Where In The World Is Evan?

It was Sunday afternoon, and the last in a string of baking hot days. My tent sat pitched in the levy of the drought stricken Goulburn Valley River, and I sat unmoving on a warm esky out front, pulling what was probably my 20th cone for the morning.

Feeling a slight jab of pain on my right foot I looked down. Swarming over the myriad of cuts and abrasions on my battered feet were a dozen or more flies. As I waved my hand half-heartedly over my feet, they lifted off and hovered annoyingly around my head. Bending over to get a closer look, I idly scratched the freshly laid maggots from the open wound and crawled back into my 40 degree tent.

Welcome to day three of the Earthcore Global Carnival!

Day 1 - Friday

In a masterful display of reckless negligent driving by J, what should have been a two hour drive out of town took five—involving speeding, running a red light, driving on the wrong side of the road,  making a u-turn on a divided freeway into oncoming traffic, and all the while with no tail lights and illicit drugs concealed throughout the car.

After getting to the party in one piece, we set up camp and began drinking. Considering the 30+ degree weather forecast for the weekend, we’d decided to drink vodka and Gatorade, rather than beer. What we’d not really thought through was that whilst in small quantities Gatorade is indeed very hydrating, there is only so much salt and electrolytes that one person can absorb.

Having largely abstained from alcohol in the last few months, drinking half a bottle of vodka in the space of a few hours hit me a little harder than I’d intended. Feeling pretty smashed by the late afternoon I decided to grab a couple of hours rest before the music really kicked off. Waking up a couple of hours later I was racked with nausea. Managing to stagger a few steps from my tent I violently emptied my stomach of a green salty Gatorade paste.

J arrived just in time to catch the end of this, and convinced me that now would be a good time to drop our first e and hit the dance floor. Unfortunately our pills were both weak and cut with ketamine, so I took another in pretty short order. Unable to really shake the lethargy of the heat and booze, coupled with the anesthetising effect of the k, I retreated back to my tent. Before I knew it, however, I was bolt upright again and vomiting all over the floor. Reaching for the nearest thing of use I tossed my towel over the mess and fumbled in the dark for what I thought was my water bottle. After chugging back a few gulps the unmistakable tang of bong water filled my nose and burned my throat. With no time to move, I threw it all back up, over the last remaining clean patch on my towel.

After sleeping off the worst of the nausea I got up and went for a bit of a wander, checking out who was playing on the different dance floors. Still feeling pretty dazed from the K, I returned to the tent and with a great effort of will power I dragged my sleeping bag and air-mattress outside, then collapsed. As I lay sprawled out on the ground I reached into my pocket and downed five mushroom caps.

Considering my recent abstinence from hard drugs my trip unsurprisingly turned highly introspective and focused on my reasons and motivations for drug use. Having taken both ecstasy and mushrooms so many times before the novelty of the drugs seem to have worn off. For them to be all they can be the people you take them with are crucial. And as I lay under the stars that night I lamented that the friends most important to me are scattered around the world.

Day 2 - Saturday

After waking late I fried up some eggs and bacon for J and I, while he fanned the pan to keep the huge swarm of flies back from our food. Having worked up a bit of a sweat from the cooking we set off for a mid-morning swim in the river. I, however, had completely forgotten about my prior mishap with the towel. After a good long swim I rubbed myself down, from head to toe, with a towel covered in snot, vomit and bong water. Not noticing the rank smell, I didn’t realise what I’d done till I returned to the tent and found a six inch long streak of mucus across the back of my towel. The afternoon was then spent smoking pot and going for another swim… after deciding it was best to simply ignore the towel situation, and keep using it.

By the evening, the excess of the previous day was still slowing me down, so I attempted to purchase some LSD to boost my mood. Unfortunately a general scarcity of acid foiled that plan, and a brief shock from a police sniffer dog convinced that I should finish off my drugs. Having only two pills left I dropped them both and hit the dance floor. K, however, is a dirty drug and I was soon laying down back at my tent. When J brought back a chick I gave them some space and returned to dancing.
 
Day 3 – Sunday

Around 3am I finally got my second wind, and danced like a mad-man to thumping psytrance until 7am. After bumming a couple of mushroom caps of J, and learning that the headline acts weren’t going to play, I returned to bed to get some much needed rest. As I lay in the tent the temperature just continued to rise and rise. When a gust of wind blew down the shade tarp, which we’d rigged up in a rather rustic manner using fallen branches, the heat became intolerable. Crawling outside to sit on the esky I soon became the repository for fly larvae and had to return to my oven of a tent.

After the sun went down and it became cool enough to drive, we packed up camp and drove home in a burstingly full car, along with J’s friend from the previous night. Arriving home after midnight we sat around smoking pot till 6:30 am then crashed into bed.