First of all, it was hot. So hot. I'm not sure you can understand how hot it was unless you stand outside in it for five hours. I'm not sure I understood how hot it was going to be until I was willingly dumping water over various parts of my body and loving the feeling of wet clothing. Also, it might have been when I accepted my dirty feet. I hate dirt. I can't stand being dirty. But I just gave in. Let it go. It was just too damn hot to care about some piddling dirt on my feet.
If it hadn't been so hot, Kate and I would have had a MUCH better experience. As it was, this is what we heard: musical snatches of: Satellite Party, Tegan and Sara, Dinosaur Jr. and Arcade Fire. We caught most of Ben Kweller (from the shade), all of the Killers, and about half of Death Cab for Cutie. And then we left. If you check out the Lolla map on the Lollapalooza website, you can see that the stage area was rectangular. And let me tell you, until about 6:30 (at which point Kate and I were happily eating bad-for-us food at a chain restaurant with air conditioning), that entire rectangle was sunny. No shade anywhere.
Kate and I opted to stay out of the sun. We were almost dying in the shade, and I don't think either one of us could stand the thought of standing in a crowd, in the sun. Ick. We would have seen all of Arcade Fire if it hadn't been sunny and 109 degrees. Oh well.
We both drank probably close to 64 ounces of water each, in about five hours. And neither one of us had to pee. That's how much sweat was pouring off of us. (Nice not to have to make use of porta-potties, though.) It was miserable. Twice, Kate said to me, "I can't believe we're actually doing this. I thought you would ask if I really wanted to do this." Kate, I was thinking the same thing about you. But hell, we did it. We survived. I'm not sure that either one of us actually enjoyed the experience, but were it not 110 degrees, we'd go again.
Put it this way: we could see what would have been enjoyable about the experience had the weather not been so ghastly.
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