pure bliss
when a good friend of mine called me up a couple months after the lottery for tix was over telling me that he must’ve deleted the phish ticketing email accidentally (cuz a friend of ours was sending prank emails) and he had gotten a call from his cred card company saying he had late fees piling up for charges he didn’t know existed… from PHISH TICKETING… for two sets of Hampton tix!! he told me this and then offered them to me and another friend of ours. i was in my office and absolutely flipped out… it was an incredible feeling and one of the nicest, most selfless things anyone has ever done for me.
then the waiting… and waiting… trying to somehow keep a lid on the excitement, as to not get my expectations TOO high for what these shows could be. but that was unavoidable, expectations are always present in some way, shape or form… and will grow even when you don’t want them to.
hank, that was an epic roadtrip out there, wasn’t it?? couldn’t have gone any better. even west virginia wasn’t as bad as i thought it would be
i woke up in our hotel room at like 7am on the 6th… unable to sleep any longer… just wanting to start the day that i had been waiting so long for. from that point on, the pieces of the puzzle just kept fitting right… buddies i hadn’t seen in a LONG time were found randomly…meeting the right (and wrong) people at the right times… each day we waited for hours in line, partying and giddy as hell… getting there at 2pm, 1pm and noon… earlier and earlier each day. and well worth it, we got the seats we wanted each night, straight away front row of the balcony… damn that was awesome.
and the shows, they blew me away. while not perfect flub-wise, like others have said, those shows were statements. marathon sets of almost everything you’ve been waiting 5 years to hear again. getting that fix we needed so badly and giving us more than anyone could have expected.
THE VIBE THAT WEEKEND WAS UNTOUCHABLE FROM START TO FINISH… that’s what i took away most. pure bliss
sorry that was a long read 