I awoke on Day Two to the shriek of a young woman. “Someone took a shit next to our car!” she cried, unknowingly securing a place in my memory as my now-current response to the question, “What is the strangest sentence you have ever heard when waking up?" After a few giggles, I tried to roll over and get some more sleep, but was foiled by the combination of the heat of the early morning sun beating down on our tent and the incessant yammering of the idiotic female friend of Ted and Alice who was on something that kept her gums bumping to the point she was unaware how woefully uninteresting her monologue was. I wanted to scream, “Use your inside voice,” but there were too many days left to be causing problems with the neighbors.
Fumo and I went to check out the shower situation. Down the way, Garnier Fructis had showers set up that offered small rooms to bathe in and warm water for a fee of $7. We passed and headed to the free “showers.” As we got to the front of the line, we discovered people entering a large metal container with maybe ten sinks on each side. People were bathing and collecting water to take back to their camps. The water seeped out, turning the dirt to mud. As the days went by, people were dirtier getting out of the box then they were when they went in. Once inside, most people usually shouted out as their systems were shocked in reaction to the cold water. A few serious campers had bags that they filled and took back to their camps where the sun warmed the water. Fumo and I never returned to these sinks because we had our own version of the sun-shower bags. The bottled water we brought that didn’t get put into the cooler got warm over the course of the day sitting in the back of my car and was the perfect temperature for washing down with soap and paper towels.
Day Two of the festival began with our checking out Grupo Fantasma after the rave review they got from fellow Snob Fantasma el Rey. They played on a small stage, but their upbeat, Latin-influenced soul revue got the early birds going. Jose Gonzalez had a good acoustic set that made the crowd happy, but I found him too laid back for a hot afternoon and needed to move on before all my energy was drained. The battle between the heat and the music over my body because a recurring event throughout the weekend.
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