Dying For Some Action

Tales from my doomed trip to Tennessee.

Illustration by Sarah Lammer

In the summer of 2009 seven friends and I loaded up two cars belonging to our parents and drove to Manchester, Tennessee from northern New Jersey. It was our first time going to Bonnaroo — the three-day music festival that I explained to my parents as the one “everyone should go to at least once in their life.” I had saved most of my stipend from a film distribution company I was interning at that summer to buy the $250 ticket. No one could stop us from making the trip that summer since Phish and Bruce Springsteen were headlining.

In hindsight, the trip was doomed from the beginning. Ric fell asleep for a split second at the wheel before we even stopped in Philly — Noah and I walked three miles off campsite to find a liquor store that would sell a case of Coors Light to our poor underage souls, only to get stuck on the side of a highway in a torrential downpour without any recollection of where our tent was.

As the third and final day wound down, we took adva…