropriately put on The Darkness’ album Permission to Land, Justin Hawkins’ raucous rock vocals bringing me somewhat back to life in the night. Ben took out a stick of Nag Champa and lit it, placing it in the mouth of the dragon shaped incense burner we had haphazardly taped to the middle of the dashboard, probably totally illegal but we didn’t care. We are the shit, I thought to myself and smiled, smelling the approaching dew on the wind blowing through the window as I puffed away on my cigarette, the dragon puffing away on his Nag Champa cigar.

We crossed into Maryland much later than we anticipated, somewhere around 1 AM or so. As we drove over the border, we both spotted the sign bolted to the overpass that said in big white letters: MASON-DIXON LINE.

We glanced sideways at one another, in a way silently saying: Well, here we go.

¹ As of 2016, this is no longer true—patrons must purchase a separate camping pass if they bring a vehicle onto the property.

To be continued...

The Journey Continues Tomorrow ... Stay Tuned.