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Bonnaroo 2019 Day 1 – The Devil Went Down To Helsboro
Traditionally, my day 1 Bonnaroo blog usually consists of a sentence or two explaining that, while you may well have to wait upwards of 3+ hours to enter the Farm after arriving in Manchester TN, that’s pretty average for a music festival and it’s well worth the price of entry.

That being said, the first few days of Bonnaroo 2019 were marred by the worst possible festival arrival infrastructure, planning, and execution that I have ever seen. Although I hesitate to spend too much time focusing on the negative side of a festival based around the idea of positivity, I think it’s healthy to express just how dangerous and unprofessional the treatment of Bonnaroo attendees was prior to entering the festival. Here are just a few facts that may paint a clearer picture of what happened between arriving in Tennessee and entering the Bonnaroo music festival:
- My caravan left the Manchester Walmart at approximately 2:30 PM, just a little after we usually leave every year. This is our caravan’s seventh year of traveling to the festival and my fourth year. We know what to usually expect when it comes to arriving at Bonnaroo.
- Thanks to a thunderstorm that came as quickly as it went combined with a lack of planning and signage, we were redirected down the main highway that runs through town. Lanes got blocked up and the police were called in to solve the mess they had created.
- We were all directed down the highway in the opposite direction until finally being directed down a back road, christened “Helsboro” (aka Hilsboro) by most of our caravan and Reddit at large.
- There we sat in the breakdown lane of a country road with thousands of other eager festival goers. Tractor trailer trucks sped by as the minutes turned into hours and the day turned to night. We eventually started counting how many cars were going in the opposite direction had a “Bonnaroo Car Pass” on their window, indicating that they had been in line and decided to turn around for a different path into the festival.
- After hours of waiting, some festival goers relieved themselves in nearby fields. Personally, I don’t blame them, given that they could either walk miles down the road to the nearest gas station or give up the place in line that they had already invested 5+ hours into. The whole situation was FUBAR for those who had paid hundreds of dollars for their tickets and driven potentially thousands of miles to attend, as well as the Manchester natives who wanted nothing to do with the festival.
- Naturally, our caravan argued the merits of turning around and ignoring the directions of the Coffee County Police Department to try for a better chance at the main highway entrance. Eventually, around midnight, we decided that it had already been 10 hours and we were fed up with the lack of communication, the lack of phone service, and the lack of police presence on a dark, country road where thousands of festival goers were turning off their cars to conserve gas, therefore making the entire scene even more dangerous.
- We turned around and joined a growing line of angry, sleep deprived, and hungry festival goers along the highway in an only slightly less dangerous predicament. Another 2 and a half to 3 hours later, we arrived at the Farm. It took us from 2:30 PM to 3:30 AM the next day to enter the music festival.
The “redirected” waiting patiently in traffic.

Imagine the frustration we all felt when, after twelve hours of waiting, we finally arrived back at the Walmart that we had originally left from that afternoon. Some in our caravan had arrived in Manchester from their 1,100 mile road trip only to sit in line for another thirteen hours. We couldn’t even be mad, that’s how exhausted we were.

What is normally a festive experience was instead a frustrating and depressing exercise in “claiming” our little plot of dirt in a field full of people. That was our reward for driving across the country, paying hundreds of dollars, taking a week off of work, and then waiting more than half a day in our cars; a campsite the size of my KIA Sedona. That’s how arriving at Bonnaroo 2019 felt.

To top it all off, the first thing I did after setting up camp was lock both my pair and my girlfriend’s spare keys in our van. $60 and an annoying ride on in a go-cart later, I was able to finally lay down to sleep at 5 AM. The sun was already coming up. The first day of Bonnaroo was officially screwed.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Byp6fuzBRwZ/

After waking up and attempting to salvage what was left of the first day of the festival, my girlfriend and I were able to see Donna Missals and a part of the Grand Ole Opry. Donna was simply amazing and was well worth crawling out of the funk that Helsboro had put me in to see at 1 PM in the Tennessee heat. After that, however, we decided that we were still too tired to do anything of note, so we went back to camp, relaxed, and eventually went to bed early. So much for a four-day music festival.
Tips for Dealing with a Situation that is Incredibly Screwed Up But Entirely Out of Your Control
1. Breath: It would be worthless for me to spend any time trying to prepare you for entering Bonnaroo if that is something you still think is a good idea after reading this blog post. Seven years of preparation could not save my caravan from the total fiasco that was arriving at Bonnaroo this year. If you intend on taking the plunge, all I can suggest is that you remember to breath. Breathing carefully can help keep you calm, lower your heart rate, and make it easier to deal with situations that are entirely out of your control.
2. Stay Safe: Despite the fact that Bonnaroo’s treatment of arriving attendees on Wednesday was unprofessional and downright dangerous, there are always precautions you can take to limit your risks while waiting 12+ hours in the breakdown lane. For example, don’t wander aimlessly across a dimly lit road after sundown while tractor trailers fly by.
3. Drink Plenty of Water: If you are in a situation where you don’t have proper access to food and water (maybe because you were redirected onto a country road and didn’t prep for Fyre festival), make sure to prioritize clean, potable water. Hydrate or dydrate.
4. Drag Corporations Online: When all else fails, air your grievances against global corporate entities loudly and publicly. The catharsis is almost worth putting up with their bullshit. It’s not and I would never wish it on anyone, but it almost feels worth it in the moment. Get your pitchforks and sharp wit ready.
To make a long story short, we did really enjoy Bonnaroo 2019 despite all that happened. You should always prepare for the unexpected when traveling to a music festival, but sometimes things are completely screwed and out of your control. In those moments, you just have to push through and remember what really brings us all together. I fully intend to spend the rest of this series thoroughly detailing our experiences and adventures on the Farm, but I would be remiss to gloss over the first day and half of Bonnaroo 2019 like it never happened.

Stay tuned for next week when we go over what happened on the second day of Bonnaroo, including a review of Childish Gambino’s set, my first experience seeing Phish, and much more.
July 3, 2019
AutoChess Review – A Refreshing Blast from the Past

If you would have told me that a Chinese mobile game would be my latest obsession only three months ago, I would have had a hard time believing you. Sure, I’ve dabbled in mobile gaming before, but I usually prefer to play puzzle games like Sudoku or Picross over more complex games. Then, Auto Chess caught my attention.

I just so happened to be browsing Twitter one fateful day when I read a Tweet about a popular DotA 2 mod turned mobile game. Players were arguing that Value and Riot Games shouldn’t be so quick to copy the hard work of devoted modders by releasing their own official Auto Chess game modes. Word through the grapevine was that anyone who respected the hard work of the mod community (e.g. me) should support the official version of Auto Chess released by Dragonest Co. Eager to try it out, I downloaded the app on my phone and dug in.

Not only is Auto Chess essentially an old Warcraft 3 map brought back to life on my smartphone sixteen years later, but it’s also a fantastically addictive mobile game to boot. Those two things are exactly what I need in my life right now, as weird as it sounds. One of my favorite aspects of the Warcraft 3 modding community that I sorely miss is the propensity towards designing games that essentially play themselves. This, combined with the theme of snowballing power creep brought me immediately back to playing custom maps on Battle.net.

Since the game was originally developed as a DotA 2 custom mode, each “chess” piece is based off a hero from Defense of the Ancients. If you’ve spent any time playing either DotA Allstars or DotA 2, you’ll feel right at home in Auto Chess. If you haven’t, don’t worry; the game is actually quite simple once you get the basics.

In Auto Chess, you select a chess piece from among a random selection of five different pieces each round. You place pieces on the board and at the start of every round the pieces you’ve played come to life to fight against either another player’s pieces or a selection of A.I. controlled “creeps.” Sometimes these creeps drop items which you can equip to specific chess pieces. Each chess piece has a role, similar to their DotA counterparts, and both a race and a class associated with them. These identifiers make up the core mechanic of Auto Chess, and essentially boil down to a game of mixing and matching colored symbols. Combining chess pieces of specific races or classes provides your whole team with special bonuses. You can also combine three or more of a specific type of chess piece to upgrade their rank and increase their stats.

If you can understand a gambling game about matching up three of a kind, you can play Auto Chess.

Some of my favorite aspects of Auto Chess are also tied directly to its design towards mobile. For example, I get a great sense of pride from performing well enough in Auto Chess that I can actively ignore my phone and know I still have a good chance of winning the match. It’s also handy to not have to constantly be paying attention to a mobile game since you are encouraged to play them on the go and are therefore more prone to being interrupted.

Let’s go back to that hypothetical that I started this all with and flip it around. If you went back to my high school self and told him that I would be playing what was essentially a Warcraft 3 custom map on my phone and having a blast, he would probably be ecstatic. This jenky little mobile game has stolen my heart at a point when I really needed a pick-me-up. Do I think I’ll be playing this game in 6 months? For my sake, I hope not. That being said, I’m having a ball right now and will enjoy the hell out of this ride while it lasts.

I give Auto Chess 4 George Costanzas out of 5.

June 22, 2019
Bonnaroo 2019 Day 0 – Road Tripping Down to Manchester, TN
Another Bonnaroo is in the bag, I’ve made it home safe after driving the approximately 2,000 miles roundtrip, and I’m ready to start blogging about this year’s festival in as much detail as possible while the memories are still fresh. I’m hoping to publish one post a week for each day of Bonnaroo starting from the day we left home to the day we got back, similar to how I outlined my experiences at Bonnaroo last year. My goal is to provide tips, hints, and advice from my four years of experience attending Tennessee’s premier music festival, while also showing off some of the photos/footage I was able to capture during my time on the farm. In case you missed it, I’ve already posted about some of the preparation that I went through before shipping off a week and a half ago. Without further adieu, this is what happened during my road trip down to Manchester, TN.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BynReB_hA9o/

As my fourth Bonnaroo, this year was supposed to run as smooth as butter. My girlfriend and I planned on reaching Tennessee around Tuesday afternoon, giving us enough time to relax in a nearby town, eat at our favorite local restaurant, and rest up for move-in day. Little did I know just how much rest we would need.

Just like last year, we stopped in New York to visit family before continuing on our way down the East Coast of the United States towards the land of country music and whiskey. The road was actually very kind to us on the trip down. We managed to sleep the night in Pennslyvania before making our way through Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia.

Unlike 2018, however, this time we came prepared. One of my main pre-Roo projects was to outfit my KIA Sedona with a mattress, curtains, and a propane stove, as well as my normal Bonnaroo luggage. The job was a bit shabbier than I had intended it to be, but at the end of the day, we found a way to cheaply and safely sleep in our vehicle.

In terms of lessons learned, I’d say I could have spent a bit more time trimming and sowing the curtains so that they were a bit easier to handle and we could have put a larger mattress in the back for added space and comfort. Since we stored most of our camping gear underneath the bed, the design of the back of the van did make it rather difficult to maneuver within the vehicle and access all of the items we had stored without stepping out. That being said, the restriction to have to get out of bed to grab a drink or snack was only ever an issue outside of the festival itself and could be easily fixed if we attempt a similar setup on a different road trip.

A windshield cover helped keep the van cool during the day and provide additional privacy. For the back window, we managed to cover it with a combination of spare pillows and a tarp. Finally, we took a small blanket and wrapped it around the headrests of the driver’s and passenger’s seats, obscuring the view from either of the front windows into the back of the vehicle. Cracking a few windows and hanging a rechargeable fan from the ceiling helped keep cool air circulating. Once everything was set up, we had what amounted to a cute capsule hotel in the back of our van.

https://www.instagram.com/p/By6bzHmhadr/

Although I know a lot of people who tag team their way through the trip nonstop, I would always suggest that you get a good night’s rest whenever driving long distances. If you have enough drivers to make it safely without taking a break, go for it, but I always air on the side of comfort, safety, and relaxation when given the opportunity. There are enough rest areas and Walmart parking lots down Route 81 to stop and get a few Z’s in before getting back on the road.
Tom’s Travel Tips
1. Pack Light: For the sake of my own anxiety, I always air on the side of packing light and getting whatever else I need either on the road or once I arrive at my destination. We made sure to pack plenty of beverages, snacks, and toiletry supplies, but left our cooler empty and waited to purchase the lion’s share of our other pantry items when we stopped at the Walmart in Manchester.
2. Bring a Friend: Even if you prefer driving (like I do), it’s always good to bring a friend along for a long road trip. Not only will you appreciate the company, but it helps to have an extra person handy if you need someone to take over driving or if you need prefer to let someone else navigate.
3. Be Flexible: No road trip (or any kind of trip for that matter) will go perfectly according to plan. You need to make sure that you have the flexibility to adjust your plans if something comes up, whether that be by packing for redundancy or preparing yourself mentally to tackle any obstacle that may cross your path. Once you embrace going with the flow, everything else will work out just fine.
4. Share Your Location: Big Brother may be an unfortunate reality of our times, but it doesn’t come without its own set of perks. Google Maps allows you to share your GPS location with others, making it easy for a third party to watch over your progress and provide assistance remotely if need be. It even tracks the battery life on your phone.
5. Drive Safe: If you’re planning on driving down South to visit Bonnaroo, please drive safe. Not only are the roads packed with tractor trailer trucks and other road trippers, but the local police are looking for any reason to pull over unsuspecting festival goers on their way to the farm. Don’t give them any reason to harass you. Staying safe is the easiest way to ensure a stress-free trip.
We fully intended our trip down to Tennessee to be as uneventful as possible, and I think we successfully accomplished that at least. It wasn’t until we arrived that things started to get hairy. Stay tuned next week when I cover how the move-in day went, how to prepare for the worst, and what to do when the worst somehow gets even more tedious and frustrating.
June 20, 2019
Bonnaroo 2019 – Preparing for the 1,000 Mile Road Trip
Bonnaroo 2019 is quickly approaching. This time next week, I’ll be relaxing in my campsite, bracing myself for the Tennessee mid-day heat. Before I get there, however, there’s a lot of preparation that I have to get done. In this post, I hope to outline a few of the most important items for any Bonnaroo fan to bring and things that I forget every year.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BxaQw82nmQx/

First of all, register your wristband. That’s key. I also decided to sign up for the auto-payment feature through Paypal so that I don’t have to fuss about having my card on hand during the festival. Once the basics are established, then it’s time to pack for the road trip:
1. Cooler: Although our Bonnaroo plan involves creating a large group camp, we still need to bring a cooler for ourselves while we’re on the road. We purchased a cooler on our trip to Maine last month, so that’s what we’re going to use this year. Our travel companions will be carrying the larger cooler for our campsite.
2. Tent: We don’t plan on using our tent for Bonnaroo, given how hot it can get in the morning with or without a canopy. However, it is still essential to have some sort of shelter if all else fails. Also, who knows what might happen if someone needs to borrow a tent.
3. Solar Shower: Sometimes it’s worth renting a motel room just to get a good shower. Othertimes, there’s a solar shower. Live Nation has done a great job to increase the quality and access to showers in Bonnaroo proper, so this may not come in handy during the festival, but it is a great way to save a few bucks either way.
4. Bed: Since we’re driving down in a van, we’re assembling a bed in the back to give us a nice place to sleep on the drive down to Bonnaroo. Thankfully, with enough ventilation and a canopy to keep out the heat, the back of the van becomes a cool little hideout to escape from the hustle and bustle of Bonnaroo.
5. Snacks: Although we usually pick up food for Bonnaroo itself at the Manchester Walmart, we always bring plenty of snacks for the drive down. Although the GSP says it’ll take ~16 hours, it’s more like 20-22 if we include stopping to eat, sleep, and pee. We’re going to want to bring a lot of snacks that I can eat, given how little I’ll be able to snack on at Southern gas station pit stops.
6. Medicine: Gotta always take your medicine.
7. Extra Car Supplies: Although I’ve tried my best to ensure that our vehicle is prepped for the trip, it is always wise to prepare for the worst. In our case, we bring a spare tire (not a doughnut), puncture repair kit, and some extra rags and tools if need be. Worst case scenario, we have AAA and festival insurance in our back pocket.
Now that the van is packed, the next step is to ensure that I have everything packed for my time at Bonnaroo. Usually, I try to pack light and load up on luxury items like food and comfortable clothes. I’ll be bringing mostly shorts, with a few pairs of pants and sweat pants for colder nights, mostly t-shirts or light button-ups, my raggedy pair of Nikes I bought to bring to Japan two years ago and my knock-off Timberland boots in case of Mudderoo. Always be prepared.

As mentioned previously, we also plan to bring a reflective tarp to act as a canopy over our van during the day to help keep it cool inside. We’re bringing sheets and other tapestries to hang from our easy-up as well. Solar lights wrapped around the campsite will help keep the place illuminated at night. Unlike previous years, I think I’ll be bringing a small propane camping stove to heat water for morning tea, coffee, oatmeal, etc. Fingers crossed.

I was tempted to bring my guitar this year, but given its sentimental value to me, I don’t want to chance anything happening to it. That being said, I recommend anyone with musical talent to bring their instruments and get things going back at camp during off hours.

My girlfriend and I are very excited to make it down to Tennessee again this year, but at this point, it’s just a case of making sure we have everything we need to bring before we ship out. Once we do, it should be smooth sailing from there.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjtGX4jHYDc/

There’s a chance I get another blog post out before we leave, but it’s slim. Better chance I publish something on the road. Thankfully, there’s a lot yet to discuss! Stay tuned here, on my Instagram, and on Twitter for more updates, blog posts, and musings.
June 7, 2019
Why Rift was the Best MMORPG for Me

There’s this prevailing sentiment among video game players that there is an objective ruler upon which you can evaluate all games. For the rest of us that live with at least one leg firmly planted in reality, we realize that art and entertainment are never that simple. Some games do very well financially to little critical acclaim, while some critical darlings go mostly ignored by the masses. Some games may not even register on your average Forknife tween’s radar, but they may still have had a profound effect on the people who enjoyed them.

MMORPGs are especially difficult to discuss like this due to their temporary nature. Despite what game publisher PR departments want you to believe, you can never go home again, at least not to Azeroth or Telara. MMOs are designed to constantly be in flux, relying heavily on player engagement to make the experience feel whole. I mention this because one of my favorite games of all time was what some in more niche gaming scenes might consider a failure, a fly-by-night World of Warcraft clone that did little more than distract fans until the next expansion by Blizzard.

This summary couldn’t be farther from the truth, as Rift did much more than temporarily steal a portion of WoW’s audience. Trion World’s debut MMO invited gamers into a rich fantasy world with an emphasis on player expression, exploration, and cooperation, at a time when World of Warcraft was dealing with massive blowback from its community about the difficulty of Cataclysm content compared to the WotLK expansion, among other things. Telara wasn’t just Azeroth 2.0, instead offering a welcome alternative that pushed the experience in other directions. While WoW’s cataclysm was revitalizing how traditional questing was done, Rift stuck to a more familiar formula and tried expanding on the core MMO experience instead of reinventing it.

Rift was developed at an interesting time in MMO history, one most memorable for the string of game publishers trying to cash in on the WoW craze just as WoW was waning in popularity and trying to revamp itself. A big complaint gamers had about the streamlining of MMO design was that it often leads to players AFKing in one or two major cities, stopping only to queue into a dungeon or check their auction house sales. Rift’s answer to this was it’s namesake Rifts that opened up throughout the game and offered players an incentive to explore Telara and cooperate with other players to defend it against invading forces.

On paper, this idea sounds revolutionary. In reality, it ended up playing like a slightly more engaging group quest from other, similar titles. But, what it lacked in mechanics it made up for in atmosphere and worldbuilding, both of which are paramount to my experience playing an MMORPG. Sure, you could theoretically ignore the invaders and go about your business, but for those playing for the sake of adventure, it provided a great distraction from the more basic questing system.

Rifts weren’t the only thing keeping players engaged, however. In between the planar invasion and rifts opening up, players could also (eventually) click a button to immediately be grouped together with other players and thrust directly into a group quest, jump into dungeons, raids, and smaller raid-style encounters. They even eventually offered more casual players access to raid content through more intimate encounters using similar assets and environments. Essentially, if you were a PvE MMO fan, Rift probably had something for you.

That being said, it did leave a bit to be desired in terms of Player versus Player mechanics. World PvP never seemed as lively as it should, perhaps because the open-world provided much more interesting endeavors than PKing unsuspecting newbs (An Ex Por, y’all), but there were plenty of instanced opportunities to kill your fellow man. Thankfully, I was more than happy to dip my toe in Warfronts before returning to my much more comfortable time murdering A.I. controlled monsters en masse.

For me, Rift was perfect because I was pretty disappointed with World of Warcraft at the time and found a fresh, yet familiar approach to a game genre I had thoroughly enjoyed for more than a decade at that point. It was obviously not for everyone, but I hope that people give the game a chance despite the fact that it will probably never live up to my fond memories of time spent in Telara.

May 18, 2019