Bonnaroo 2006 - Thursday, Getting Ready For The Trip

So I'm known to like a good music festival now and then, and I was up for going to something new this year. And there's this little gig called Bonnaroo, not far from my family in Knoxville. My brother and sister-in-law decided they wanted to go this year, so I'll fly out and hang out all weekend. Sounds like fun. Best part? My sister-in-law's father is going to loan us his big-ass RV for the weekend for FREE! Hell yes!

But nope. Not really. Didn't work. It wasn't really anyone's fault, but the RV fell through. We'd booked my flights. We'd bought our tickets. We'd bought the RV camping spot. Everything was cool, but the RV broke down. Wasn't running. No spark. Don't pass go, don't collect $200.

Well, no biggie. I mean, yeah, a biggie, but we'll deal, right? A few calls later, and I'm realizing that pretty much every RV and camper trailer on the East Coast, or at least an easy drive from Tennessee, is booked. Why? FOR BONNAROO!

No problem. We bought an RV pass, but we'll just throw up a tent and sleep on the ground. I do it all the time. Sure no A/C in TN, in June... but we'll deal. No private bathroom. We'll just share with the hippies. This should work, no problem.

But just to be on the up and up, we send the Bonnaroo folks an email. My brother writes to them, "The RV broke down, etc, we have a RV pass, blah blah blah, we can camp still, right? Of course we can still camp?" He asks what are our options? How can we make this work? Help us out, people. We've spent money on you already.

Well, a few hours of pre-festival shopping later (this was late Thursday afternoon), we get a very helpful response from the Bonnaroo folks. Who, by the way, don't list a phone number. Anywhere. It's email them or nothing.

Some incredibly useful asshat replies with the following sentence... and I mean that, only one sentence. He says, "No, you can't camp in an RV parking spot."

That's it.

Wait, what?

"No, you can't camp in an RV parking spot."

Huh? Why the fuck not? Didn't we pay extra for an RV spot? What do you care if we park an RV in it or not?

But really, that didn't make me mad. What made me mad was the fact that he answered only in the negative. There was no positive solution to help us out at all. If we took them at their word, and their very strict sounding policies on their web site, we might not have tried to go at all. If I ask you a question, trying to make something work, and I've already freakin' paid you, if you want to remain in my good graces you'd better give me some good freakin' ideas. Meet me half-way, dude!

In the end, we lucked out. We had to borrow a truck (Thanks Dad!), but we were able to rustle up a single pop-up camper that some Bonnaroo-hopeful had not picked up at the rental place. Still no A/C or private toilet, but I'd say that Providence and the Hippie Festival Gods smiled upon us, my friends, if I didn't find out later that it really didn't matter.