My brother and I drove the six hours from Pennsylvania to Virginia with one ticket on us... We knew that his friends had another one waiting for us when we got there. Needless to say, this wouldn't be a good story if they really did have the ticket. They actually had had an extra for the 17th, which people couldn't give away, let alone trade for one for the 18th.

And so we walked the parking lot for almost four hours, hopelessly searching for an extra. There must have been five thousand ticket-less fans at that show. Hampton was by now a legendary venue, which was only furthered by the release of the boxed set a month earlier. 

By the time the sun was going down, I was sure one of us was not getting in, and we had previously agreed that if we both couldn't go in, we were going to get rid of our one ticket and go home.

In a last desperate effort, I camped out in front of the will call entrance, embarrassingly badgering innocent people for an extra I could buy. I heard people around me saying that they had just scored one, and as time wore on the prices slowly rose. Finally, I asked a guy who had a VIP pass if he had and extra. 

Without even responding verbally, he grabbed me and another kid behind me and took us into willcall, where he gave us each a free ticket. It turns out he was a childhood friend of Page who was on the guest list.

After finding my brother in the sea of people, we went and had a couple of drinks and relaxed. The sweetest Phish memory that I have is walking down the pitch black grove of trees that serves as Shakedown and seeing that big beautiful space ship appear out of nowhere to light up the night. And it was a pretty damn good show, too.

 - Bob Egan