So I kinda went AWOL on you guys last week. Well i have an excuse that should explain it - I went dippy on you and ran off to Buckeye Lake, Ohio for the weekend to enjoy Hookahville Spring 2000. I did it on the spur of the moment as that's the type of cam girl I am - flighty and a tad irresponsible - just enough to worry and annoy you.

I went on this trip for several reasons - 1) because I have never been camping, 2) I have never made a 12 hour car trip before without maiming a fellow passenger and 3) any trip with the Hell Twins (Mike and Jeff) was sure to be an episode I didn't want to miss. Also, I had never been to a Lollapalooza or any other three day music festival, and I really felt like I missed out on that trip - so this was like making up for missing the first one.

Well, our road trip started out at 11pm at nite for our 9 hour drive to Ohio. However, it ended up to be 12 hours because of Jeff's shallow bladder and the fact that the car pretty much blew up on us an hour outside of Buckeye. After we found a shop to put it in, and packed our stuff up on our backs like mules, we were off to the campground.

I am not sure how to explain the counter-culture that lives in this campground. After setting up the tent, I took in my suroundings and have equated it to Fraggle Rock. Tents were colorful and built just about one foot away from each other. Everyone was so friendly there - we met all of our neighbors in the tents around us and became instant pals. It was a lot like a sci-fi convention where everyone was friends and there weren't any fights. I imagine that these festivals are modeled after the first Woodstock. This isn't just a vacation for some people, it's a way of life, and they follow these shows and make their money off of food, handmade items like clothes, and of course mind altering drugs - which seemed to be the big draw there.

The drug scene was amazing. I could walk ten feet from my tent to the main road and if I ingested everything offered to me - I would have never made it to the road and would have been screaming "I am the Lizard King" for the rest of the weekend. The big drug emporium was at this crossroads between the campsites and the main stage - what I like to call the Pharmaceutical Wall Street. I sat and watched fascinated as people would walk by and mutter what it was they had to sell as others were walking by - and people who were looking for something to buy would do the same - then the haggling would begin, a deal would be struck and then one would walk away rich and the other walk away stumbling and stoned - both guys grinning like idiots.

I did have some complaints, however - one of those being the bathroom situation. Now I don't mind having to go in the woods armed with my own toilet paper - but these port-a-potties were disgusting. Sure, they were ok for the first few hours of the festival - but by the end of the weekend, I was debating whether to risk a bladder infection and hold it instead of having to fumble my way around in a dark plastic box covered in filth. Luckily, I found some out-of-the way toilets that had been overlooked by most of the attendees - and I would walk the 3/4 mile in the middle of the nite to go to use those facilities.

The other complaint was the camping itself - I never got to have a shower, or enough privacy to change my underwear - and couldn't even use a mirror to fix my face. The last day of the festival it rained, so I woke up in a puddle of mud. The only up side to these things was that everyone else had the same situation - so we all looked gross together.

The overall experience was really cool, and I liked the fact that people have made this their career - to go from city to city with everything they own on their backs to follow certain bands and festivals and have no idea where the next day will take them or who they will meet. For a fleeting moment I thought that I would like to try this out for a summer - but then I realized that this meant no computer, cam or soft toilet paper for months on end - and the thought quickly exited my head.