Cornerstone 1999: Jason’s Diary, June 29

Although I came down to Cornerstone a few days early in order to get a primo campsite, which we did, I’ll admit that I was pretty bored for a little while. You try to use those extra days to build up your reservoir of rest and stamina, but you can only do so much of that when the sun starts beating down on your tent and you’re sweating like you’ve just done several hours of heavy labor. And it’s only 8:00 in the morning.

Most of Tuesday was spent putzing around, doing little errands here and there and getting ready for the big days ahead. Since you can drive around the grounds fairly freely, due to the lack of big crowds (although the campgrounds are getting pretty crowded by this time), you usually run into town to pick up odds and ends.

It’s also one of the last times that you’ll get to use a real toilet, before you buckle down and start using the, ahem, “facilities” on the campground.

Also, by Tuesday night, people started showing up at the Asylum. I believe that today was when Jennie and Greer, two friends from #velvetempire (the Christian Goth IRC channel) showed up. I also met Christian, an incredibly hip fellow with an incredibly cool taste for Elvis moves and corny movies.

It was actually Tuesday night that I went to my first show. The Found Kids, a Christian group dedicated to reaching out the rave community, threw a dance at their campsite. Christian, Greer, and I headed out (I think someone else came with us, but I can’t remember) and hung out there for a little bit.

The DJ was quite good, putting out some excellent house and trance music, with some solid beats and bass. After hanging out there for a little bit, we headed back to the Asylum and hung out there a little bit longer. It was back to the campsite after that, to try and get a little more sleep before the sun smacked me upside the head (literally) at 7:00am.

Just a little note: when setting up a tent, never set it up on an incline and always make sure that the ground your tent will occupy doesn’t have any rocks. I forgot both of those little nuggets of wisdom and I suffered for it. I kept sliding down to one edge of my tent, and there was a nice rock located right under my hip, which poked me awake at some unknown hour in the night. I’m surprised I wasn’t bruised black and blue.

But even had I been, it wouldn’t have mattered — I was at Cornerstone.