About 9 months ago I decided to attend The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. This would be the biggest trip of my life this far. The festival actually started exactly 2 months ago today. I've wanted to write about my experiences there for awhile now, but I've held off. I've been waiting for the right time. Looking back at my time there was what I needed and now that 2 months have gone by, I think I've finally got the right bearing on how I actually feel about my time spent there.
I've been infatuated with Coachella ever since my favorite band got announced to headline one of the nights back in 2005. I had never heard of the festival before. After that I purchased the DVD Documentary about the festival and then I just fell in love. I can't say what took me this long to actually GO to the festival, but October of last year I finally decided to go no matter what.
It didn't matter who was playing or headlining, I was going. For 8 months, I saved every extra cent I could manage to get to the festival. Jay-Z, Muse and Gorillaz were announced as headliners for Friday, Saturday and Sunday respectively. Under them were a wealth of very talented and eclectic artists from all kinds of genres.
I arrived in Los Angeles around 10:30am local time and quickly got my rental car and drove to a Wal-Mart in Baldwin Hills to pick up supplies. After that made the 2 hour drive out to Indio were the festival is held every year. I waited for abour a half hour in the parking lot of a Food For Less, a local grocery store, for Marquis. Marquis was a fellow who had sent me an email after I put out an ad wanting to know if anyone who didn't have a camping ticket wanted to stay in my spot. He showed up, we took off.
We arrived at the Empire Polo Fields around 3pm. We waited in line to have my vehicle searched four about 3 to 3 and a half hours. We forgot that glass was not allowed in the fields, thus we had to pour out a bunch of water and dump our beer into it.
After our car check, we got to our spot in the camping grounds and started setting up shop. We quickly made friends with two fellas from the Greater San Jose area. Will, whom I affectionately called "WillChella" and his buddy Mickey, whom I called Mickey.
Soon after that 4 other fellas I whom also responded to my ad showed up and soon started setting up their massive tent. Jeff, Kevin, Ramon and Chris filled out the group for the weekend.
As 20,000 people set up camp around me, a sense of completion came over me. With the mountains surrounding me and the sun retreating for the night, calm settled in and I was beside myself. Giant strings with balloons attached reached far over the tents and vehicles that littered the grounds. Spanning the night sky it was something to behold.
One thing that totally made the weekend was something that you have to be apart of to truly understand. As rows and rows AND ROWS of cars and tents adorned the grass, you could hear a far off yell. The yell got closer and closer and closer. And louder and louder and louder. Then soon passed by and went off past you in the other direction. Known as the Coachella Yell. Thousands of people just screamed and yelled at the top of their lungs and it spread throughout the fields. Think of it as a wave at a game in a stadium but except it was with people screaming instead of people waving their arms in the air. One of the greatest moments of my life.
The first night ended with a beer and a game of Uno. I retired to my jeep to get a good night's sleep for the long day ahead.
Part 2 coming soon.
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