End of the road

Many tales from Coachella will go untold.

It was an epic experience. Everything from the road trip, to the camp area, to the mass of fantastic music will stick with me for much of my life. We made friends, met people, learned about the world and ourselves. At one point an older part Native American man selling trinckets on the side of the road began prophesizing about my life in the next few years, and it really hit home.

But much of this is personal and should remain that way. I appreciate anyone who stuck with this blog as the trip came and went. Keeping this record has meant a lot to me. I'm dealing with the final days of life before the real world, not an easy thing to do.

I hope you've enjoyed reading this just a fraction as much as I've enjoyed putting it together. The idea was to kill time during the massive wait until Coachella, and to also have some record of this trip years from now. I've accomplished both of those things.

Finally, I'd like to urge everyone I know and even strangers to take a leap. When something like this pops up in your life don't ever rule it out. Sure, it may take months of hard work (I lived on Wal-Mart food, worked out daily, and quit any and all fun for four months to make this possible) but in 10 years it is the risks, big events and foolish choices you make that will stay with you. As someone who has strung together a chain of seemingly random trips, I say the most valuable moments of life almost always happen outside of your routine, your hometown, away from your friends and family.

Buy me a cup of coffee, and I'll tell you all you want to know about Coachella. Thanks again.

Zack Quaintance.

Albuquerque can be a cold place

Wrapped in a comforter, vision obscured by dark sunglasses, Chad Wetzel smoked a cigarrette outside of a 7-11 at 4 a.m. last week in Albuquerque.

I had just driven us from near Amarillo to New Mexico, where we learned the desert can be a cold, unforgiving place at night. With no gas stations open near the exit, we moved further into the city, where a squat woman sold me $40 in gas through a latched window.

Before pumping the gas, I made sure to wake up Chad, who works third shift and had been preordained to handle the roughest splotches of driving. He had been sound asleep on the cooler for a solid four hours before we roused him.

"Wake up douche, it's time to drive," we yelled, hitting him in the head and shaking him. Douche may not have been the exact word, but it either that or one of the other terms male friends use with eachother.

"Alright, I just need a smoke," he said. As Chad sucked down the cigarette we all ran around wildly outside disgusted with the temperature, which we assumed would be brutally hot at all times of day.

This was just one of the stops we made. Every six hours we gassed the car, drained our bladders and waited for Wayne to move his bowels. Clearly, much happened along the way. I drove over a curb, a gas third shift gas station clerk cursed at Wayne for buying three suckers with a debit card, and a weirdo in Flagstaff, Ariz., told me the next time I eat at Denny's I will certainly get food poisoning.

The road was part of the fun of this journey. Going there was more than bearable, what with the sense of anticipation and none of us having previously travelled that route. Going back was fun as well.

On a stretch of Arizona to New Mexico highway we caught one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen. With Arcade Fire serenading our view, we all sort of dropped silent for a while as the red sun bathed nearby bluffs, mesas and valleys. Someone may have commentted on how at peace we all were after such a brillant weekend, or maybe that's just my mind filling in the blank that doesn't need to be said anyway.

This was a once in a lifetime trip, it hurts to realize that.

The Nightwatchman cometh

Clad in a thick shirt and dark jeans during the hottest part of the desert day, because "you never know when the tear gas will start falling," Tom Morello became the Nightwatchman before our eyes Saturday.

With protest and anthem songs reminiscent of the 60s and 70s, he had a capacity crowd inside the smallish Gobi Tent singing along with every word. Morello, a master of the electric guitar, plays a decent enough acoustic and sings in a fitting gutteral style. The Nightwatchman falls far short of Rage, not that Morello wants to replace his old band. But the over the top persona and point he strives to make hits home hard.

He played many of the songs off the newly released Nightwatchman album, teasing us on one occassion when he ripped into his piercing part of Rage hit "Bulls on Parade." Tim, Chad and I had come an act early to make sure we'd be up front for this while Wayne planted himself at the main stage waiting for Arcade Fire. By the end of the set, I was ecstatic we had stayed.

About half way through, Tim turned to me. "Zack's back there," he said, referring to Rage's lead singer who we of course would have liked to have seen a day before the reunion show. Tim spotted an afro and assumed it was de la Rocha. Instead, it was Boots Reiley of the Coup.

Morello brought out Boots and former Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Ferrel to rip through Woody Gunthrie's "This Land is Our Land," adding pro-revolution verses of course. Never in third grade did I think this patriotic song we learned in music class would end up on my lips as I sang in unison with hundreds of other dissillusioned young people. It was powerful to say the least.

My fingers hurt from being crossed too hard in hopes of a new Rage album. Deep down I realize a fifth album from my favorite band holds the likelihood of me walking on the moon. That said, I think I can settle with Morello's little side project, and a full-scale Rage tour, wishful thinking there. It's ridicolous to think music can spur wide-scale change, but thoughtful tunes can open eyes.

Arcade Fire steals Saturday

Despite not being able to move my arms for much of their set, Arcade Fire blew me away Saturday evening.

Playing the main stage just after sunset before the Red Hot Chili Peppers, this indie band from Montreal put on one of the greatest live shows I have ever seen. The passion was incredible and the crowd gave it back. We also met some cool people just before the show started.

Wayne had camped out most of the day and had a great spot by the front on the left. Chad, Tim and I spent our day watching Tom Morello's side project the Nightwatchman, and came late just before the Kings of Leon set. We met this Canadian guys who had a great plan to make it to the front.

"I'll just knock my way through and you guys follow behind me," one tall canadian with no shirt and a straw cowboy hat told us. "I'll just say sorry I stepped on your girlfriends foot bro, but these guys were pushing me."

The plan worked flawlessly. We followed this guy very close to the rail. Also, he had a hash nugget and ate it with a bottle of Gatorade after no one around us could offer a pipe. Interesting dude.

The pushing before Arcade Fire was intense. As 30,000 people behind us fought for our spots the crowd developed a sense of humor about the whole thing. "Don't give an inch. You shall not pass!" Became our rallying cry.

All in all, the fight was worth it. While nowhere near as intense as Rage or satisfying, the Arcade Fire has exploded in popularity and many news outlets reported on the quality of this show. Glad to say I was front and center, even if I was squished.

One guy enjoyed Rage more than me

A horrible smell assaulted the Rage pit at one point during the perfomrance. I bristled immidiately, knowing exactly what it was. Then the people around me noticed it as well.

"Who farted?" someone asked.

"That's no fart," came the reply.

And it wasn't. Without a doubt, someone in the Rage mosh pit near the stage slightly to the left soiled his pants. Then my inner monologue spoke up: "Uh-oh, that wasn't us was it? We need to check."

It wasn't. But the event raised many questions when I looked back at it during the car ride home. When this guy gets home, he has the most interesting description of how the show went.

"Hey man, Coachella huh? That must have been really great, what with all the bands and all. Wait, woah! Didn't Rage reunite, shit bro, how was that?"

"So good I shit my pants."

"Wow, so they were good huh? Phenomanal even?"

"Yeah, man, I mean, I shit my pants."

I was also left with several qustions after this happened. All through the show people were bailing from the pit, having us hardcore dudes lift them over the crowd to safety. But when the smell came, no one stepped forward. The culprit probably hoped to keep attention off him, so he kept moshing with shit in his pants? Gross.

Still it speaks to the power of Rage's reunion that a man lost his bowels during the show. The pit was truely intense. I felt as if I were fighting for my life the entire time. I will be surprised as if anything in my life causes this sort of fear again. Still, best show I've ever seen. Don't know how anything could top this.

Here's a photo of the crew, reunited after the show.

The road to recovery

We're back, we're safe, we're fully armed with memories we shall carry until we are old men.

I lay upon the couch in my boring, generic, middle of the road, cliched college apartment in Carbondale as I finish my final 10 days as a college student. I could be a frat guy, wasted on Busch Lite, calling some upper-class, white girl with long stringy bleached hair that likes guys with a sweet faith in Jesus and a knack for pointing out how funny people different from us really are. I could be content to be normal.

Instead, I lay here, ankles throbbing, ears ringing, mind's eye rapidly shuffling images of a week that could vie for the best of my life. Before I sort out the trip's events and the impact it will have on my life, which has changed after this, I must nurse my body to health.

I slept three hours last night sitting upright in the car as we crossed from Texas to Oklahoma. My ears rang from being up front for Rage Against the Machine's reunion. The show gave me goosebumps with its power and relevance, but it also gave me some wicked injuries.

We camped out from 2 p.m. until Rage took the stage. Though the more than 100 degree weather tested us, we enjoyed our stay in front of the stage. Armed with a back pack full of bottled water, we bantered playfully with those waiting around us, making friends for the afternoon.

Explosions in the Sky, a brillant instrumental band from Texas, played beautiful background music during the hottest part of the day as we watched security heave open bottles of water into the air between spraying down the crowd with cool water. We grooved to the Roots, who as expected blew us away with what is no question hip hop's best live show.

Seated on the left side of the stage, no more than 10 people away from the front, we laughed at our brothers and sisters on the right. We stood comfortably as they pushed for position. We were enlightened, polite and just better. We cheered Willie Nelson as he and his family band performed a day before Willie's 74th birthday, and we felt bad for Austrailian 80s band Crowded House, who suffered through a totally geeked Rage crowd as they played one of their first shows in 11 years.

Then tragedy struck. Our utopian left side degenerated into the same miserable pushing as our friends on the right. As Manu Chao prepared, we found ourselves fighting for every inch of ground. I dug my feet in, using my ankles to stay in place, that's when they first started to hurt. Manu Chao, despite a horde of foaming Rage fans, managed to rock the crowd with his high energy set. That's when the first of our group fell. Chad and a girl he had befriended during the wait bailed. Security pulled them over the rail right before my very eyes.

"Chad, no!" I yelled, trying to convince my friend to stay put, but it was too late. So I threw my sweat soaked Manu Chao shirt to him, and wished him well. The move proved to be a smart one. THe Rage pit nearly ripped me apart.

I stood relatively close to Tim and Wayne before the set, but that quickly changed. The organizers showed Zack de la Rocha's sillouhete on the jumbo tron and the place exploded. Goosebumps covered my arms as I yelled as loud as I could, Zack took the stage with his band mates and set us afire with a few simple words: "Good evening. We're Rage Against the Machine from Los Angeles, Calif." With that, they launched into Testify, and destroyed any intent I had to stay a college student.

Wayne would quickly bale over the front rail as a gaggle of strained helpers lifted him up. Tim would get pushed back to the corner and also bail over the rail. I would remain in the pit the entire show. Someone ripped my wife beater off my body as pants and shoes flew through the air. I battled, I battled hard and I did more damage than I suffered, but all with good nature. When a smaller guy in a red shirt with dreads stumbled, I picked him up under the arms and hauled him to his feet.

After Bulls on Parade, I pulled a hidden bottle of water from my pocket and sprinkled the surrounding crowd, much to their delight. But the moment the music started I was down center pushing with all my strength, spinning, fighting and singing at the top of my lungs. I sprained an ankle somewhere along the way, and it wasn't so bad. I sprained the other ankle later, and it still wasn't so bad.

At one point, an afternoon friend helped me stay on my feet as we rocked out. I entertained the idea of fleeing over the rail, but I wanted nothing to sully this memory. I stayed, worried these sprains could lead to a broken bone. That's when they started Wake Up, that's when Zack gave us what we wanted - commentary on current events.

Zack told us every president from Truman to today was a war criminal and deserved to be "tried, sentenced and shot." That includes Bush. Zack climbed the amp as we hailed him, thanking him for the return. Rage finished us off with Freedom and Killing in the Name Of. Epic describes it perfect.

Fast forward to tonight, to my couch. Sure I'm hobbled, beaten and disoriented. Sure I need to force my way back into everday life. Sure, things will be tough these next 10 days, fee of binge drinking and losing control. But I wouldn't have this any other way. I have what none can take from me, a story, a memory, a thing that makes me special and helps me see what's really important in the world. Expect far more updates, photos and info when I feel better.