Bonnaroo

Bonnaroo

By Yoni

I was on my way to Bonnaroo, a huge music festival in Manchester, Tennessee. I’d started out early Wednesday morning. The first part of the trip had been a pleasant monotony along I-81, down through Pennsylvania and then Virginia. I was trying to get to Manchester early in the morning on Thursday, planning to ride through the night to get there.

The plan began to go awry as the storm became visible ahead of me. The sky was filled with heavy, dark, clouds and I could see the lightning miles ahead as it danced and ruined my ride. I pulled into a gas station just as the first heavy raindrops were coming down, gassed up and began putting on my rain gear. The rain grew heavier as I slid into my rain pants and put my rain boots on. It was positively sheeting rain as I put on my rain coat. I abandoned thoughts of leaving immediately and went into the gas station to get a cup of coffee.

I sat outside the gas station, nursing the coffee and contemplating the rain. It had settled in thoroughly, and looked as if it was going to stay all night. I needed to decide if I would, too. I don’t mind riding in the rain, and I don’t mind riding at night. But riding in heavy rain on a heavily traveled interstate at night is not my idea of a good time.

I was putting on the last of my rain gear after heavily considering my options. I’d head toward a campground or hotel; whichever I saw first. As I finished becoming completely ensconced in rain gear and swung my leg across my seat, an old, battered truck with Harley stickers on the back of the cab pulled in.

Three men were sitting in the cab of the truck. Two got out, walked into the gas station, and emerged a few minutes later with one holding a case of beer in his hand. They were on their way back to their truck when one of them glanced over at me. He came over, along with his buddy, to ask who I was, what I rode, where I was from and what the hell I thought I was doing getting ready to ride in a storm this bad.

We chatted for a little while. They were on their way home from a long day working construction, followed by a trip to the hospital for one of them for some kind of emergency which it looked like he’d recovered from. They seemed trustworthy, and it was a rainy, rotten night. And when one of them offered shelter at his house, just a few blocks away, it seemed reasonable to follow.

So I followed their truck in the pouring rain, barely able to see through my face shield. I followed them to a cute little house only a mile from the gas station. I had been told by one of the bikers that it was actually his mother’s house. She’d died about a year ago. The house was halfway through being cleaned out of a lifetime of belongings. I saw photos of the bikers I had met, as young boys on her walls. They had apparently known each other for decades. One was named “Smoke” and the others also had nicknames based on events years passed.

I left my bike in the garage outside the house. We sat around inside and passed time and telling stories of rides and runs long gone. They told me how surprised they were to look over and see a biker out in a rainstorm this bad, much less one from seven hundred miles north; and they were amazed upon approaching me to talk when they had discovered this lone rider was a girl.

After much more story telling, and promises that I wouldn’t leave in the morning until after I’d had a big, southern breakfast, Smoke showed me how to deadbolt the front door from the inside and the three of them went out to the truck to go to their respective homes. I settled with my sleeping bag on the bed of a dead woman, and idly wondered how I would get to Manchester in Tennessee early enough to get in and get my camp set up before dark.

I woke up the next morning so early it was just barely starting to get light. I packed up my sleeping bag, bungeed it back onto my bike in the carport, went back into the house and left a note. I told them thank you for the excellent hospitality; they had certainly saved the day for a soggy biker from up north.

I was happy to leave early. I had been dreading the big southern breakfast because I had known it would go on for hours and would somehow end in my not leaving Virginia until afternoon, and I would not get to Tennessee until way too late in the day to get into the music festival while there was still light. I started my bike, let it warm up for a few minutes, then swung a leg over and headed off into the slightly damp but no longer raining day. Bound for Manchester, Tennessee home of the Bonnaroo Music Festival.

I took I-81 to where it ended and got onto Interstate 40, which crosses America east to west. I had been seeing more and more wayward hippies bound for Bonnaroo as I got further along on the journey. We were the majority of the traffic as I passed through Knoxville and got onto I-24 headed toward Manchester. We were a colorful display of what a music festival looks like on the road when I pulled off the interstate to get gas. And then couldn’t get back on.

Anyone who got off the interstate near the festival was not allowed back on. They were trying to keep it as clear as possible and had opened up bypass roads along state highways and long, winding roads that meandered for miles. That was one of the roads I was shunted onto.

I waited in line for hours. I made friends with the people in front of me, who had come from Florida, and the people behind me, who had come from Maine. It was going to be a great festival. The police were letting people play hacky-sack as long as it was done on the shoulder of the road, and everyone was meeting everybody in a humungous happy mess of a traffic jam that went on for hours.

I was having a blast. I smiled at the Harley Low Rider with Tennessee plates as he rode past on the other side of the street. I smiled again when he turned around and came back to say hello. He asked why I was waiting in line instead of riding up the shoulder and I explained to him about the troopers last time I’d been to Bonnaroo, and how much they had frowned on that type of behavior.

“Well, hell, I’m a local. Just tell ‘em your with me.” After half a day of waiting in line, I still could not see the entrance. Following him seemed like a great idea.

I rode along behind him, my 883 Sportster carrying everything I would need at this music festival in a field in Tennessee in June, and we passed about eight miles of stalled traffic. When we got up toward the front, he waved and rode off.

I was at the front. I looked at the ticket takers and the searchers and all the hubbub that takes place at the entrance to a ninety-thousand person music festival. I was trying to figure out which ticket taker to approach when one of them came up to me. I gave her my ticket and she put on a wristband, I went through one of the entrance gates and started following traffic that was slowly wending its way into campgrounds. I was struck by an idea and rode carefully up to one of the traffic control people.

“Excuse me,” I told him, “I’m wondering if I could ride on the side of the traffic? I don’t want to sit and idle and have my engine get hot.”He looked at me on my bike loaded for cross-country adventure, smiled and in a thick Tennessee accent he told me, “Easyrider, yew kin do what yew want.”

So I rode along the side of the traffic to find my campsite, figuring if I had any troubles I’d tell the traffic control people, “that feller back there, he tole me ah kin do what I want” and laughing. This was an excellent start to a music festival.

It got even better as I got to my campsite, set up my tent and began to meet my neighbors. I was camped with people from Kentucky on one side, people from Florida on the other, Ohio behind and a group of Texans in several trucks across the road. As the night went on, and then went on some more, and then didn’t end but instead continued due to the Texans’ non-stop and very loud partying, the Floridians were becoming progressively more irritated. The Texans’ music poured forth over more than half the campground and the Floridians fussed and fumed. They tried enlisting support of others in the campground, approaching the Kentuckians and then me.

I looked at the Texans partying with vigor and much whiskey across the way, sized up the situation and the reputations of aforementioned states, sized up sizes of the participants and gave my decision to the Floridians: As the designated New York Contingent, I informed the Florida Representatives that if Florida wanted to take on Texas, they were strictly on their own. New York was having no part of this dispute. And truly, I believed that if Florida engaged, Florida was going to get its collective ass handed to it on a platter, courtesy of Texas.

Eventually the problem solved itself when sometime before dawn the last Texan finally gave out for the night and then one of the Kentuckians slipped over and turned off their stereo.

The next morning was Friday, the first full music day of the festival and I fed and washed myself, and then headed off for the first of three glorious music filled days sitting in a field in Tennessee. From Friday to Monday morning, I listened to the Allman Brothers, Donna the Buffalo, The Dead, James Brown, Earl Scruggs, Yonder Mountain String Band, Neil Young and enough others that if I were to list all their names, you would get bored and skip further down this story. It was wonderful. I love any kind of music, particular with a banjo and this place was a fantasy come true in a field. I even didn’t mind the rain that came down Sunday, turning the whole place into a mud fest.

Monday morning I took my time packing, hoping that the ground would dry out before I got moving. I packed up everything in my tent, let my tent dry then packed it, ate lunch and waited some more, and eventually realized it was time to move. I could hold out no longer and it was time to head for home. I slowly went through the fields, trying to avoid for the most part the mud-bogs, and walking my bike through the muddier places, a foot on the ground on each side, feathering the clutch and easing my way through the slop.

I almost made it to the first road through the campground, a gravel affair that had become a major highway for foot traffic during the festival, and had become an major exit way for the festival. Vehicles had been slopping through the mud to get to it all morning, and patches along its sides were several feet deep in gloppy goo.

I avoided most of the mud, and was just a few short feet from this modern marvel of as close to a paved road as I could find in this place, when I got stupid and put my feet up on the pegs. Which was about when my bike slid sideways in the mud and faster than I could say, “Hey! What the hell is going on here?”, I was covered in mud and on my side.

It took a moment to realize exactly what had happened. I slid out from under my bike, squishing through the mud as I did so, and slogged my way the few feet to the edge of the bog, where I looked back at my bike and began to figure out what to do. I had never seen my bike at this angle. From its upside-down position, I had a clear view of the entire rear chain and the bottom of the tranny case. It was completely laid over, resting on a left handlebar and an over packed saddlebag, tires high in the air. It had the pathetic look of a flailing beetle on its back.

I waded back into the mud and began unbungeeing duffle bags from the rear fender in preparation for lifting it upright. As I got the last bungee cord detached, two people came along and offered to help get my bike out the pit. Demonstrating a firm grasp of the obvious, I told them they would get covered in mud. They said they would help, anyway. The three of us wrestled a slippery bike upright and through the mud, and once on dry ground I thanked them for their help and they went on their way.

Everything seemed okay at first glance. But everything was covered with a thick, muddy slime, so it was rather difficult to tell for sure. I was fairly certain I’d picked up a few souvenirs in the form of scratches somewhere on my bike. I decided to start it and make sure it was still okay.

I pulled the clutch in, hit the starter button, and my trusty little bike roared to life. It was okay. Relieved that this had only been a minor disruption, I bungeed all the mud encrusted duffle bags back on, put my leg across the seat, and started out for New York and my next destination: The Harley Rendezvous.

Everything was just fine for a few moments. But then, once I got onto the gravel road and left the mud pit behind, I tried to shift into second gear. As my foot touched the shifter, it dropped right down to dangle vertically. I got as close to the side of the road as I could without engaging another mud pit, and got off to see what was going on.

At first I thought I just needed to tighten the bolt that holds the shifter onto the shaft. So I moved the shifter back to where I wanted it, and tightened it down with an allen wrench. I tried an experimental shift and down the shifter went again, hanging limply.

I cursed and examined it more closely. I could see nothing wrong. I tightened again, shifted again, and watched the shifter hang one more time. It was infuriating. I dug my service manual out of a saddlebag and read what it had to say: I needed to take off the shifter. This much I had figured out on my own. Something was wrong with it, and I wasn’t sure quite what. I dug out the tools I thought I would need and set to work.

Removing a shifter is an easy thing, if you know what you are doing. Many of my repairs are learned by doing them myself, and they do not always take place in optimum conditions. A field in Tennessee, with the southern sun beating down on my back, encrusted with mud and hung over from four days of partying is not conducive to a good mechanic’s experience.

My service manual said to put a screwdriver blade into the slot of the shifter, and then tap gently with a hammer. I followed suit, putting the screwdriver in and tap, tap tapping to get the shifter off. I was scared of breaking my bike, miserable in the heat, angry that everyone was driving by instead of stopping to ask if I needed any help, and muttering curses non stop for about two hours. Which is what it took to finally get the shifter off.

One look at the shifter, once I got all the mud off it, showed exactly what had happened: The teeth on it, which grab onto the splines of the shaft it surrounds, had worn down over the years. This had never bothered anyone, until the jolt dropping my bike knocked the shifter slightly askew. It had obviously hit something when my bike went down: It was slightly bent in. I tried putting it back on, setting it over the shaft and tap, tap, tapping with my hammer. Once the shifter was back on, and the retaining bolt tightened up again, it worked no better than it had before.

In a slight panic, I took out my cell phone, called information and asked for a bike shop in Manchester. I got hold of a bike shop the next town over, about forty miles from Manchester, and spoke to someone there. I told them what had happened, and they said they had a shifter in stock. I got directions from them to their shop in to Murfreesboro, started my bike and began the trek. Forty miles from Manchester to Murfreesboro.

In first gear.

I trundled along on the side of the road, an obvious refugee from the music festival. I was covered in mud, grime and sweat, smelled like barn full of pigs, had the thousand mile stare that a long journey brings on and my top speed was about twenty. First gear. I felt like a cop magnet as I cruised along on the shoulder of the road, a vague panic setting in whenever I passed a Tennessee sheriff, just knowing they would see me and my New York plates and I would end up being stopped, searched and otherwise harassed by the South’s finest.

I poked along in my out-of-state panic, hoping I was right about the shifter and hoping the bike shop would magically appear around the next corner, when a big twin piloted by a man wearing overalls roared by in the other lane. A complete feeling of relief washed over me when I looked in my rear view mirror and saw him pull a U-turn to come back to me.

He had long, curly hair that stuck out from under his helmet and was the easy six foot plus size that enables someone to ride one of those huge Tour Glide sized bikes. He came up next to me as I pulled to a stop on the shoulder and with a friendly grin said, “Scooter givin’ ya troubles, gal?”

I told him that it was, and explained the sad story of my drop in the mud followed by the slightly bent shifter with the spent splines and the bike shop I was aiming toward and my unfortunate stuckness in the Gear of First. He pulled a beer out of his saddlebag, handed it to me, told me his name was Jimmy, and to sit down under the shade of a tree while he went off to the bike shop to get the shifter.

I waited, relieved I had found a friend in the wilderness of a thousand miles from home and my anxiety melted away as I drank the beer. He was back before I finished, refused to take my money to pay for the shifter, and showed me how to put my shifter on with three fierce hammer whacks.

As he put the shifter on, I listened to his story of how he was riding his friend’s bike while he was fixing his, and noticed an HD bar and shield tattoo on his arm, with 1% proudly emblazoned underneath. I had already agreed by then to accompany Jimmy to his buddy’s house so I could be living proof of his reason for being late getting his friend’s bike back. Apparently, Jimmy had a habit of starting out on an errand to get, say, cigarettes and a lighter and would several hours later return, proudly bearing a 12 pack of beer, rolling papers, matches and a bottle of whisky. So he was proud this time to have proof of being responsible during his lateness, or so I was able to glean from his pronounced Tennessee twang.

How could I get out of this? I knew what fate would befall me: I was going to follow him to a snake pit of his friend’s house where my bike would be stolen, I would be killed, and parts of both of us would be found years later under a tree in some Tennessee hollow. We were goners. I gulped.

After picking up tools from the quickly done shifter job, Jimmy took a look at my frozen reverie and immediately seemed to know what had caused it. He pointed to the 1% on his arm. “Know what this means, gal?”

Yeah, buddy, I thought. I’m gonna die. Please don’t rape me and I really like my bike so if you could just keep it in one piece after you take it from me, I’d be thrilled. Thanks. I concluded that saying the above paragraph would be a mistake and my brain struck randomly about for something to say that wouldn’t offend. It is, by the way, very hard to think where you are terrified.

I settled on a truthful response and choked it out: “Things are either going to be really good or really bad.” After saying this, I took my screwdriver from Jimmy’s hand and as I stood to put it in my tool bag, I tripped over, well, over nothing at all and fell sideways onto pavement, scraping my elbow and knee in the process and dropping tools all around myself.

Jimmy laughed loudly at this, and in between guffawing fits he told me, “I hope yew kin ride better than yew kin walk, gal.” I was acutely aware that I was bombing out at being a cool biker and next I was going to get killed. There had to be a way out of this. Jimmy had mercifully stopped laughing and helped me to pick up various tools. We got them into my tool bag without me falling down again. I was frantically thinking of ways to get out of the invitation to his friend’s house, which I knew was a backwoods murder zone cum chop shop. I couldn’t think of any.

“Yew ever rahd ah too foe?” Jimmy asked me, as we got ready to go.

Ah too foe? Ah too foe? What the hell is ah too foe? It had to be some kind of weird Cajun thing, but we were way too far north. Unless, of course, some strange migrations of Louisiana foods had made their way northward to Tennessee. I decided this must be the case and further decided the only way out of this was through. I would push on, would follow Jimmy to his friend’s house. If it looked bad, I would simply turn around and leave. If it was okay, I would stay and try some ah too foe. Then they would kill me and take my bike. “No, I haven’t,” I told Jimmy, “But I’m willing to try.”

He gave me a puzzled look, started his pal’s bike, and I started mine, silently told my bike how much I loved it and how it had been a good ride, and followed Jimmy. We rode to Interstate 24…..I-24……Oh.

After a couple exits we got off, and took a side road to a side road, then followed that to a side road, and we were there: Donny’s house. Donny and his whole clan were hanging out on the back porch and I couldn’t tell if they were going to lynch me before or after supper. I could smell some good cooking, and everyone seemed pretty comfortable. Except, of course, me. I sat down on the porch with them, cigarettes were smoked, bottles were passed and no one tried to kill me.

Jimmy told a long and entertaining story of finding the “lady biker from New York” and I tried to still look cool when he described how I got road rash standing still. It was hard, believe me. But everyone seemed pretty good sorts and no one had said anything like, “Nice little bike. Now give it to me.” So I guessed things were going to be okay, then Donny’s wife called and we all trooped inside for dinner: Southern cooking. Pork chops, greens, cornbread and lots of all of them. We fell to.

After some time digesting the meal, it was decided that I should be shown the sights and we went outside to get on bikes. Everyone had a bike. Except the guy who had saved me, Jimmy. “Well, gal,” Jimmy told me, “I could ride on the back of your scoot.” This was a guy with a sense of class. I stated that my bike, unfortunately, has no back seat and no passenger pegs. This, Jimmy told me, had never stopped him before.

I unbungeed all my camping gear and clothes from my rear fender, setting various bags on the porch. I eyed Jimmy, uneasily. Jimmy, as I mentioned earlier, was over 6 feet tall. I am not. I ride a low Sportster, a Hugger, to compensate for my not being within daydreaming distance of six feet tall. This was going to be interesting. I’d never ridden with anyone on the back of my bike, or any bike, ever.

“You’re just going to ‘hang on?’” I asked Jimmy.

“Yup,” he drawled.

“Okay.”

I swung my leg over my bike, turned and looked at Jimmy. Six feet. Way taller, way bigger than me. First passenger. This was getting worse. I looked at him again. “Gal, ya look nervous.”

Oftentimes honesty is the best policy. “Well, I’ve, uh, never carried a passenger before and I’m kind of nervous ‘cause you’re a lot bigger than me…”

“I can lean, gal.” Laughing.

“Okay.”

“Or…” He looked at my bike.

“Yeah, that might work.”

So I ended up being a passenger on my own bike, which is a unique experience. I hung on and wished I had passenger pegs as we picked up speed going up curvaceous roads in Tennessee hills and I wished Jimmy maybe rode a little more cautiously like I usually did and I think I voiced this opinion through a squeak here and there.

In retrospect, it was wonderful. At the time, however, I had other opinions. I had never, for example, had my pegs scrape the road as I went around a turn and several times the whole plan of being murdered and my bike parted out changed to being killed in a bike wreck in the middle of some Tennessee mountains. We flew down roads so fast the trees were a blur and I alternately loved it and fervently wished it was over. I think we went airborne over a tree root somewhere as we headed up to a place called “The Farm”, which turned out to be a doublewide trailer halfway up a mountain, and there we stopped. I gingerly got off my bike, aware that it had done things it would hopefully never do again, and followed Jimmy and his friends inside. If it looked bad, I would run outside and leave.

It looked good. It was a small partying spot and we sat and drank various moonshines, comparing Tennessee vintage to Kentucky’s, and I swelled with pride when Jimmy said of my bike, “why, it ain’t nothin but a baby FL!”

We talked, and sipped and tippled and I told them about New York and all about Bonnaroo. I became drunk, they were drunker. I had planned on drinking only a little bit but having only rarely encountered moonshine before, I had a hard time estimating alcohol intake and it came up on me like a train loaded for a two thousand mile trip west. On top of that was lack of sleep from Bonnaroo, and exhaustion from the day’s events and I found myself having a harder and harder time keeping my eyes open. This was where I was going to get killed. I knew it. I had gotten myself into a terrible mess and there was no way out but possibly through. I was too drunk to ride, couldn’t stay awake, didn’t know what to do and these bikers were becoming progressively more drunken and louder. I was becoming frightened. And sleepy. I kept on lifting my head from the table I was seated at, trying to figure out how it had ended up down there, and then having another southern biker trying to ply me with more alcohol.

“Ya tired, gal?”

I froze. This is where it was going to happen, I knew it.

“Ya tired, gal?”

It was Jimmy. Drunk. Very drunk. And telling me about a bed in a back room. This was definitely where it was going to happen and I cursed myself for getting stuck in this mess. Somehow manipulated into being out in the Tennessee mountains, alone with a bunch of people who were going to rape and kill me, then chop my bike up for parts.

“Yer safe, gal.” Did he know I was frightened? Was my complete state of panicked terror that obvious? Maybe I couldn’t hide it due to the drunkenness, or the tiredness, or just the filthy fatigue that encrusted my mud spattered body, I don’t know. Jimmy walked me outside and in as serious a voice as he could muster he told me if I wanted to I could hop on my bike and take the road right down the mountain and somehow, by following directions I could not understand from him, I would end up on I-24.

I could barely stand straight. I was so far from sober it would take a half day’s searching just to find that state again, and I knew I would be falling asleep somewhere very soon. I didn’t want it to be at the bar, surrounded by a bunch of very drunk men I did not know. I decided to make a gamble with the devil and sleep in the back room for a couple hours, then if no one had killed me or kidnapped me, I would wake up sober a few hours later to consider my options.

Jimmy showed me the room, empty except for a bed in the middle, and I crouched down in the corner after he left, made sure my jackknife was at easy access in my pocket, and gave in to utter exhaustion.

I woke early the next morning to snoring, loud snoring, and looked over to see Jimmy sprawled across the bed in a dead sleep. My muscles were sore from crouching in the corner and no one had raped me. Nor was I dead. I stood up, creakily, walked to the bed, dropped my boots on the floor and lay on the mattress. Not even the snoring could keep me awake. Maybe I was safe. A few hours later, I woke again as the mattress moved to Jimmy’s waking up. He sat up and looked at me.

“Do they ahlways sleep in corners up north or is that just something yew do?”

“Oh, well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I just didn’t…I wasn‘t sure what would happen and I was afraid that, uh, that, uh, that….” I stammered off into silence.

“Gal,” Jimmy told me, leaning in close so I could see he was serious, “Any lady that’s gonna ride her scoot all the way from New York to Bonnaroo ain’t gonna have no troubles here.”

We went together out to the bar area, where others were already awake and coffee was on. Jimmy had to go off to work with his friends, and after giving me detailed instructions on how to get to Donny’s house, and having to repeat them several times to make sure we had gotten past the language and accent barrier, I followed them down the hill, Jimmy now riding shotgun in someone’s pickup truck and when we got to the bottom they turned right and I turned left, carefully followed the directions I had memorized, and ended up at Donny’s house.

Brenda, Donny’s wife, was there and she had moved my duffel bag and camping gear inside. She offered me a cup of coffee and told me if I wanted to shower, do some laundry and sleep on the couch for the day I was welcome to do so, so I took her up on the offer. After starting a load of the grimiest clothes I had ever seen, and hoping I didn’t gunk up their washer, I went out to the living room, put my head on a couch cushion, and didn’t wake up until hours later, when Donny and Jimmy were coming back into the house.

Another night of southern feasting ensued, followed by a much mellower evening of porch sitting and smoking, and I began to seriously fall in love with Tennessee. Like New York, but mellower and warmer and I was considering just staying down there until I remembered I had the Harley Rendezvous to get to and it was coming up quick.

The next day I slowly packed to go. Jimmy had said goodbye and headed off to work, and I was left with Brenda and Donny. By late morning I was ready to go and Donny rode with me to I-65 in Kentucky where I continued on and he went back home.

I rode north with a feeling of extreme happiness. I love motorcycle adventures, and this one wasn’t over and had already been one of the best. From the depths of frustration to heights of relief and happiness, with some great partying and getting to hang out with a man who could make overalls look good, it had been a great ride.

Back to Welcome Page