***
Let me begin by saying the 12th Tom Waits Festival waaayyyyyyy exceeded all my expectations of a cool party. I literally had the best time I've had in about 6 years. Well maybe a tie with the total eclipse of the sun in Feb 98 on Curaçao. But that only lasted about 4 minutes. THIS lasted 25 HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The story begins on Friday the 26th of October in the year 2002. I boarded a train bound for Penn Station New York to catch a charter bus bound for Uncle Bob's Dead Battery Farm. It left from this diner a block from the train station.
The bus ride took about 2 hours.
After the bus ride, I set up my tent in the rain, in the dark, holding a flashlight in my mouth and drooling all over it. There was a preparty in two parts, one bar in the basement and one up a hill in the back yard. Slowly, everyone went to bed.
When it became apparent I was up later than 75% of those present, I decided to head on up to the ol' tent and try and crash. I called up several people on the cell phone and wound up reaching Ohio and talking to Jessica for a half hour. We had never talked on the phone at length before. It was more than just kinda fun. She has a really cute twang to her voice that I like. It seemed like she liked talking to me too. Then my battery was dying and she had to get off the phone anyway. Soon afterward, I fell asleep.
The next day, at 6:00 am, TW12 began. But, in my humble opinion, it didn't REALLY start picking up speed until there was a COUCH TOBOGGAN RACE!
Then there was a scavenger hunt, which didn't lend itself too well to being photographed. Still, I managed to get a few good pictures.
Quite possibly my favorite event of the entire party was the POTATO CANNON firing! A manned target up on top of the hill involved a dunking tank which may or may not have contained water.
Then the annual sailboat regatta took place. Good and bad pictures were taken. I'll show you the good ones.
...mmmMMMEAT!!! ...mmmMMMEAT!!!. Not for the vegetarian of heart.
At some point during the day, the sun came out. Some people didn't like it, others did. I did. This page contains candid shots of people. I was getting a bit comfortable you see.
Time for the Iron Chef competition. Or was it the Iron Stomach competition? Could it be they used wild picked mushrooms? That could explain the creepy hallucinations I was having on the train ride home, and how I still feel like my body has been injected with hot sand today.
Sunset! Dark! Time for drinking lots and lots of water, and hearing bands and meeting beautiful women. Like Laetizza who wouldn't tell me how her name was spelled, so I had to guess.
The evening wore on and on and on and I LIKED IT!
oof! OUCH! oh my GOD! aaaAAAAaa! *wails* *yells* D'oh! [THUMP] [THUMP] D'oh! [THUMP] ow ow ow! (you get the picture.) Now I know how it would feel after falling off a cliff, bouncing off the cliff face about 20 times, and then at the bottom getting run over by a train.
Of course I feel better now.