Shouldn't there be a sign or something?

Huh. I don't even know where to begin.

I'd heard, been warned by people who have attened Bonnaroo before, that traffic going into the festival grounds could be "a pain." Nope, it was not a pain. It was a fucking disaster.

First, they had the interstate traffic redirected 20 miles south of the exit to Manchester, and then back north again, through people's corn fields and pig shit fields, to the "entrance." At this point - 2 hours in the car. Second, it was just a pile of crap at the entrance. In fact, it was less an entrance and more... imagine if every resident of the state of Minnesota were, at once, attempting to make a deposit at the Wells Fargo on Fairview & Grand. We then sat two cars back from the entrance for a full 40 minutes.

The last band of the evening that we had planned on seeing, Devotchka, had been finished for a solid half hour. We were hungry and Oprah was almost out of gas - at this point the frustration was too much, and the worst part was that there seemed no end in sight. We still had not moved- the decision was made. Fuck it, let's bounce. O, but wait, we can' t get out. We are completely stuck at the front of the back half of the biggest line of tail lights, hippiechicks eating bananas, and 19-year old entrepreneurs (mushrooms, anyone?) one might imagine in their dumbest dreams.

Sounds hopeless, right? And you are imagining the next step is that one of us loses it and just starts shrieking APPLE BUTTER BISCUITS, YOU BITCHES out the sunroof? Wrong-o. 15 minutes later we are out, completely due to Shorty's ingenuity and her, uh.... dimples. A strapping blonde security dude had traffic stopped and was waving us through before I could even say apple but- Thank you Shorty. And thank you Devotchka for coming to the Varsity Theater on July 1 so I don't have to cry myself to sleep tonight for missing your show.

Ciao, buddies.
-Nina

P.S. Shorty and I have acknowledged that the deal-breaking frustration of this evening was largely a direct side effect of our age. We were indeed, as feared, older than everyone we saw, including the ticket-takers, traffic directors, drug dealers, most of the bands and the blonde dude who got us out. Just maybe, sigh... this whole music festival thing isn't for us anymore.

Or not, I don't know. Stay tuned.