Day Five was the shortest of our drives. Unfortunately, it was also the earliest show. We had a three-and-a-half-hour drive, and we had to be in Cedar City by 10:30 in the morning, so you can pretty much do the math on that. It was another crazy early morning. I was the first one up, at 5:45 again, so I took a shower and packed all up my stuff before anyone else was even awake. Then I took my camera out and went for a little walk to admire the scenery. I didn’t have to go far; just through Wendy’s orchard, actually.

When I returned, everyone else was up, and getting their stuff together to load up the van and head out. Wendy gave us huckleberry pie (or was it loganberry? Can’t quite remember. . .) and muffins, and then we raced off into the morning. We stopped at a truck stop along the way, where I saw two T-shirts that made me feel very disheartened with our society. They were marriage-related. One had stick-figure drawings of a smiling bride and a frowning groom above the caption, “Sentenced to life.” The other simply said, “All men are idiots, and I married their king.” Those made me really angry. I tried to imagine if I was married, and one day either my wife or I was wearing one of those shirts. Is the other person just supposed to laugh, or look away? I mean, if my theoretical wife wore a shirt that said, “my husband is the king of idiots”. . .well, actually, I don’t even need to finish that thought, because I’m NOT the king of idiots, and everyone who knows me (certainly anyone who’s likely to marry me) knows that very well.

Something else we found at this particular truck stop was hard-boiled eggs. We each bought a pack of two and devoured them, only to regret our decision about an hour later, when we all started to have stomach issues. We pulled over, ran inside, and absolutely destroyed the bathrooms at that next truck stop we arrived at. I hereby apologize to anyone who was in those bathrooms at the same time the three of us were.

But it wasn’t all eggs and poop. This was Utah, after all, so the scenery, even in the not-special areas, is breathtakingly beautiful. Breanna and I each took a lot of pictures just by rolling down the window of the van.

I’m sure there’s a way to get rid of those stupid power lines using Photoshop or something, but I don’t know how to do it, and the picture is pretty enough that I figured I’d include it nonetheless. Most of the pictures didn’t end up looking very good, but I managed to keep a few of my friends updated through pictures sent by text message also.

So finally we arrived in Cedar City, and we weren’t even very late. The sound crew had been working out some technical difficulties, so they were running a bit behind also. This bought us a little time to walk around, take pictures, get souvenirs, that sort of thing.

Each of the participating musicians got a T-shirt, but I splurged for a second one in a different color, and then I got a pin and a kazoo also. Breanna and Justin bought a frisbee, and a pin, and a nice little cloth bag. I walked around the grounds and talked for a while on the phone until Justin motioned for me that the group before us was almost done. We were the second group in the entire festival, so we watched the first group, tuned our instruments, and paced around the grassy backstage area.

Finally it was our turn. We were pretty nervous. We didn’t make any mistakes, but we just felt like mimes or something up there. There was one guy in the audience who kept yelling things to us. He wasn’t heckling us, but he was extremely drunk (incidentally, it was well before noon) and it was obnoxious. Luckily he liked us, or it could have been much worse. He clapped extremely slowly and out of time with the songs, on purpose. He also pointed at each of us in turn and yelled things like (to Breanna) “You have a really good voice!” and (to Justin) “Dude! You’re a really good guitar player!” and (to me, after I’d played a song on the melodica instead of the cello) “You’re good at. . .everything that. . .you do!” See what I mean? It was nice enough, but he still affected the flow of the show, and made us nervous.

So we finished our set and got off stage by about 1:30. We found the photographer guy who we’d been talking with earlier, and asked him to take a picture of us as soon as we put away our instruments.

It was really hot, and we were planning to be out and about for quite a while, so I wanted to go looking for a hat to protect myself from the sun. Breanna suggested that I wear her cowboy hat, which ended up looking really cool, so I wore it for the rest of the day, and actually got lots of compliments.

I know; I’m hot.

We were very relieved by the fact that we now had the rest of the day to ourselves. We went and checked into BestMotelInTheWest. There was an older couple checking in at the same time, who kept making jokes like, “Oh, we didn’t know that there would be live music in our room.” Ha ha. “Hey, that’s really great that we have musicians playing a free show just for us.” Ha ha. “Want to play us a song right here?” Ha ha.

After checking in, we went to our separate rooms and collapsed for a while. I unpacked my stuff and took a little mini-nap, and Justin and Breanna presumably did whatever young couples do when they’ve been cooped up in a van, or a house, or a studio apartment, for days on end, being constantly surrounded by at least one other person, then finally get some time to themselves. We met up afterwards, and walked over to get our complimentary meal at PizzaPlaceNamedAfterMafia. Naturally, our next plan was to find a bottle of wine or something for later.

That takes a bit of doing in Utah, where anything stronger than beer is controlled by the state, and has to be purchased at a liquor store. We were so sick of driving around in the van by this time that we were prepared to walk anywhere in Cedar City, no matter the distance or the heat. The nearest place was about a mile and a half away, and it was ninety-five degrees. Perfect.

Hey, look, it’s the Village People!

Nothing like a little shock value for the street full of locals driving by. But as you can see, I’m all about da ladeez. Howdy, ma’am. Much obliged.

So the three of us got what we wanted at the store, and then we walked the mile and a half back. We left our bounty in our respective motel rooms, and then went across the street to the festival to listen to some music and just check out The Scene a bit. We must have been there for a couple of hours, buying gifts, watching bands and getting more food, before we decided we were completely exhausted and done for the day. We headed back to the hotel, took some pictures. . .

. . .and then went our own ways. I can only imagine what those two ended up doing, but I talked on the phone with my friend again for about an hour and a half, and then watched cable TV shows, like Home Movies. The movie War Games also happened to be on, so I kept an eye on that while I wrote in my little notebook about the things I wanted to remember about the day. Things such as this; there are Gideon Bibles in just about every motel room in the country, but if you’re in a motel in Utah, you get a special bonus.

Hey, it’s a rock star’s life for me. Phone calls, Home Movies, War Games, the Book of Mormon. . .the debauchery just never ends.

Or DOES it? Find out for yourself in the next edition of. . .ON TOUR.

OneYearAgo