Most recently I went on a trip to the Phish festival in northern Vermont (I'll maybe add pics later). I took a red eye out from LAX on Tuesday night, that took me through several stops, the first of which was Las Vegas. I barely made my flight, I deplaned from my first leg to find a person waiting for me to rush me to my next flight. I boarded to a round of applause from my section of the aircraft. I was sitting in the middle of a traveling group on their way home to Ohio (my next stop was Cleveland). This was my flight to sleep on. It was the longest leg through the night. But the crowd I was in was fresh off the casino floors. The raucous group of Roseanne Barr lookalike lesbians bought more drinks from the airline and did a pretty good job of preventing sleep. One of them was continuously farting, and the surrounding fattys would make a huge commosion, half trying to get up and run. It was aweful.
I made it to Cleveland and boarded my quiet flight to Hartford. Upon arrival, I went to baggage claim and called Caniprokis and Wilson; they were less than 15 minutes away. We were going to head straight up to Vermont. The baggage carousel made a short turn, and three bags came out. None of them mine. After talking to the airline, and filing a claim, they promised to send my bags to me, even to Vermont. So when Caniprokis and Wilson arrived, we went up to Vermont.
Later that day they called and told me that the bags would be on a flight that evening, and they would send the bags right out. I called at 10pm that night (fighting sleep still, and quite cold being in wet/cold Vermont with only the clothes I travelled in (shorts)) to find that there was a plane on its way through the taxi-way to the gates. Call back in 30 when they have time to unload, they say. When I call back, they tell me to call back in 30 when they have time to finish unloading. I call back, and they say they don't have them but to call back at 1:30am as there is another flight arriving. I went through the same crap, and the time changed to 10:30am Thursday. I tell them that I wasn't going to be around very long during the day (had to get to the venue) and they should send the bags to my parents probably. But the bags did arrive on that plane, and they promise to send out a driver immediately who will call me with an ETA.
So, after a heated discussion in Miss L's diner, we decide to wait for my bags. We went to the local Lyndonville college to use their gym showers, and I bought a change of clothes at the local JC Penny's (just about the only store that sold clothes).
My bags eventually arrive that afternoon. We immediately drive up (less than 30 miles) to the concert exit. We're a few miles away when we hit traffic. We see the left of the two lanes is closed, and the shoulder appears in use. The radio confirms the use of the shoulder. We take the shoulder. A few cars we run across seem to feel that the shoulder users are evil and try to block us. But eventually they all moved, and we were about 2 miles from the exit before we slowed to an even slower crawl of about 20 feet per hour and it was raining quite hard. The beers were cracked open. Thursday night the band was playing a concert in New Jersey that was to be broadcast on the radio. We had made friends with the neighboring cars by this point, and we fired up the boombox and listened to the concert broadcast in our ponchos in the rain. Drug availability was quite high, especially for the interstate. Use was open despite the constant trooper traffic on the passing lane. We were expecting this to take all night. The fields the festival was to be held on were flooded from the rains.
We eventually stopped moving for the night, and I was in for another night in the car.
Friday we awoke pretty early with the sun, and cars started moving again. The day basically progressed same same as the previous evening. We made it past the 1 mile to exit sign, around the time we discovered there was a Subway less than half a mile from the exit (Wilson and I made the trek up for food, which we did not bring with us on the trip). And we were prepared for yet another night in the car. We did move a little throughout the night though. We heard many rumours, including that they were towing cars in through the mud. The whole time we were also trying to fight off line cutters. Folks who were in the passing lane (that basically takes you to Canada if you don't take our exit) were trying to get into the 20' gaps left by drunk/drugged/missing drivers who would eventually be found and move their vehicles. We would surge into the gaps and this little guy with a megaphone would scream at them to move on. It worked every time, but during one of the heavier sets of rain a truck with a trailer snuck in. They were in front of our car too.
Saturday morning we were at the 1/2 mile point. It was about 10am and we were near the turn-around point through the highway median that the troopers were occupying. The concert was due to begin in just hours now and we had half a mile of freeway, and over 5 more miles of back roads to the camp grounds.
More troopers were arriving, and they were putting on their flak jackets and arming themselves with shotguns and semis. Soon, we got an announcement on the radio. We were to turn around. Refunds will be given. We were not happy.
But not being violent folk, despite the fact that our car was the first to be cut off (the trooper pulled in front of our car). We had no choice, so we turned around. We raced down the the first exit back, and got on Rt5 north. We took the road (parallel to I91) as far as we could. We found other people already there, setting up camp in a random field along the road. I was scouting for information, and saw a few locals offering their land for camping/parking. I found one that would put us within a mile of the gates, Caniprokis and Wilson had already found someone else. We ended up going with the lady offering the mile.
The lady's property was less than 5 miles from Canada, north of the Venue. We setup camp, and changed quickly. I badly wanted to be out of my underwear, which I bought in Vermont and was too small. We loaded up a tarp and some warm clothes and set off for the venue. The best thing was this lady was driving us pretty darn close to the gates, and was goign to pick us up after. She had over 20 other campers there, and a boyfriend to help out.
The concert was good, but very muddy. It was still quite a walk (over 2 miles) from the end of the road where we were dropped off. I crashed hard that night, lack of sleep for days made it easy to sleep on my shitty air mattress.
I woke up and dosed most of the day. Caniprokis was suffering from the previous day's exersion. Mad blisters on his feet from his now muddied boots. He decided he wasnt going to make it up to the concert that night, so Wilson and I went without him with cut up bits of tarp to tie around our feet to keep them dry. Quite a final performance, they went out with a bang.
It was a good final Phish experience. Nothing like 44 hours of traffic for a great concert. I don't think I'll ever to get to party on the freeway again. Good times.