It is somewhere in February of my senior year, and little did i know, but the hiatus - god i hate that word - was to be over in less than a year. My friends and i decided to go to an oysterhead show in ann arbor.

We get there and freeze our asses off in the lot waiting for the show to begin. We watch the show and it has its moments, despite the fact that oysterhead/trey solo stuff never could "take me to that place." It actually depressed me a bit thinking what Trey was doing was so far off from where I wanted him to be, but i suppose if that's what he needed to do than its cool.

Anyways, the show ends, i go outside with my buddy adam, and we are walking around the back of the theater when i decide it's worth a shot to ask a roadie if trey had come out yet. He said no and told me where to stand.

When Trey came out he was wearing this black skull cap and a long coat if i remember correctly (this is michigan in the winter for all of you who know how much it can suck), and he walks towards us. we were standing at the entrance to his bus and he shakes this dude's hands, looks at me and nods, and thanks us for coming out.

Despite the fact that all i could think about was how close i was to him, at the same time i wanted to grab him and shake some sense into him and tell him to just get the boys back together. He just got on the bus and shut the shades and that was that.

The point of the story is that i was glowing for the next week because no matter how selfish i can be in terms of just wanting phish to be back, my proximity to him was enough to make me shed a tear or two of bliss. Now that the boys are back, i can only think of the good times to come for all of us phans. peace and see you this summer (i definitely had no luck with NYE or hampton).

- Chris