After volunteering my car for the previous few nights down in jersey, I coaxed my friend into taking his car up to the festival: bad idea. It all began waiting in the traffic jam heading into Oswego. The sun began to set, the day turned to night, and we found ourselves in his junkbox of a toyota as the first notes of the evening reverberated down the road. Traffic had come to a standstill hours ago, and by now we had had enough.

An executive decision was made to put the car on the side of the road and take the few things we needed for the night. We caught the final two sets, did some drugs, and made the best of what was the usual festive scene.

Fast forward to 4am, time to hike to the car and bring it into the festival. Well the good news was that the car wasn't towed, bad news was it didn't start. It made one of those noises that even I, the most unmechanical English major in the world, knew something was very wrong.

We revert to crisis team management and my three friends and I figure, no worries we can set up camp in this local field and call a tow truck in the morning. Oh wait, there seems to be a problem. In a daze from seeing all the jersey shows, and rushing to pack the car for the festival, the poles to the tent eluded my eye. No car to get into the festival, no tent to sleep in, and waning effects of our drug concoction left us all coming down in a very hard way.

Morning comes, the car gets towed to some hick mechanic. The news was not good, the car was a piece anyway and all of those long hours idling in the august heat in new york state had dried out all of the engine oil, effectively destroying the engine. We walk into the venue after getting the go ahead from a local farmer that the field was open to us as long as we kept it clean.

For the day and into the night we immersed ourselves in the glory of the festival. Seeing many phriends and relaxing at various campsites eased our nerves a bit, of course to go along with this we proceeded to lose collectively $150 and an equivalent amount in drugs, don't know how, never found out why--although the money was later recovered in my friend's mystery pocket, appearing weeks later in the laundry.

The show was average, nothing crazy and the weight of our impending problems probably dampened any joy we had in listening to the music. As the crowd stumbled back to tent city we stumbled back to our make-shift tent, which we had dangled in the limbs of a tree in hopes of creating some sort of shelter.

Next morning we wake up and the whole place is deserted. Not that we expected anything else, but it was sobering to say the least. Without any vehicle and with little food, we begin setting up missions to grocery stores miles away and to the mechanic to get word on the car. The car would take another 48 hours to fix, and if it was not for our situation, it would have been considered totaled.

It is now Monday night; for the past 72 hours we have consumed about equivalent amounts of illegal substances, turkey sandwiches, and water. Certainly not a healthy diet, made that much worse by the fact that we would be living off little more than ramen noodles and deli sandwiches for the next three days.

By Tuesday we went on a proactive tear, returning to the festival site which was desperately in need of a 'green crew'. So we spent the next five hours in 90 degree heat collecting nasty piles of leftover beer. Our take was good enough for gas money and food for the trip back if that ever came.

Wednesday morning rolls around after a night of rain in which we got soaked. We all looked like hell and desperately needed to GET OUT OF OSWEGO, but we had to wait untill 4pm when my friend's shitbox was finally in driving condition.

Nothing was worth this. On the way home, through the dregs of new york state, yours truly suggests to stop at Arby's. What the hell, I never eat here, let's have a 'decent meal' before we crawl back into our homes.

Bad idea number 200 of the journey. Both myself and our driver are stricken with food poisoning for the next 24 hours. We all missed three days at work, albeit summer jobs and I am diagnosed with anemia on account of our less than stellar diets. Phish and its scene are amazing and I don't know if I will ever be able to part with either one. However, this journey and the retelling of it years later taught me the importance of...what was it ...oh yea planning. Big Cypress, IT, and over a dozen other shows since oswego have been conducted with the utmost of ease. Live and learn. Sorry for being so long winded. See you all around.

Eric