Trip to Indio for Big 4

Day 1:

I woke up at 6:30am, showered, found coffee, bought ice and beverages for the road, then packed all my stuff into a cab and headed down to Zeitgeist to meet up with my crew. I was extra careful to grab EVERYTHING I needed. When my cab got to the corner before my destination and I reached for my wallet, I realized - DAMN! I forgot my jacket! That's important! It had my ticket for the show, my wallet, my weed, and several other things in its myriad of pockets that would have made this trip impossible. So... I took the cab back home, got my jacket (Still forgot my hoodie, woulda come in handy those cold desert nights) and headed back to ZG again. As I got dropped off, I ran into Derek outside walking down to the rental van to show it off - he was about a block away and had his back turned to me, so I whistled a couple times for his attention then started kicking my coolers toward the door of the Zeit'. DD turned around and saw me and helped me get all the stuff to the van. Burden unloaded, we head back to zeitgiest for a pre-road beer. Inside I meet Charlie, Nate, Dereks friend Sev, and we're all wondering where Scott is. Turns out he's being responsible and on his way back from bank so we don't have to stop on the way out of town. Go Scottie!

After some sitting in the sun outside, smoking, drinking a cool refreshing breakfast beer, and excitedly chatting about how much fun this is going to be, Scott shows up, and we have another chimney of beer, get a shot of Underberg in us, then Charlie buys 24 individual bottles of Underberg for the trip. Call it tradition. Nate and Scottie also got a leg of Herraduras for arrival.

Then we all load up, find our seats, and hit the road. The rental was REALLY nice; fold down tv screens for every row of seats (we never used them, but nice to know they were there), ample seating, not much foot-room in the back, but if you straddle the seat in front of you it's like a recliner. Besides some lumbar support issues, the backseats were nice too, and reclined into almost laying down position. Derek is an excellent driver, I never once felt nervous about the way he handled that vehicle. Charlie figured out how to hook his iPod into the aux-in plug (luckily DD brought a patch cable, I had planned on it, but forgot mine) and we had a big four playlist all ready to go. OK, so maybe Charlie didn't finish his playlist, but all the bands were on there, so, good enough, we have a DJ!

It was pretty loud and windy in the back, and I struggled for what seemed like hours to pop open a side vent - turns out the only way to do it was a button by the drivers seat - but there was no communication between the front and back seats due to sound barrier, so I quietly endured. Then we found an In'n'Out burger joint, something we had planned on visiting since we started talking about the trip. Everyone was happy to be out of the ride for a minute, but then there we were, back on the road again. Time to bust out the Pure Kush.

The Pure Kush: I brought two kinds of weed for the trip, Sour Flower, and Pure Kush, the latter obviously being the superior, though option 2 was not bad either. We sampled some of the Kush and then we got lost in window-views of roads and mountains and windmills for several hours while Derek diligently drove. and METAL! ...I'll get back into the pure Kush on Day 2.

Then we all got hungry again and pulled off to a burger king for nuggets and stuff. After we got our food and ate in the parking lot, I pulled out the secret stash of 3 beers I had hidden under all the ice. The boys were happy, even if it was Miller Lite, it was so cold and we had all not had a drop of alchohol pass our lips since 9:20 that morning, so it was nice to get a refresher. I think it was about 3pm. The rest of the ride was a straight shot, except for one bathroom break. More windmills and mountains. Still windy in the back, but I'm used to it by now, and so are my new tornado-styled dreadlocks.

and then... ARRIVAL! We met with our "landlord" for the weekend, Ed, on his tricked out golf-cart, and he escorted us to our Condo at about 60mph. I wanted to tell him he's not escorting a pregnant woman to the ER, but he couldn't hear me screaming it out the window. We parked and he gave us a tour, and he was a very nice and affable man. He even told us we could stay a 3rd night free if we wanted, since he had no one else scheduled for a week. The condo was immaculate, Beautiful interior, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, smallish kitchen, but nice appliances, and a very cool living room/dining room combo area. And the patio was nice too, shaded area, gas grill, nice umbrella patio table and chairs set, and couple nice lounge chairs and couch. So, we settled in, got all of our stuff out of the car, and headed off to do some grocery/provisions shopping. Back in the car, even tho my tailbone hurt from bumping up against the seat for 9+ hours.

Returned from shopping with enough stuff to fully stock our fridge, everyone picked their own steak, we got breakfast stuff for the next morning, Nate made a salad, someone else was grilling corn, and we were all preparing our steaks to get thrown on the grill. We hooked up some asparagus for the grill too. Damn! forgot my grilling basket. We made do by just grilling them on foil with butter. and then the steaks went on, and each person watched their own steak. We only had one pair of barbeque tongs, so most of us just manned up and used our fingers (hey, we've all worked in foodservice and have unburnable fingers.) Everything came out awesome, so we all sat down, had our meals, and were sated.

I climbed on top of a 5 foot wall on the patio to retrieve some of the "Strange Fruit" from the tree in the neighbors yard. I had to stand on one foot, on tip-toes, to just barely reach it, but I retrieved it successfully, if you don't look at all the scratches up my arm from the thorny branches defending their fruit. Then we compared it to the size of Nate's head - then someone sliced it up and we all sampled it. It looked like a giant lemon, then when sliced open it looked like a grapefruit, but it tasted like neither, not at all bitter, and very sweet and soft. My friend suggests that it may be a palmello. To me it will always be "StrangeFruit."

More Pure Kush. and more beer. Some of us got tired and trotted off to bed, and the rest tried to play poker, but it's pointless if you're not gambling, so we switched to crazy 8's - basically Uno with regular cards, but we were all buzzed enough at that point that the easier to play the game, the better, so we did shots, drank beer, ripped bonghits and played cards until we all got tired.

Time for bed, and the end of Day 1 - I had planned on sleeping on the floor on a ground pad with my sleeping bag, but charlie told me he'd share his bed, so I slept on the right side in my sleeping bag (because I get accidental boners in my sleep,) and kicked all the blankets over to his side. He's a good sleeping partner, not too big, doesn't snore that I noticed, and doesn't move around a lot. I slept right through the night.

Day 2:

I was one of the first up and made coffee, then within minutes everyone else was up. Pure Kush again. Now where did those last couple hours go? We cooked an outstanding breakfast - DD made home fries/hash browns, and I made some garlic spinach and very cheesy scrambled eggs, while Nate made a plethora of bacon. I'm sure there was another course, but I forgot to take a pic cause I was so hungry, and now it's lost forever. Then we all kinda had our mornings. I smoked and drank beers outside most of the morning, switching between the hot sun and the shady part of the patio as often as needed. It was HOT in the morning, but nice and cool inside - I didn't care, I wanted to be outside. After a couple hours of just sitting we still had a couple hours before the show, and Scott and Derek took off to get more provisions so we would have stuff after the show, so me and Nate headed for the pool.

The pool was cold! It seriously took us about 10 minutes just to get submerged up to our shoulders. Then Nate dived in and I took a couple slow laps from side to side in the pool while I tried not to think about my nuts shrivelling up to inside my pelvis. Nate started swimming long laps and diving from the side, while I just stood there in water up to my midsection, stoned and snow-blind. It was so bright, all I could do was look at the bright refractions on the bottom of the pool. I was too stoned to go underwater - I feared I might forget to hold my breath - so I walked around on the shallow end of the pool until I was ready to get out. By this time Charlie had shown up and just dived in - so brave! I parked myself on a poolside lounge chair for a few minutes to soak up some sun, but it wasn't enough, so I headed back to the condo for a hot shower to help my nuts drop back into position.

Got out of the nice hot shower, my anatomy once again intact and in it's right place. So we had a couple beers, drank tons of water, then it was time to go to the show. I had stashed some waters in the freezer to walk with, so everyone had a cold drink in hand and we set off. It was a long, windy, dusty walk, I think about 3 miles. Just about the time we hit the admissions gate I realized I had forgot to put deodorant on, and I was getting kinda ripe, but oh well, I wouldn't be the only one in that crowd. At least it was outdoors.

I didn't bring any contraband, but the guy who searched me was mystified and a little irritated as to why I had about $20 in quarters in my pocket (so was I - I had just forgot to dump my change before heading to the show) - he was so mystified, in fact, that he forgot to look at my hat, which I had put all the other stuff in my pockets in so they could search it more efficiently. I guess I could have brought contraband if I wanted. Oh well, I'm not walking back now.

So we got in the show, all met up, and kept in touch with cellphones as to location. Charlie needed to wait in line at the first merch tent he saw, so we lost him for a bit. We all agreed on meeting spots between sets in case we got split up, but most of the show all of us were together. It was a HUGE field, and Anthrax was just starting - they played a bunch of my favorites, and they were really good, but it was loud enough to go walk around and get beers and find some other friends who were supposed to be there. Me and DD trekked over to find the Noodle, and there he was, in all his resplendent glory with his pretty companion, tripping balls with his tiny Cerebrus Sunglasses on. There was a funny story about getting past security, that I will save for another time and his permission to tell, but for now, let's just say it was legendary and to be expected from the Noodge...

We went back and found the rest of our party, Anthrax finished soon after, and we hiked over to the biggest tent to find beers and shade before the next set. YAY! for $10 beers! It doesn't matter when you're thirsty. I think at the end of the day I really only spent about $60 on beers, as the boys were buying them for me too.

My hair was like a woven net around my head by this time, with the wind, the sweat, the dirt, and the headbanging, it could no longer move about freely on it's own. Oh well, one less thing to worry about for the rest of the day.

Megadeth was up next - I gotta say, they did a great job - at this point a few joints had gone around and I was pretty stoned, so I managed to grab one photo and just zoned out on the music - I couldn't give you a set list because I was kinda of out of it by then with the sun and the weed and the beers. But I was stoked to be there, and surrounded by awesome friends, and it was turning into one of the best shows of my life.

I took a hike by myself to go find Marin and Daniel - they were with some Irish friends/traveling companions, and one of their friends was doing this weird slow hippie dance to Megadeth... uhm, ok, but this ain't how we do it in America, buddy. They didn't want to get any closer up front, so we had our greetings and hugs and handshakes and I went back to find my group. I was glad they labelled all of the speaker-towers, because it made it much easier to remember where everyone was.

I think the male to female ratio was about 1000:1 - LOTTA DUDES! The pits were kinda lame, everyone just running around in circles and no real contact. Half the people there weren't even old enough to remember when the Big 4 were starting their first tours. But I wasn't there for the people, I was there for the music. And the music RULED!

Another break from sets, and we hiked back over to our big white tent, had a couple more beers, swapped stories about our other friends that were there, and had a nice break in the shade. Just as the sun reached the horizon, Slayer started getting on stage.

SLAYER!!!!! They stole the show! WOW! Blown away! Not just the loudest band, but the most precise. They killed it. I'll never forget.

The boys were all headbanging as hard as they could, but I have a different method, where most of the banging I do all comes from my calves, so I don't wake up with whiplash the next day. It worked, and I was banging with the best of them.

And then another break, the sun was down, and it was starting to get a little chilly. I saw a very young, very thin girl in the tiniest bikini, and I couldn't help but feel sorry for her. It didn't seem like she had any other clothes, no purse or backpack. Oh well, she made her choice. Bet she learned a lesson.

And then, Metallica. Eh. not the biggest fan, not because they don't rock, but because they all act like douches a lot more than other metal bands - but WOW, did they put on a show. I was a little disappointed that they mostly chose the slower ballads to play, but WTH, it's Metallica, strap yourself in and enjoy. They had some great pyrotechnics and fireworks, and it really was a good show. I could tell most of the people there only cared about Metallica, because then all the cams came out, everybody was on everybody elses shoulders, and we really couldn't see the stage anymore, but cool, my ankles and calves were still good for some more trashing, so that's what I did. The GIANT screens really showed off the important stuff on stage anyway.

And then, All Four Bands! got up on stage and played together. What song did they play? Hell if I know. I was pretty loose by then. And then Metallica did a couple encore songs, but we were all starting to head to the gates. Caught up with the boys by the first merch booth, and we headed out. Charlie may have the shortest legs, but once we hit the main road, he was just GONE. And he took Scott and Nate with him, I presume he carried them both on his back during his boost of super-speed. So me, Derek, and Sev all sauntered back to the condo with dust and hair whipping into our eyes, and on arrival more weed was smoked, more beers were drank, and more stories swapped. At some point I wound up in bed, because that is where I found myself the next morning.

Day 3:

Woke up with black dirt crusted all around my eyes. I was sure I washed my face before bed, but there it was. Time to wash that off and make the coffee. People were getting up gradually, so breakfast was starting to be made. We nuked the leftover hashbrowns from the day before (mixed with some sprigs of uneaten spinach), made a bunch more bacon, and Nate and Scott went to work on making french toast. Scott fried up some bananas to put on the french toast, and fresh fruit and berries were on the side. Delicious and manly breakfast. Now I am going to go make my Easter family/friend calls outside in the shade while I get stoned and smoke cigarettes. Just squeaked those in before my phone died.

Time to start loading up for the trip back home. There was some deliberation as to whether we should stay another night, but 3 of our 6 people had to work Monday, so we decided it was time to wave goodbye to our lovely condo. Goodbye condo! Goodbye very low shower-heads (I had to shower on my knees)! Goodbye Strange Fruit! Goodbye ballshrinking swimming pool! Goodbye Hot-Rod Ed! Goodbye Throw-away Bong! Goodbye refrigerator that barely kept our beer cold enough. You will all be missed.

Loaded up and road ready, we head over to Santa Monica Pier, an hour or two away, for a delicious oceanside lunch. I slept a little on the way. I had the chimicangas and they were JUST what I wanted, tho I didn't know that at the time I had ordered it. Providence! I sampled Charlies ceviche too - very good, just the way I like it, not too limey. All fat and happy, we walk down the old site of muscle beach and pile back in the car for the rest of the ride home.

It was a nice ride, I read a book until it got dark, then busted out my NDS to play some Golden Sun - Charlie musta played about 300 games of solitaire on his smartphone. It was dark, and there was nothing else to do, and Nate was our DJ now, since Charlie was in back with me. I also remembered to bring a rolled up towel for lumbar support, so I was not near as sore from the ride home as the one down there. A couple of pee-stops later, I was home, jacked up on Mountain Dew Code Red (the cherry flavor really doesn't hide the fact that it's Dew.) I sat down, turned on my TV, unpacked the various coolers, stayed up for a few hours, updated my facebook status so everyone knows I'm still alive, then finally went to bed.

The trip is over, but the memories will always remain. Best concert trip I've ever had in my entire life. Charlie, Scott, Derek, Nate, and Sev - I fuckin love you guys. Thanks so much for every little thing.

kloveyabye! And if Big Four happens again next year, let's ALL go. We'll take that thing over.

~Frank