8ish and we were out the door.

the trip there was pretty uneventful until we got to illinois. of course, we stopped at the delerioufivequestionmark subway in grinnell..it was only fitting. my rollerblade car made pretty crappy gas milege w/ the car top carrier on it. rather, it made the same gas milege as a normal car instead of a car made for midgets, which is what it is.

once in illinois, the confusion began. for some reason, the directions i'd gotten from yahoo were completely bogus. turns where there were none, roads that didn't really exist. it was frustrating, to say the least. a trip that shouldn't have taken more than an hour and a half ended up taking around 3 hours. at any rate, by the time the scenery got familiar, we didn't even care that we were "off schedule".

once in bushnell, we stopped at the hallowed ground that is dairy queen to put pants on (we were all looking gross and morning-ish)...cos ya know it's illegal to look crappy at cstone :)

i, of course, take the longest to get ready. i don't know what it is about me, but i just can't be rushed. i never have been able to live within worldly time and space. finally, i made it out the car where alyssa and liz were impatiently waiting in the heat. when i'm just about to the car, a voice called out to me and said "hey...have you ever eaten sea urchin?" i just stood in amazement at this question, then said "pardon?" and he repeated himself, walking over to an electric blue colored blazer-looking vehicle. he turned back to look at me, and narrowed his strange eyes. finally, i said "uh..no." he said "well you should." then he got into his blazer and left. stunned, i sat down in the car only to hear alyssa and liz chime in with "holy crap that guy's spicy!! hope he goes to cornerstone!"

as luck would have it, he did go to cornerstone. we pulled into the gravel road, having weezer's "holiday" pouring from my lousy speakers and blowing birthday blowers. it was a euphoric feeling to be back at my most favorite place in the world.

we drove around the whole farm, marveling at the beauty - both in humans and the landscape. finally, we decided on a spot on the main road somewhere between the main stage and the rave tent. it was a semi-shady place right next to a huge isreali flag. just as i pulled into it, a man in a weird shirt that was neither a sheet nor a shirt and obviously underwearless...red from head to toe..his mouth was barely visible through all the hair on his face and the hair on his head was wild and massive...this man tells me i'm not allowed to camp there because it's reserved for jews for jesus or something like that. one thing leads to another, i share w/ him my exceedingly huge intrest in messianic judaism and weild my star of david with a cross in the center...."red jesus" (as he we eventually know as) let us camp across the road in a spot that was originially reserved from some vaguely familiar people from kansas city. then, he helped up set up both our tent and tarp. he invited us to shabbat services on friday and said we'd talk more extensively about judaism later.

we began to make our new house a home, and took the top of the car top carrier off to use for a table, which ended up being pretty cool like that.
we walked up to the hyvee to try to scrounge up some food. witin minutes carter had appeared. he wasn't as tall as he said he was, and seemed very nervous around me. i tried over and above what i normally would have, to make him feel welcome. he just looked like he felt very akward and i felt bad for him. we walked back to our campsite with a bag of zig zag cheetos and talked for a while. then he wanted he and i go to his camp. we we did. he gave me a beautiful book that made me cry and we talked for a while, then walked back to my camp again and sat around some more. he bummed cigarettes and talked about how they were almost candy they were so weak. we sat in the dark for a while. we decided that we would leave for canton the next day around 11am, so i told carter to be to our tent at 10:30ish. alyssa and liz came back and we eventually went to bed.
(i'm lumping tuesday and wednesday together because both days were pretty uneventful)
8:30am al and liz and i were awoken by carter singing at the top of his lungs outside our tent.

that was NOT a smart thing for him to do.

so we all lay there in complete awe of this guy's nerve to even think of waking us when it wasn't even sweltering hot yet and we didn't have to be spat from the fireplace of a tent. those rare non-boiling hours are treasured and not to be stolen from an underslept person. after this abominable racket goes on for a few minutes, liz, in a fit of sleepless anger, screams "CARTER! go away!! we want to sleep. come back at 10:30!!!!".

so he left.

and came back at 10:30.

so alyssa, michael (a friend from mt ayr, iowa) carter and myself in my tiny car going to canton. canton is where my old manager from work moved to. walmart, food, supplies was the mission of the day. canton was a quaint little town. i can see why joe moved there. it's a sweet place. the walmart wasn't too impressive, but oh well.

carter looked like he was either annoyed with the whole situation, was tired, or just didn't want to be around any of us. i realized something on the way to canton, in between fart jokes, riotous laughing sessions and instant crying stopping as quickly as it started....that carter had been doing reckless and carefree things like what the rest of us where doing, years ago. he's grown up and adult and much more mature than any of us. he has a job and a place to live and has everything we don't. we're just dumb little kids.

then i started to feel bad for bringing him with us. like he just wasn't happy being around 3 18 year old strange kids and it was very wrong of me to subject him to an afternoon of us. at any rate, we made it back to cornerstone in time to do..uh..nothing the rest of the night. we made a sign that said "home of liz, one_violent_femme, and alyssa 7ball message board" and stuck it on the front of our tarp. late in the afternoon, katie from the board came over and gave us huge hugs. i hadn't even talked to her that much before the fest, but now wish i had. she's a really great and loving person. she's got a cute minnesota-ish accent and her face was exploded in smile. it was cool to meet someone just from the sign on the tent.

i met our neighbor, jess. he was a strange and wonderful person. he had black hair that was bleached orange on the top and in tight curls that begged you to run your fingers through them. he sat near the road in a collapsible chair smoking kools and wearing barettes that had black feathers on them. he laughed really weirdly but just hearing him laugh made me laugh even harder.

THEN, that night, it started to rain. and uh, it didn't stop until the wee small hours of the morning. i went up to wash my face and when i came back, i was greeted by a whole tarpfull of faces, two of which were joel and christy. they are incredible people. they both gave good hugs and had wide eyed conversation for a few minutes before needing to head back to their tent before the floods would come. seeing them sit together made me just want to take picture after picture of them. they were begging for photos w/out saying a word. cuter than cute and ever so nice.

the rain kept coming all night. for most of the night, it was only liz and myself in the tent. alyssa was sleeping under the HM tent w/ friends. every few minutes, liz or i would get up and push the water off the roof the tent (the tarp had fallen down hours before. one of jess's friends came over and said "knock knock!! helloo??? knock knock??! uh, ma'am..your tarp fell down..." so i put clothes on and went outside, just to get pissed off and scream "forget it!" after he and i tried to put it back up in the torrential storm. alyssa came home somtime before the sun rose, and whined for an hour about how she had to pee. that, too, was a picture that should have been taken. a pant-less alyssa whining in lightsaber light about how she's gotta pee, but she can't uncross her legs to put pants on. liz and i were laughing so hard that we almost didn't care that we were nearly drowning.

the rain kept coming all night. through the floor, and a bit through the ceiling. somehow, by mid-morning *I* ended up the wettest. that still baffles me. i was in the middle of the two of them, liz gets almost untouched, alyssa the same..and me..? oh, i get soaked. my phrase for the week was "uh, if you can HEAR your blankets slap on the floor when you move them, they're wet. not 'ew...my blanket's wet cos it's a little damp'. no. that's not how it is." i was a bit mad and off-kilter when i woke from my whole night of no sleep at all. at least, not a wink of productive sleep.