That summer, a younger friend had been hopelessly busted by his parental unit, and I doubted that I'd get to party with him again before moving away. A couple friends picked me up in "GROOVN" (as the VT plates read on my best friend's car), and we were off to Limestone. Five typical hours in the car pass by, and we pulled off at a random exit to hit the first in a long line of porta-potties. 

As we were pulling off there was a Mazda in front of us that read "Going Phishing" in the rear window. I didn't recognize the car, but I recognized the people driving it. "Holy Shit! It looks like Smax and Doug $$, but who's the blond guy in the back seat?!" Low and behold, DumbBoy had made it. The kid busted out of his house at the last second, ran through the woods, and his two closest friends picked him up and were on the way to the Wheel when we bumped into them in the middle of NOWHERE, off of some random exit in Maine. 

The only bathroom to be found was an untouched porta-potti that we christened with a "GodDAMN it's good to see you" bowlpack or three. That night we stayed in a funny camp ground that had "wooden-tents" (ours was called the Coon-Cage) and little bunny rabbits running around. Bunny Rabbits? We met another crew of friends who didn't realize we had found DumbBoy, and sloppiness ensued. We were out of camp by 6am the next day and on our way to Limestone. 

With a little over an hour to go, we decided it was safe to start partying immediately. We made it into the lot half-wasted and completely ripped. This was my first on-site experience, and the sights were overwhelming. We managed to set up camp, slam some beers, mow a goo-ball or two... hell, we even had Goldy (the infamous Goldschlagger binger) for the pulling of tubes.

All of a sudden a man comes up to me with a badge, a walkie-talkie... the works. He starts asking for IDs and all this shit, and I'm completely wasted, underage, and shitting myself. He breaks out a pad of paper that I think he's going to write down our information in and starts filling it out. Then he rips the top sheet off and hands it to me. Basically, the guy was fining me for "Not Partying Hard Enough"... I laughed so hard that I made a donation to whatever his real cause happened to be.

At about 1pm, and a solid 15 beers deep we were approached by another stranger peddling Phungus. I'm so out of my gourd already that I didn't understand he was offering... I thought he was looking. THE most confusing conversation took place for about three minutes, until one of my friends finally slapped me, straightened everything out, and bought the boomers.

Now, Squeeker's about 10 beers up on my 15, and he decides he wants in on my score. I reluctantly split the 1/8th with him (thinking it would be hard to get more? haha) and we sat back down.

Now... 20 minutes have gone by, it's been a long day to start with, and these puppies are coming on strong. Basically, I decided we needed to go for a walk. The sun is comin down super hard, and we're insanely dehydrated from our level of boozery thus far. Squeeker's face is bright red and he looks like he could pass out at any moment. Kites and balloons are beginning to litter the skyline, tents are up as far as you can see, and the line of cars still on their way in looks infinite. 

At this point I am fully blown away by what's goin down around me, and the only things I can communicate are "What the fuck" ... repeatedly, to myself... and "Dude, we gotta get you to some water" because I was concerned for my malnourished friend. We made it to "THE" porta-potti... the tower... the light shows...remember? Needless to say, I didn't actually get to go to the bathroom in there!

Once I got his sorry ass to water, the next best thing was to sit down and chill for a bit. As we're sitting there, a 3 inch crack in the pavement grew to 10 feet.  My friend assured me that it was "All Hood" that we were this fucked up, in public, with this many people cruising around (i was a bit worried). As he soothed me with the ever important "Just go man," we began to really relax and were pretty much just sitting, in the moving traffic lane, people watching and laughing our asses off. 

The next thing I know, a friendly couple is walking by us and asks if we need any mushrooms. As the crack in the pavement opened further, I made eye-contact with my buddy and we fell apart. I think I told them we didn't need any "MORE" mushies, and they sent back warm smiles and laughed their way into the horizon.

This all went on for about 5 or 6 hours, and then we found ourselves back at camp. Most of my other friends were laughing at us cause we were being so ridiculous, but once we finally got our shit together there was only one thing to do: It's Thursday night, August 15th, Phish is coming on tomorrow and there's a LOT of good energy flowin around the base. DumbBoy and Rodge decide that the three of us are gonna go take a "few shots" and then come back and rally everyone to go party with us. A few shots turned into Lemon Drops, testubes of Grateful Deads, some Beam (Who's got my piss-warm devil juice?)... you name it. We scored a full rack of Chips-a-Hoy from some guy and sat down amidst some tents to eat cookies. Once that was over, we realized that we had forgotten everyone at camp, but... "Where's that music coming from?"

ALLLL fucked up from a days worth of poisons, we began walking towards the beat. You know where we were going, right? DiscoRV. This was my first encounter with the RV. 10,000 watts of "Celebrate good times"... I think this was the night that I learned how to dance.

We inhaled some hippie-crack to round off the day and headed back to camp where DumbBoy and the crew were sitting around, relentlessly stuffing Goldi. It was then that DumbBoy made one of his most infamous statements. He's younger than me and I wasn't going to see him for over a year after Lemonwheel was over. He looked up, his treacherous parents were 10 hours to the south, and he proclaimed, "Hey bitch, sit down a take a couple bong-hits, you'd be surprised."

- vt2tahoe