Swampass B-Gone!

Ten Years.

I've been going to the Philadelphia Folk Festival, i.e. The Happiest Place on Earth, for 10 years. Since 1996, actually, making this my eleventh show. In a row.

On our first trip, Greg and I went on a Friday afternoon, parked a pup tent on the only place available -- a 45 degree slope to which Pythagoras would give a hearthy thumbs up -- and went to see some music. That night, it began to pour. The sort of rain that makes you want to trade your tent in for an ark. But under some trash bags, we perservered, and got to watch David Wilcox amazingly sing the rain away, first by appeasing it with a few rain-themed songs like his "Eye of the Hurricane" (which is really about a motorcycle, but the man loves a metaphor like I love cheese fries), and then by easing into some sun-centric music ("Sunshine on the Land," and "Here Comes the Sun" spring to mind. And even though it was pitch dark out, it worked. For the rest of the concert and some time after, the rain stoppped. Life was good. (True, it started again later that night after we'd sacked out. And when we woke up, or tent had slid about 50 feet toward closer to sea level. But still, that was a magic show.)

That's not the only time it's rained, of course. We danced like hell in that rain, listening to the Saw Doctors lay it down a few years ago. (I think that was Kathy's first fest -- so is that seven or eight? Jaysis.) And once we took refuge in a friend's cool-ass bus, and returned to the three-man tent to find water seeping in at ever seam.

But often -- very often -- it's just hot. Awful, sticky hot. Egg-fryin', chocolate-meltin' hot. Slow-cooked-barbecue hot. Re-entering Earth's Atmosphere hot. And it doesn't have to be nearly that hot for me to sweat like I'm in the heart of the sun.

So, after ten years, I did what any sensible human being would have done after one. I bought a shower!

A nice camp shower you can see right here. Now, I know it won't keep me clean. It won't keep me half clean, to be perfectly honest. This is camping after all, and I'll be living among the dirt and the bugs and the old folkies and nuveau-hippies and granola chix. But there's gonna be a moment or two every day, when a certain 15 percent of me is going to feel clean. Clean, I say!

And that 15 percent makes all the difference.

Rob