Getting to Coachella

My Coachella story starts at the beginning of the year when they announced the lineup. Their had been rumors that Rage would be making a comeback at Coachella, and when they announced that it would be happening I knew I had to be at the show. So I sent the word out that I would be going to see if any of my friends wanted to come with me. Lester was in, and so was Joe. Lester and me had talked about possibly going to SXSW this year, however the lineup for Coachella was too good, so we figured this was the way to go. Anyway after the tickets went on sale we quickly all bought 3 day passes, and Lester and myself picked up cheap flights down to LAX for that weekend.

Now to backtrack a bit. In November of last year I tried to renew my passport, only to have it rejected due to a problem with my guarentar. I didn’t have time during the holiday season to get a new application done so I waited until the new year. This turned out to be a huge mistake as the new passport regulations imposed by the US government were just taking effect that required all non US citizens flying into the country to have a passport. This meant massive lineups at passport offices, and huge backlogs of applications.

After sorting out a new guarentar I sent out my new passport application in the middle of January. I figured it would be quicker to send the application than to go into an office. how wrong I was.

Fast forward a few months to the beginning of April. I have still yet to get any word back regarding my passport application, when I get another problem on my shoulders. Lester sends me an email and says, “Hey Stefan, did you remember to buy your camping pass, because it looks like they are now all sold out.”

So not only do I not have a passport, but now I don’t have any accommodations for that weekend. Things are not looking good for me. I call the passport office to inquire about my application. They tell me they have still not processed passports from the day my was received. They tell me I should wait another week and if it is still not there go and do an express application. So I go back to my parents place for a week to relax, and hope that my passport will be in the mail when I get back.

I get home from my trip to my parents to find a package from Canada Post. I quickly feel it out; the situation looks bad, the envolop appears too narrow to contain my passport. I then tear it open to find another rejected application. This time not because my guarentar was rejected (that part was fine), but because I failed to have him sign a photocopy of my drivers license. Retarded.

So now here I sit a good 10 days away from Coachella without a passport or accommodations, things couldn’t get worse could they?

Well I start to fill out my new passport application, and in order for the passport office to do an express application you need to show prof of travel. So I go and print out my flight only to notice that I made a huge flight, the date of my flight down to LAX was completely wrong. It had me leaving Friday instead of Thursday, which would have meant I would have missed an entire day of Coachella.

At this point I broke down. It seemed as if everything was going wrong with this trip, and that on some higher level something was conspiring against me to make this trip not happen. That is when I came to my senses and realized two things. All of these problems were my own doing, and all of these problems were fixable.

So that night I payed the $300 additional dollars and got my flight changed to the right date. The next day I brought my new passport application down to the Richmond passport office at 5am and waited with hundreds of others. Finally I did an extensive search online for people selling Coachella camping passes and reserved a car for the weekend.

In a few days I found a person in Vancouver selling camping passes for face value, and my passport was due for pickup a day before my flight.

Stress subsided, mistakes corrected, trip back in motion.

Thursday, 2pm sitting in an Air Canada plane, I finally realize the trip is going to happen, and that in a few short days I would be seeing Rage Against the Machine.

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I will be posting my Coachella review and photos soon. Stay tuned.