Welcome to my trip down to the two-day 2006 Coachella Music Festival in the desert outside Palm Springs, California!

ABOVE: me sitting and our Chrysler 300C car rental in the Coachella parking lot.

ABOVE: the main reason for driving 10 hours south of San Francisco - MADONNA!

BELOW: Luck of all luck, Tiffany and I were able to score free VIP front-stage passes that let us stand right in front of all the action, just 25 feet away from Lady M!  Seating this great can run in excess of $1,000 but all we had to do was run 300 yards through the sun scorching desert heat to be among the first few fans in line at her music tent - beating out hundreds of other funs who were in competition for the same VIP passes.  I tell ya, all that time invested at the gym really paid off!

ABOVE AND BELOW: Madonna performing at the festival.  Yep, we got THAT close to her. . . and got to see aspects of her that most fans don't get to see from afar.  ;-}

Tiffany at the dance tent.  There were five performance venues at the music festival which meant that at any given time, five groups/bands/musicians/artists were performing and we could just walk around and sample whatever type of music we were in the mood for.

In general, our favorite tent was the wine and beer tent!  I tell ya though, mixing alcohol and desert heat can be a real tricky combination!

ABOVE AND BELOW: slightly scandalous imagery of Tiffany dancing around the music tent.  Tiffany had asked me to rip the collar on her shirt just a little bit, but apparently I got all excited and nearly ripped the shirt in half!  Oops, my bad!  Worry not though, we managed to tie up the shirt eventually and reduced the free peepshow everyone got for a few minutes.

Me harkening back to the lessons learned on tying cloth into head wraps while in Saudi Arabia.  Gotta protect all that real estate upstairs from the desert sun!

We were very happy with our car rental.  Despite gasoline costing $3.50 - $3.70 a gallon these days in California, we figured that doing the 10 hour drive in comfort would be well worth the price - and it was!

Me starting to roast in the early morning desert sun out in the campground surrounded by thousands of other campers.  Not a bad lodging deal tho: $35 for the whole weekend, which included Porto potties, shower trailers, teeth brushing sinks and food stalls.  We just couldn't get away from the sun and the heat.

Me not looking terribly impressed first thing in the morning being woken up by the sun pounding in through the walls of the tent.  Gotta love all that steam and body moisture greeting me first thing in the a.m.!