CAMP BISCO: DAY 1 (Thursday)

You start out all sunny and fresh with your specially bought snacks from WalMart and your brand new shiny glow sticks. Underslept and overcaffienated, you’re in good spirits despite spending hours in line waiting for a gaggle of Hells Angels to cavity-search your car. You have ice-cold Budweiser tallboys and are flush with Camel Lights, which you smoke as though they were not a finite commodity. Once inside the venue you cheerfully set up your tent, make use of the PortAJohn, (surprisingly clean, considering!) and set off for the food vendors, whose varied wares glisten like so many gems in the fading light. The sun sets over a happy parade of revelers, Pretty Lights takes the stage, the weekend spreads itself out before you: an unending tapestry of wondrous adventure.

CAMP BISCO: DAY 2 (Friday)

So you haven’t slept at all, except for a small nap in between the end of the late-night dance party and the beginning of the morning sets, but that’s OK because you’re having an AWESOME time. You wait out the day’s heat in the shade of the tent and drink your tallboys, which, admittedly, are getting kind of warm, and smoke your Camels. After an unfortunate encounter with a filth-ridden PortAPotty you’ve taken to peeing in the woods, but Dieselboy hits the decks in the afternoon, Bassnectar throws it down in the evening, and the New Deal is slated for 2am at the late night tent. I mean, who can NOT be thrilled? Music festivals are awesome, I’m here with ALL my friends and life is GREAT.

CAMP BISCO: DAY 3 (Saturday)

Oh God. You stayed up until the sun was rising and then took a Trazodone to knock you out. These people NEVER turn off their fucking music, seriously. Sleeping all day in the heat in a zip-up hoodie and a mummy bag, you’re a mess by nightfall. The spigot is now surrounded by a swamp of mud, so rinsing off is an exercise in futility, and once night falls you’re peeing behind your car. You don’t have any more ice, so your beer is totally hot, and all the nice folks who were selling their beer before have found themselves in the same plight. Cigarettes are not tasting so good anymore. Then it starts to rain. Hard. For a long time. You amuse yourself by playing poker on your iPhone and eating the rest of your candy. Everyone else is asleep.

CAMP BISCO: DAY 4 (Sunday)

Your camp is a litterbox of spent glow sticks and Rolo wrappers. Everything is wet. You’re now peeing next to your car in broad daylight and changing clothes right where everyone can see you. Dignity is a distant memory, and even the pay toilets have long since stopped flushing. You’d kill your own sister for a cup of decent coffee or a way to wash your hands. Luckily, there’s no music today. After two hours of restless sleep, you break camp at 8am, gratefully returning to the world of indoor plumbing and odor control. As you leave the grounds, you marvel how much this whole episode resembled something out of Blindness, and how quickly we slide when left to ourselves.

Lesson learned: next time, bring baby wipes and more ice.