Fest Chronicles Pt. 1: Wednesday/Thursday
Fest started late on Wednesday night for my roommate Pat (Party Pat) and I. Being from Canada, our travel time was lengthier than that of most of our friends going and also required flight. We decided to fly out of Buffalo since it would save us a considerable amount of money on flights and we lived pretty close to the border, making it pretty easy to get there. Our good friend Scott who was joining us on the trip offered to drive us to the airport and picked us up! We finished our packing Wednesday night and met Scott in a parking lot near our house at around 10:30 PM. From there we went to pick up our last two passengers for this trip, Duff and Shelby. We had originally planned to sleep at Duff’s house and then head out early in the morning for Buffalo. However, we did math and realized that we’d only get about 2 hours of sleep. Figuring that it would be better to get all the driving over with at once and just sleep in Buffalo, we left on an all-night drive. Everyone was sleep-deprived as the day before we’d all either worked or had a pretty huge amount of schoolwork to finish. As a result, the ride mostly consisted of beef-jerky, Doritos and Simpsons quotes, especially us breaking out in “Moe, Moe, Moe, nobody likes me why don’t you like me?” every 10 minutes.
We got to the Buffalo airport at about 3 AM and slept in a waiting area until airport security opened in the morning. Whenever I travel to the United States, I always fly out of Buffalo because of how much cheaper it is. Unfortunately with all the money one saves, they almost always have to put up with this sleep in this area. It’s always late when you get there so you’re always a zombie of a person. It’s uncomfortable and it really sucks.
After getting through security at about 5 AM, we greeted with a four hour wait until our flight boarded. Now in a larger airport this isn’t as bad because there are usually at least a few things there to help kill time a little bit, Buffalo airport on the other hand, does not. We got breakfast when the restaurants opened but for the most part sat in our gate watching the clock tick for four hours.
Finally 9 AM came around and we could get on our plane. Around this time Party Pat left us as he had different flights, albeit from and to the same places and at somewhat similar times. The flight down to Orlando was quick and pretty uneventful. As I got off the plane I was immediately hit with a giant heat wave. In Canada the weather had been pretty cold, with the temperature staying around 0 Celsius, and I dressed accordingly, covering myself in sweaters, flannel and toque and a jean jacket. In Florida it was sunny and about 25 degrees. I was pretty excited about this because I despise cold weather. Sweating, but excited. I found Scott, Duff and Shelby and we made getting a cab to the Orlando bus station our first priority.
We grabbed one out front of the airport and the driver turned out to be a huge ass. He yelled on his phone the entire ride, except for when he took breaks to ask us if we had ever been to the theme parks there. It’s around this time that I realized how much Orlando sucks. It has Universal, Disney and the Kennedy Space Centre, but other than that there isn’t much. It seems like the entire skyline is hotels and everybody there is a tourist going to the tourist attractions. Doesn’t seem like a very cool place to me. Also, our driver, as we would later discover, took a very roundabout way to get to the bus station, taking advantage of the fact that we weren’t from the city and didn’t know our way around. Fuck that guy.
After that shitty cab ride though our fortunes started to change as we coming into the homestretch of our journey. We walked into the bus station and were greeted to a large crowd of kids who were clearly also going to Fest. I changed into my cut-offs, stashed all my winter clothes into my bag, bought a strawberry flavoured Fanta (that shit ain’t in Canada) and commenced loving life.
Our bus to Gainesville was almost completely punk kids, save the talkative/crazy women from Texas who sat behind Scott and I and the women with an autistic child that kept yelling “IT’S ‘CAUSE HE’S RETARDED!” because she is clearly a terrible parent and person that was sitting in front of Duff and Shelby. The bus ride was great because it was long and boring, allowing me to put on some music and catch up on sleep. There was a rest-stop halfway though, allowing me to grab Funyons and various other snacks. Our rest-stop also coincided with that of my good friends Mark and Emily who were also travelling from Canada, but had come down the day before to go to Universal. We said “See you guys in an hour or so” and took off to finish the bus trip.
When we arrived in Gainesville we realized as soon as we got off the bus that we were far from where we needed to be and didn’t really have any logical way to get to our hotel other than walking. So we set off, seeing all the fine shit-hole landmarks of the beautiful metropolis that is Gainesville. It was a long walk but it wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t already spent the day travelling. At around 2 PM we had finally reached our destination: The Gainesville Holiday Inn.
Beginning a theme that would continue the entire weekend, we were greeted by familiar faces in the lobby, our friend Mike. We quickly checked, dumped off our stuff and Scott, Duff and I went to go eat at Checker’s (also not in Canada!) while Shelby napped. We bought our first case of beer for the weekend, I changed into my bathing suit and we went up to the pool deck.
This was the first “re-union” or “meeting” for the weekend. We knew a pretty sizeable amount of people going to festival, coming from all different parts of the States, Canada and even Australia. As we got up to the pool we saw a huge crowd of these people. Probably about 20 of them! Smiles and hugs all around. We proceeded to drink and swim and hug and sing for the next few hours. It’s really great seeing friends you haven’t seen in a long time again and that is definitely a big part of what makes Fest so awesome. Since I live literally an entire country away from many of these people, chances to see them are scarce. When we do get to see each other, we definitely try to make the most of it, as you will see from the stories from this weekend.
There was a Pre-Fest show on the Thursday before the whole she-bang started, which many of our friends were going to. Unfortunately it sold out pretty fast and I didn’t get a chance to get tickets. Fortunately I was not alone. Duff, Shelby, Gimper and I set off for a dinner at Boca Fiesta, which is a Mexican restaurant in Gainesville owned by Warren Oakes who used to drum for Against Me! I had pulled-pork tacos, mashed sweet potatoes, cornbread and a Schlitz. It was delicious and a pretty fun time.
I was pretty drunk at this point as I had been going since mid-afternoon and it was starting to get pretty late. Most were still at the show, but a dozen or so of us got to together to party in our friend Ian’s room. Party Pat had arrived while I was at dinner, so the whole crew I had come down with from Ontario had been re-united. The World Series was on and we had a ton of fun watching it and drinking. An awesome Canadian moment occurred around midnight. Scott and I had just finished off the last of the Pabst case we had bought earlier in the day. I said “Damn, we’re out of beer” and everyone looked at me weirdly. I then remembered that we were in Florida and could buy beer in gas stations and convenience stores, which were open until 1 or 2 AM, much later than the LCBO or Beer Store are open in Canada. I got pretty excited realizing we would be able to re-stock on beer essentially whenever we wanted to. Scott offered to go buy some I gave him a ten. He asked “So I’ll grab you a six-pack?” and everyone gave him the same look I had just received and ten minutes later he came back with a delicious twelve pack for me.
After this Party Pat, our friend Babs and I left to go get some food at Checker’s (I uncharacteristically passed as I had just had it that morning). While we were outside we saw a large group of people walking towards and joked that we probably knew them. Lo and behold among them were Steve and Dan. This happened all weekend. No matter where you were at whatever time of day, there were always a ton of your friends around you. It was the best.
After our riveting food adventure we returned to go to sleep as it was somewhere around 2 or 3 in the morning, complete with Pat sleeping on our floor because he had nowhere to stay.
In terms of how I thought it would be in my mind, Fest was definitely living up to the hype.
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