Nashville and Bonnaroo

"God is Love
Love is Blind
Ray Charles is Blind
Ray Charles is God"

This was a wonderful piece of graffitti that was on a fence at Bonnaroo. I quoted that to just show the absurdness of the weekend. Bonnaroo was the largest collection of crazy people that I had ever seen. I was proud to be a part of it.

So I have been absent for a bit. After my adventures in the Cherokee National Forest, I headed to Nashville. For the first part of the trip, I spent a lot of time the Fido's Coffee shop. I stayed with Seth and Betsey for two days and just mingled around Nashville. From Bookshop, to Bikeshop, to coffee shop. On Wednesday, Britti came in town to start her internship. It was the first time that we had seen each other since my graduation so it was great just to see her, I had no idea that we would have such and amazing weekend. Britti had to work on Thursday and Friday, so during the day I did the regular coffee shop/ bookshop/bike shop circle, except for those days I even brought a mall into the picture! Oh yeah, Thursday night we went the famous Blue Bird Cafe to hear Seth sing. It was awesome to see him sing, now that he is a big time songwriter. Who would have ever thought that I would be the one going to grad school and Seth would be the freespirit working out of his house?

Anyway on Friday night after Britti got off work, we (Britti, Brittany Rollek, and I) drove 60 miles SW of Nashville to the famous Bonnaroo Music Festival. As I said earlier, it was a crazy weekend. There are 60,000 burnt out hippies and music lovers, plus another 1,000 "carnies" in this huge field. There were probably 7 stages and the music ran from noon until 4 am. The stages were named things like "What Stage" "Which Stage" "This Tent" "That Tent" and "The other tent", so besides the fact that you were probably talking to someone on drugs about which you have never heard, but the names made it confusing as hell to ask for directions. It would be hard to do a whole summary of the whole weekend, It was long, rainy, hot, but it was an awesome time. We saw: Metallica, My Morning Jacket, Donovan Frankenreiter, Against Me!, Two Gallants, Mason Jennings, Ozomatli, BB KING, Ben Folds, Jack Johnson, Sigur Ros, Lupe Fiasco, Rogue Wave, Orchestra Baobab, O.A.R., Death Cab for Cutie and Widespread Panic.
That is 17 bands and two days! People watching was also have of the fun. I would stake my life that 75% of people there had tattoos and 90% of them had several. I saw more drugs than the Medellin Cartel, but touched not a single one. The highlights for me were BB King, Sigur Ros, O.A.R., Donovan Frankenreiter, Widespread Panic, and getting to spend time with Britti in such a fun atmosphere,

Currently, I am in the town square in Fayetteville, AR at the Jammin' Java Coffee Shop. The farmer's market is today and the square is very lively. I stopped last night and stayed with Barbara Dillion (Ammen's Mother). We had a great dinner and I got to hang with my favorite dog in the world, DINKER! My plan was to ride today, but it has been raining a bunch and the trails are super muddy, so I think I am just going to hightail it to MOAB.