Digital Johnny, Real Johnny

Vacation Pictures 2: Phish's last show ever (Coventry, VT)

Thursday, August 12, 2004

The bus ride from Jamestown to Buffalo took about 2 hours. I saw Lake Erie - it looked like the ocean. My train, which started in Toronto, arrived 1.5 hours late after being held up at US customs. It was a long, boring, barely comfortable ride that took just over 6 hours. I arrived in Albany just under 2 hours late, and was so incredibly glad to see Susan. Not only because I hadn't seen her since just after school ended, but it's always nice to see a friendly face after a frustrating, nearly 300 mile trip across the entire state of New York on what I consider to be public transportation. BTW, I didn't just rent a car because you have to be 25 to rent a car in New York state and that won't happen for me until this coming March.

This is as much as I got to see of downtown Albany on the way to Libby's. Susan worked in one of those big buildings this summer.

Anyway, we immediately went to her friend Libby's house, where I quickly packed my backpack with stuff for the weekend and we set off for Coventry Vermont in Libby's dad's 4 wheel drive jeep, piled high with blankets, pillows, water, beer, beer, more beer, chips and our clothes. We were in Plattsburgh, NY by midnight (where I called my dad in Jamestown from a payphone to assure him I had made it to Albany alive) and inside Vermont by 1am... where it was too late to buy beer because you can't do that in Vermont after midnight.

Susan at a gas station just over the Vermont border

Friday, August 13, 2004

We found the line (of cars) at around 2:30 in the morning, and only had to wait 4 cars to turn left into the main line, but there were headlights as far as we could see to the right of us... so I guess we lucked out and came the "magical" way. The line moved very slowly, but at least it was moving. I was glad to finally take off my seat belt so I could take part in the front-seat conversation and stand outside the car for a bit. There were funny signs on the way, asking people to keep Vermont clean and to not litter. This was my (and our) favorite:

We said this phrase a lot over the weekend, and tried to not leave butts on the ground.

When we finally got to the place where your car was to get searched and you got cool wristbands in exchange for your tickets (for entry into the actual concert venue Saturday and Sunday), we were barely searched but we saw some other people really getting it. It was 5:45am by the time we got in the final line that was to take us where we were to park/camp. I tried to get pictures of how amazingly massive the fields were (I'll try to scan and post the map of the area we were given sometimes soon), but it was still too dar to get a good picture. There were two main roads (really runways since it's a small airport) with grassy areas all over, where people were to park/camp. There was a Greek theme for some reason so each grassy area had it's own Greek name (we were in Nectar Rorris). There were also some "access roads" which seem to have been built in the fields to allow better access to the campsites. While these were probably meant for cars, as the weekend got muddier, they became welcomed breaks from walking in the mud to get around. We were parked at our campsite by 6:00am and set up our tent. It had been raining off and on ever since we first got in line and the ground was wet enough that tractors were already pulling people out of the mud and parking them near the runways. Although I had been up for 23 hours, there was no way we were sleeping after the amount of redbull we'd consumed during the night, and it was just too bright and noisey anyway. It was raining, so I took one of the clear garbage bags we were given, tore 3 holes in in and wore it as a rain slicker. It only lasted until that afternoon (when I graduted to using Susan's umbrella). Our first order of business was to get food and coffee, which we found to be reasonably-priced at the "Common Dreams" cafe, which is apparently run by some religious group (shhh... cult) called the Twelve Tribes and one of the girls tried to talk to us about their group. Susan said she was familiar with them since she had studied them as an Anthropology major. After that, we went in search of Susan's friends, who had a sweet, huge awning-like tent in Pythagoras, and their land wasn't as wet as ours since they had been set up since 3am. We all had a beer and relished being dry for the moment, especially since my socks and shoes were immediately soaked and soiled from stepping into some calf-high mud on the way there.

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Susan (and friend... I met too many new people in too much of a sleep-deprived and half-drunk state to remember names) chillin' in Pythagoras

Truck getting towed out of the mud in Pythagoras. You know it's bad when not even a big 4-wheel drive truck can move at all.

View of Nectar Rorris and Hercules from the Pythagoras port-o-potties Friday morning

We walked around the runways, met some interesting people, and at around (what we assumed to be) 11ish, Susan and I decided to try to get some sleep. We cleaned off our feet as well as we could and got into the tent. I think I got a few mintues, but as soon as I would doze off, someone around us would start playing music, or it would start raining hard (which sounds super loud in a tent), or light a grill and yell because they almost lit themselves on fire.

Trying to sleep

We realized that wasn't working, so we got up and tried to make our way back to Pythagoras, but as soon as we reached the nearest runway, it started raning incredibly hard. We ducked into one of the vendor tents to avoid the worst of it, which was right across from the "rave tent", where they were playing techno mucic all weekend w/ flashy lights. We never went in there but, there was some dude right outside of it dancing as if it were the happiest moment of his life. I found that inspiring.

Really hard rain

Dude happily dancing in very hard rain

Back in Pythagoras, where more people were awake

We spent most of the day at Susan's friends' camp, since they had dry seats and we could just observe the rain from there instead of having to deal with it. By this time, I was wearing Susan's flip-flops w/ my jeans rolled up as high as they could go, despite the fact that they're 2 sizes too big for me and kept getting stuck in the mud, just so my feet could dry off whenever I was sitting down for a while. The rest of the day was an attempt to get/stay dry and to find more people Susan and Libby knew. I saw some pusher kid wearing plastic bags w/ duct tape over his socks and inside his shoes and I was so sick of being wet and cold (already) that I immediately set out to do the same for myself. It worked pretty decently. After 8 hours of walking in mud and water, some water did seep into my socks, but not enough to fret about and at least it wasn't muddy water. We were drinking beer most of the day and night (well, I was nursing mine in an attempt to not get shit-faced after not sleeping for over a day), which is probably why I wasn't that hungry and only ate chips. Finally, well after nightfall and the big mobile stadium lights came on, I was incredibly tired and had to go back to the truck to sleep. There was no way the tent was going to work anymore since the ground was so wet. I had wanted to go to the General Store in the Common Area earlier in the day to check if they had rainboots, but didn't since I'd figured such a thing was too good to be true, but since Susan and Libby weren't ready to turn in yet, I went to the General Store in a daze and the vague hope of finding feet protection. Turns out they did have rubber boots earlier in the day, but by that time, they only had childrens' sizes left, which were too small for even me. I did buy the last pair of size 6 rubber shoes and a tarp for... whatever we'd need it for. Getting my garbage-bag socks off was incredibly difficult since I was so amazingly tired and weak and I didn't have anything to cut the tape with besides my keys... and I was trying to avoid getting mud all over Libby's car and myself; which we eventually accepted as impossible. I finally got them off, washed my hands w/ bottled water and contact lens solution as best I could, took out my lenses (you really have to when you've been wearing the normal kind for over 36 hours), rolled up my pants further so as to not get mud on the seat of the car, wrapped a shirt around my eyes (to block out the light from the mobile stadium lights), and took a Benedryl (to assure sleep despite the techno and Phish music that seemed to be coming from everywhere). During this entire process, I was trying to call Aaron at home (everyone was roaming on the same system so it was hard to get a signal), but he wasn't there when I finally got through, and I must've left the most incoherent, rambling, sad-sounding message ever.

Saturday, August 14, 2004

The first thing I heard Saturday (besides Susan getting ready to venture out) was someone's radio tuned to the Phish-show-info-channel saying that they were going to start turning away people who were still on the roads because the camping conditions were too poor to bring more people in. When we got to the runway, it was an entirely different place, since people who had arrived during the night were parked in the middle of the runways, RV's on the main runway and cars on the other. It was kind of disorienting at first since there were now 4 main roads instead of two, and we were terribly jealous of all the "pavement dwellers", as we bitterly dubbed them. We spent most of the day at Susan and Libby's friend Kerry's pavement-dweller tent (who was walking around with a broken foot more cheerily than those of us without broken feet), playing with her cute black puppy, Gypsy, and trying to avoid the sun. I was especially hot due to the "moon boots" I had created that day, but at least my feet were entirely dry and mud-free. We also visited Susan's friends Drew and Betsy at their amazingly mud-free site in Hercules. While we were at Kerry's, some dude with a big plastic penguin came around doing a total rip-off (yet very good) impersonation of Sacha Baron Cohen's character from Da Ali G show, Borat. "Borat" tried to get me to hold the penguin, but I was not in the mood and irked by his blatant rip-off. Is this how he tries to meet girls? I called him "Borat" and told him I was a big fan of Ali G, too. He went away. I saw him later without his penguin or the silly accent. Although the day was only partly cloudy, we realized how bad the conditions were and how many people were stuck, and we heard it was supposed to rain ever harder on Sudnday, so we started to think about eventually leaving and how to best assure that we'd be able to do that as easily as possible Sunday after the last show. I took a walk around and surveyed the area.

Sign says "No lifeguard on duty" in the "lake" near our car

Susan near Libby's car (black on in the center) in the morning; what a gorgeous day!

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Click here to see the part of this pic I'm not using as my desktop's wallpaper

It was getting near showtime and, while we were all excited to receive our reward for spending the last 30 hours in the mud, we thought about moving the car again. We figured it was at least a try to get it out of the mud, but we just got more stuck than we were before and now our car was in an even muddier area so it was impossible to avoid mud getting in and out of the car. Doh!

Libby and Susan pondering moving the car. Acacia gave me the shirt Susan's wearing, but my torso isn't long enough so I gave it to her... shows off her tattoo well

My Saturday footwear: rubber shoes, plastic bags, electrical tape, duct tape

So we headed off to the concert venue, where we (amazingly) encountered not only more mud than we'd seen thus far, but more kinds of mud than I've ever seen in my life. We amused ourselves by trying to liken the texture to foods: pate, brownie batter, cake frosting... Oh, and I haven't even mentioned the most pervasive and wonderful thing about the mud. It smelled of shit. In some parts it was because there were police horses going around everywhere, free to poop wherever they wanted, which mixed with the water and mud, and in others I guess the ground had been manured sometime in the not-too-distant-past. It was a long walk to the venue from the camp grounds over a variety of mud, wood chips, gravel and then finally FRESH GRASS (which is probably why the venue was closed until then). We found Susan's friends Drew, Libby and Jay (who had a tarp to sit on) and thoroughly enjoyed the show. I was fairly well rested and had just enough beer in me to not be able to resist dancing, although my shoes were so heavy and my legs were so sore from trodding through mud that I couldn't really lift my feet well. We made the big mistake of going back to the camp grounds during the 1st set break to get more supplies, since we had to do all the mud again twice and we missed the first half of the song Susan really wanted to hear since it took us so long to get back. Here are some pics and the set lists from BOTH nights. I didn't bring my camera that night for fear it would rain. After the show was over (around 1am), we hung out at Drew and Betsy's for a while, then visited Kerry's before going to bed in the truck.

Sunday, August 15, 2004

Sunday was pretty much like Saturday. So much in fact, that I keep getting my Sunday and Saturday stories mixed up while writing this. The ground was drying a bit and people seemed to be in better spirits. Susan and I headed to the Common Area to get breakfast, where we heard that people were parking their cars on the side of Vermont roads to walk as much as 30 miles to get to the show, some without any of their belongings, like this guy we met while eating who lives here in San Francisco and had walked for 5 hours and couldn't find his friends inside. (We saw him later; he had found his brother)

Susan in the Common Area Sunday Morning

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We wandered around, and visited Drew and Betsy again. I got up on their car and took these pictures:

View of Oedipus and Nectar Rorris

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View of Nectar Rorris (Common Area in distance)

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Panoramic with above pictures

This day, I was just wearing my tennis shoes and black socks, since the mud wasn't nearly as wet as the last two days and while my socks were wet, my shoes did a good enough job of keeping out the mud. Before I knew it, it was concert time again. Although you weren't supposed to bring alcohol into the venue, we loaded up a bag of beers and snacks, a champagne bottle and tons of water and headed for the venue. It was a gorgeous, warm day so I brought my camera and got tons of good pictures.

On the way to the venue

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Heading for "The Back Forty" Sunday

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Whirley Ride on the way to the Back Forty (see what's written on the wall?)

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Libby and Susan on the Back Forty

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Arriving at our spot (about 50 feet closer than Saturday's sptot) - we also brought the tarp I got Friday night to sit on)

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Phish onstage (have I still not mastered the zoom function?)

Balloons!

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Susan and Libby

Susan and I went up on the ferris wheel during the first set break

Too bad the whole crowd isn't in this one, but you can see that in this great collection of pictures from the show, where you can also has excellent news and articles about the last Phish concert. During the first set, they played the song I'd been saying the whole weekend I wanted to hear the most, "Wolfman's Brother", which is from my favorite Phish album (hence, the only one I own), HoistAlthough I'm not what I'd call a loyal Phish fan, I do really like their music, which is why I was there in the first place (and to hang out with Susan).

Looking the other way, at the camping grounds, on the ferris wheel

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I went to the bathroom after the ferris wheel and was on my way back when "Down with Disease" started the 2nd set. People who had been milling about started running to join the crowd. It was an amazing site. Almost as amazing was the amount of glow-sticks thrown into the air during the highpoint of the song.

When things got particularly good, people would throw hundreds of glowsticks in the air; they just don't give off enough light for the camera.

People had been setting fireworks off all weekend (although no fireworks were allowed on the grounds), in the camp grounds, in the Back Forty, even from the crowd. During the 3rd set, someone released one from the crowd, but it went off very, very low, so that fire was basically raining down on a large section in the middle of the crowd. All the "aww's" became "ooh's" of sympathy. Not sure if anyone got hurt.

Waiting for the last encore

After the 3rd set, there was a "fabulous" fireworks display put on by the band, so they were beautiful, professional and a safe distace away. I really tried to get a picture, but the shutter always seemed to close between explosions. So I gave up and just enjoyed it. It was like Disneyland. After the encore, which probably held more meaning for real Phish fans who know about their history, tour buses visible from the crowd began to take off - we all assumed they had bailed as soon as possible to avoid any possible mayhem, since to get back to the camp grounds, we all had to cross the only service entrace/exit to the site. It was over. I felt it was anticlimactic, but I'd had a great day, the champagn was treating me fine and the thought of going home was very nice. Here's the set lists for the night

All over

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I had discovered on Friday night that the Common Area potties were like Hiltons compared to the rest of the port-o-potties (I will totally spare you the sick descriptions of some of the potty conditions and impossibility of getting to some of them due to the crap-mud surrounding them), so Susan and I headed there before going to bed. We also stopped by the information tent to see how we were supposed to go about getting a tractor to pull us out. We were told that tractors would arrive at 5:30 in the morning and we were to come put our names on a list to get towed out. Fine. On the way back, we found a big board that I thought we could use as a ramp to get ourselves unstuck from the mud. Susan was pretty sick of talking about getting unstuck at this point, and I knew that but I was really concerned about making my flight out of Albany at 3pm on Monday and I (foolishly) thought that if we could get near/on a runway we'd be able to leave after Sunday's show and we could all make our Monday appointments. While we were carrying this huge board, I saw the shirt I wanted to get for Aaron as a souvienir - it's the comic book guy from the Simpsons saying "Worst ending ever" to Trey. Haha. We tried the board, it didn't work, we got all muddy. I wanted to cry because I felt trapped and frustrated and foolish for even trying to get us out, but at least I'd finally lost hope, so I could sleep without even bothering to lay there awake trying to think of a plot to get us unstuck.

Monday, August 16, 2004

When I woke up, it was about 8am and Susan was already getting ready and headed out to see about the tractors. Apparently, they weren't there yet for some reason, but we also heard that they were charging $35 per tow. Although we'd started out with a lot of cash, we didn't even have $35 between the three of us. So, we foraged together some boards, cardboard and a couple large pieces of plywood, and built a little ramp for the truck to go up onto the plywood. It worked wonderfully. We were able to move back into our original spot and then 4-wheel it out of that section. Instead of going for the runway (through the worst mud) we went back toward Hercules access road, where we waited for the next 7 hours with absolutely no movement.

We did some mad libs, Susan took walks, I read some of one of Libby's books and found out that my airline company would only put me on standby for 2 hours past my flight time, and it would get more and more expensive the later I was, but I could buy a 1-way ticket for $600. No thanks. There was a feeling that we had all been abandoned there by whoever was in charge; that it was up to all of us to work together to get ourselves out. There was open patience with each other, but a lot of shit-talking inside our cars. Around 5pm we heard that nothing was moving because some tow trucks were stuck in the mud outside main entrace, along the one exit road and that the national guard had been called in to tow out the tow trucks. We also heard that they had finally decided to open the service entrance/exit to let people out. Although it required everyone on our service road to turn around, we managed to get moving along the service road toward the service exit within the hour. I was excited about going out a way that would avoid us to avoid the areas where all the "walkers" had parked their cars on the side of the road.

Monday aftermath

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We got back to Albany at around midnight and, after picking my stuff up at Libby's, Susan and I drove to her mom's house, which is very pretty and in a very pretty area. Everything's so green back east. I had the best shower of my life and the best sleep I'd had in over a week, with my very own bed in the guest bedroom. Susan woke me up at 8am to say she'd gotten up and started researching flights for me and she found a $143 flight on Delta from LaGuardia, which is a 2.5 hour drive from Albany. Although I felt bad for making Susan drive me so far, she insisted that she could visit people while down there and that she didn't mind. We got to the airport just in time, I checked in at the curb, (had to (as always happens to me) sit through extra-special security and be patted and wanded "in the position", and have my pink, pointy-toed, Franco-Sarto's scanned, and then we headed off for Atlanta, where we had to stop before heading for SFO. On the way into Atlanta, the plane took the sharpest drop I've ever felt besides on a rollercoaster for what seemed like 2 whole seconds. I hate flying. The more I fly, the more afraid I get. I got a sandwich in Atlanta and when I got back on my plane and retook my seat, some guy was already in my seat - seems we'd been assigned the same seat. He went away and a flight attendant came to me to say that I'd have to move. Bunk! I had been sitting where I could see the movie screen, but then got moved to a seat as far away from the screen as possible, in middle, behind a really tall guy. Great. So it was a boring flight. I finished "The Master and Margarita" within the first hour of the flight. We landed in SFO and I've never been so glad to see anyone as I was to see Aaron. I almost cried. Turns out Delta didn't manage to get my bad onto my flight in time, so I had to have it delivered to my house the next day.

Wednesday, I went to the bookstore and got my books, did my pre-reading assignments and readied myself for school. I like my classes better this semester, I feel more hopeful. The first Beer on the Beach was lastnight; it destroyed me.

Posted by Kristina at August 27, 2004 10:01 PM