Meredith

Good Evening People!

This blog will be about the Meredit Music Festival. Held every year in December from a Friday until Sunday. I wanted to leave work early but did not want to tell my boss why. Apparently this event gets dubbed as a 'hippie' event and I heard my boss makes fun of those who attend, so I just kept that to myself. Maybe you will be able to sense sarcasm in this blog.

This picture shows the absolute chaos that happened over the weekend.

I was slightly nervous that I would be bored going to a music festival all weekend, this was my first. I mean, what could we possibly do all weekend? The obvious, listen to music, yes. But what if I didn't like the music? What if I wanted to sleep and the music was too loud? What if I wanted to take a real shower? What if we didn't meet up with the other people we knew going as the ten thousand people there might be hard to find them? What if, what if, what if everything??? I've only become a 'camper' in the last five years, was I really ready to embark on a full weekend of music and camping?

I committed. Along with Steve and Annie, we drove the few hours to Meredith on Friday afternoon and then sat in a bit of traffic waiting for all cars to get checked (no glass bottles were allowed, but any other form of container in which to put alcohol could be taken in).

The forecast was not looking good. I think it drizzled a bit on our carride, maybe even rained a bit. But this did little to prepare me for what was to come. Two nights of camping, three days and nights of music and this year, especially for us, 48 hours of sideways rain, cold wind and mud. It was a thrill. I cannot even begin to describe the actuality of this weather-but I will try.

Out of pure luck, we were in the farthest possible section for camping. Tents were crammed in next to one another, like sardines. And couches! Everywhere! Couches at campsites and even more down at the stage. There were so many. I wondered if people literally took the couches right out of their living rooms or if they found a couch on the side of the street and grabbed it on the way. After this weekend, none of these couches would be able to return to their original homes.

People were walking in the dirt road (which was a no-no on the list of rules), people were partying, people were listening to music, people were waiting on line for the port-o-johns. There were just massive amounts of people, everywhere. As we drove to a land far, far away, we pulled up next to another group of friends by pure coincidence. Steve picked out a site for our tent wanting to set up before the downpour started. Annie set her massive tent up next to us.

We then began a difficult walk down a very, very long road to get to the music, the Supernatural Amphitheater. Maybe not so difficult for the drunk people there who didn't care, or Steve who has experience walking in any condition, or Annie who had gum boots (of which I had gum boot-envy all weekend), but it was tremendously hard for me. I am pretty sure I was moving at the pace of a slug and missed about four sets of bands performing. It was just mud, pure mud. It must have rained pretty good before we got there. But it was just slippery. I just had this huge vision of me walking too fast and slipping and being covered in mud. No way was I going to go all weekend without a shower and mud covered.

Off to bed early. As we slept, the wind swept through like a tornado. And all night. I almost thought one of the drunk neighbors was pushing our tent in just to annoy us. Poor Annie had this giant tent that broke. It caved in on her! While she was sleeping. The wind was so intense and insane! Annie's tent day 1:

That was Friday night. I thought that was bad. Had I known what would happen on Saturday, I probably would have been kissing that muddy ground thanking the skies above for providing such a beautiful evening for us.

This day was just absolutely ridiculous. We finally got our acts together and put on our ten layers of clothing-oh, I forgot this very important point!

Steve must have learnt this in boy scouts. As it was completely muddy and wet on Friday night, I had on a pair of synthetic socks which allowed for them to get wet, but to keep me warm still. They were unbearable to get off at bedtime, so wet and muddy.

When I had to get dressed on Saturday, Steve wasn't sure if the other socks I brought were synthetic so he suggested I put on the damp, muddy socks from the night before. Oh it was so disgusting. I almost got sick when I was entering my right foot into this dreadful, unwarm dirty sock. But Steve insisted that they would keep me warm. Then, I had to put on the cold, muddy shoes I was wearing the night before. Another joyous moment at Meredith. I was so annoyed that Steve didn't know if my other socks were synthetic, it would have been so nice to wear a fresh, new, clean pair of socks. Ugh! What the heck do boyscouts know anyway? It wasn't until I actually got out of the tent that I realized my feet were warm. They were! He was right! Boyscouts know everything! And while I tried really hard not to think of how filthy my feet were, at least they were warm in this freezing cold weather.

And so, in the dirty, warm socks, we went to the top of the hill where we could slightly see the bands on stage. It was a giant tent, two actually, that tons of people were under to be sheltered from the sideways rain. Massive amounts of rain fell from the sky. And because the tents we were under only had ceilings and no side walls, we might have well just been outside with the rain. The wind was blowing the rain sideways into the tent and making us wet. It was hard to get into the music with this but I did hear a few bands that I liked. Wish that the weather wasn't so bad so we could have been out more. Mostly I was just standing there, face down, with a hat on and a raincoat (thank goodness Annie's dad insisted she bring an extra set of rain pants and raincoat!) snug around my face, I wondered how long I would have to sit there.

We walked around some more. Up and down the hill, the food and bathrooms were down the hill. The 'path' up and down the hill was really just a hill filled with mud. I know this entire area is a farm, but don't they have any grass on this farm? I swear it must only be dirt for miles when there are no people or rain. It was so thick, seriously! I just had to put my foot in it, it just sank right down, like quicksand. You could almost hear the oozing of mud into my shoe if it weren't for the rain. And when the heck was this rain going to stop anyway??!?!?! I think there was clearly enough mud to last us a decade! I almost thought girls were going to break out into full-on wrestling.

The mud near our campsite was so bad that they brought in quads and a tractor to pull the cars out of the mud who got stuck. By the time we got back to our site that night, half the people were gone because the weather was so ridiculous. I was proud that I was still there, although, that's probably only because I wasn't driving.

Another early night for us, about midnight. Steve said this is the most sleep he's gotten at any music festival in his life. Annie's tent officially became our storage area for our esky and chairs as it clearly could not be a safe place for one to sleep, some of the poles even snapped in half - just from the wind! It was now a storage area because Annie had to put the seats down in the back of her car and sleep there! What a trooper and a true Meredith fan (8 years of attendance!).

Sunday we awoke to no rain! Was this really possible? Maybe we were all having the same exact dream. But no, this was real life and there was no rain! We could actually get to the stage and stay dry, and the mud was about 98% muddy still, but that 2% difference made it feel like dry ground.

We watched a few bands, one of which we felt was a cult as the lead singer was male and sang songs that sounded like Simon and Garfunkle and all the other band members (all 12 of them) were women, ranging in age from 13-25ish. Seriously. Okay, there was one other creepy guy in the band, but totally a cult, right?

And better than that, Steve was offered a porn DVD by some random guy. Steve said no and another guy near the porn DVD guy said, 'Don't worry, he's not in it.' I guess he was thinking that Steve would be interested if the guy offering the DVD wasn't in it. Still not interested. And so random!

Later down at the stage, we ran into the porn guy. He was wearing what can only be described as a 10-year-old girl's winter coat circa 1986 (bright blue with pink and purple flowers on it). And that's it! Nothing else. Seriously. I know this because he flashed us a few times. And this was earlier than 11am. He must have been pretty cold.

I sound so bitter, huh? I still had a great time and I would probably do it again next year. It can only go up from here, right? Just jinxed it! I had a really good time and left on a really good note-no rain! We were able to enjoy some of the music and got a ton of sleep! It was a good experience and I'm happy we went.