• Spun out dude named Egypt who could speak only three words: “Family!” and “Welcome home…” He was wandering around the campground, going up to strangers and welcoming them home, then pulling some mushies out of a bag and feeding them to the family member he just “recognized.”
• Chilling with Dmitri by a river bed.  Dude made me see every blade of grass waving in the wind individually.  So fucking beautiful…
• The rush of sneaking Smokey and Spitz in the center gate with fake wristbands – “it just feels like the inside of my heart is coated with Icy-Hot!”
• Ripple! They never play Ripple, but they did!  Hearing Truckin’ live was wicked too… hell, I love American Beauty, cliche though it may be, but hearing Sugar Magnolia or Friend of the Devil live was fucking sick.  Granted I ran into Dmitri again during the second set and got trapped in the Stealy over the stage, but I think they ended with One More Saturday Night on the main stage before moving inside (and Phil and Bob and a menagerie of other musicians who kept getting rotated in played ’til like 4) and given that it was Saturday, and I was tripping face, I picked up on the connection like that!
• When the power went out for the spotlights over the campgrounds.  The one head in the dark, in the dirt, loogies being hawked all around him, shady characters selling cryptic t shirts, and this one dude happily proclaimed, “there is nowhere I’d rather be right now!” Smokey and I exchanged a glance – Really?? Like, seriously dude?
• The cops on a golf cart stopping 100 feet in front of me and Smokey in the unlit campgrounds – “Hey Smokey, you think the cops are here to bust that dreaded hippie chick who’s spinning the fire poi things over there, or those dirty fuckers with the leaky nitrous tank right next to her, or the thousands of other illegal things going on around here… actually, moving the open flame away from a leaky tank of explosive gas probably isn’t the worst idea in the world…”
  Then the dude next to me and Smokey starts scolding us “You guys shouldn’t be laughing, he’s getting busted for that tank and it’s not even his tank, man…”
  I looked at Smokey.  ”There’s only one way you could know if that’s not his tank… and that’s if it is your tan-” I was pointing toward the guy, who had just disappeared into the shadows.In a last-ditch effort, I tried negotiating with the cops, hiding behind a car and screaming, “this is a hostage situation! We’ll give you two hippies for fifty balloons!!”
• The ice cream cooler that was outside the food vending booth.  I picked out an ice cream bar, held it up to the guy with a $1 bill and a twenty and kept trying to mime “how much?” to him.  It felt like an eternity, and then he told me $4.75, and didn’t even take the cash I was holding.  In that instant, Smokey and I both realized the absurdity of the situation, and that that was clearly not that guy’s ice cream – otherwise it would have been on his side of the counter.  ”$4.75?” I laughed, and walked away, ice cream and twenty-one dollars in hand, while he dealt with the post-third-set-line behind me.  ”I tried to make it easy for him and just give him a dollar, but no, he was on some power trip… and who leaves a cooler of ice cream where Deadheads can just reach into it anyways?  Rookie mistake…”

• Running into the bald kids I almost got thrown out with like four more times.  ”You’re still here? Wicked!”
• Introducing my friend Smokey to an old hippie dude, also named Smokey, giving out free beer and frozen, bacon-wrapped beef medallions like fifty feet from our cars.  Smokey Sr. rigged up his pickup truck with a flash freezer, and was trying to learn the internet to get his meat delivery business going.  Dude had some cold fucking Budweisers – reaching into the cooler hurt like frostbite so much that reaching in there became dubbed “fighting the beer sharks.”  Smokey Sr. was thrice divorced, and had the best one-liners for each of his ex-wives.  When a panicked tripper about me and Smokey Jr.’s age popped up looking for a dog, Smokey Sr. fielded it like a pro.
  “You lost your dog?”"No, it wasn’t even my dog, it was this girl’s dog!”We were all laughing, but Smokey Sr. reminded the kid how screwed he was.”You don’t even know, man!  I just met her today.  How do I find this dog?”

  “Okay, here’s what you do.  Forget about the dog.  Lose the girl.  Forget about the girl.  You ever fought the beer sharks before?”

Can I just say that I am loving the fuck out of this place?  It’s morning now, Smokey and I grilled up the meat medallions that were thawing under my car while I tried to get a two hour nap in, and Smokey Sr. (who has been awake since before the sound check) is going on a run into town to get more beer.  Orange juice, dude? …not from concentrate, if possible!

“Uh, yeah, actually, I was…”

“Do you remember me?”

“Uhhhmm, I met so many people there, I was ‘working,’ so-”

“Yeah that’s just it, you smoked me out for free though, remember?”

“Ohhhhhhhhh yeah! Yeah, you’re the girl whose boyfriend had just been busted for selling bud and molly when I was right there fifteen feet away slinging bud and- bud. Yea, I told you I’d smoke you out but the bowl was in the car and I accidentally sold like 4 bags on the walk back… How you been?”

The abridged version was good, and that she’d  brought her friend Dmitri to Furthur.  And now, through the transitive property, karma, unbelievable chance and good memory, Smokey and I have been introduced and are gonna be chilling with Dmitri all weekend too.

Jackpot.

After finding Smokey and Spitz – in the parking lot by the admissions gate, they drove right past my site where I told them to stop, but no – I put a bracelet on Spitz and told Smokey I’d help him make one once we parked his car.  I took the wheel and drove out the entrance toward my car.  Someone (honestly unsure if it was Furthur staff or clever campers) put up a string of those triangle flags across the boulders I’d driven between, which was doing surprisingly well at keeping all the late newcomers from doing exactly what I did.

“Sig, you can’t drive through there, it’s flagged!”
“No, look, that’s my car, right up there…” I stuck my head out the window and motioned to the guy selling bracelet pipes to lift up the flags.  He recognized me and obliged.

The spot next to my car was taken, but we managed to find the drivers to clear a path so we could face both trunks (two hatchbacks) together to have something to hang a tarp from.  Now the game plan is don’t die of dehydration before the show even starts…

At least I didn’t get as spun as the fat old naked guy who staggered in a roundabout way toward the exit (right past my campsite) and down past three miles of cars waiting in line to come in.  I overheard cops talking about what to do about him.  ”Well, if he makes it to the highway he’s the state troopers’ problem…”

“Yeah, but what about all the families waiting in line that he’s gonna walk past?”

Bear in mind, this is all before the sound check has even started.  [I took a video on my phone, which I can not for the life of you figure out how to upload here, and that's probably for the best, but I'll email it to anyone who wants to see it... you sick, sick fucks]

Anyways, parked right at the center gate between the campgrounds and the stage was Furthur.  The hippie bus, Neal Cassidy, Ken Kesey, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, namesake of the current incarnation of The Dead… ch’yeah, that Furthur.  After Phil and Bob plowed through three sets of disposable rotating musicians into the wee hours of the morn, I found myself utterly drained with two days and six sets to go.  Fuck, I don’t wanna end up like that naked guy…I should go back to the car, go pass out… I’ll just… rest up here, on this… what is this… for a moment…

Next thing I know, the sun is up, I’m in that first five seconds of waking up where dreams blend with reality (and Sid wasn’t helping any, exacerbating the situation, if anything) and I hear this pissed off dude screaming at the top of his lungs to, “GET THE FUCK OFF OF THERE NOW!“

Eyes start to focus, dart to a hand-painted sheet banner that says “Kesey’s Bus, but the writing was backwards, facing out the other way.  I looked down at the hard metal surface I was sleeping on to be met with a psychedelic galaxy of technicolor explosion.  Oh… Shit.  Bail!

So within ten seconds of waking up (on top of a relic, that and seeing Kerouak’s On the Road scroll are up there on my list of relics I’ve encountered.  Those and blowing lines of Al Capone’s bar…) I’d already jumped off of a bus and had my first chase of the day.  Got away, great success.  Now I gotta go make sure nobody took the parking spot I saved Smokey and Spitz, find them, and guide them into it.

Oh, and water…

But yea, so I thought it would seem disingenuous to ask people for clippings if I were already wearing a wristband, so I kept walking around bare-wristed for a few hours – mistake! – and taking my sweet ass time.  A badge asked me to pull up my sleeve; I changed direction.  A minute later I felt a hand grab my shoulder.  Fuck!

I got taken to the hidden police compound in the center of the festival, where two other dirty hippie kids, a skinhead guy and a girl with sectionally shaved blonde hair, were getting interrogated for not having wristbands as well.  After four cops surrounded me, they started throwing accusations at me all willy-nilly like.

“Do you have any weapons on you?? Anything illegal??”

“No, no!” I wasn’t lying. I emptied my pockets (except of wristband clippings, of course).  This meant wallet, phone, cigs, keys, and my canister of bud. “That’s medicinal, I’ve got papers for that,” and not just Elements… I started to get a copy of my prescription out of my wallet when a cop stopped me.

“Look, if I actually called up to verify all the medical scrips I see out here, at a Dead show, I’d be here all month.  You’re fine, except for the trespassing-”

“Trespassing? I was just in the parking lot,” I may have been lying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I needed a ticket to be this far in…”

The cops explained to me and the other kids that we weren’t being charged with anything, and were welcome to come back in once we had tickets, but a cop was going to march us out to the street. Man, out of anything I could have had on me or where it could have happened, at Furthur too, of all places, and all I had in my pockets was a little bud. Talking to the cops is like a roll of the dice every time…

“…and if we see you in here again without a wristband, I’ll remember your faces…”

Right, like I don’t have ten more hats and four pairs of sunglasses in my car…

The cop who was monitoring our departure was pushy at first, motivating us to keep a brisk pace and stay a few feet ahead of him.  After five or so minutes of walking through the campground staring toward the exit, I looked over my shoulder.  I could not see the cop.  At all. I turned forward, then asked the bald hippie kids to check; they couldn’t see him either.  I decided to introduce Kemo and Nazi to an oft-utilized strategy in my survival skill utility belt – the art of bail!

“Okay, here’s what I’m thinking: on three, you guys go right, I’ll go left, and we disappear into the campgrounds, and fast.  Sound good?” Two nods. “Alright, have a good festival guys! Three!”

The irony is that the car is parked literally right at the entrance, I pulled right into the corner of the parking area, so my car was right at the entrance we were walking toward.  As soon as I got back, I taped on a wristband.  All good now, and I’ve seen a hundred other fake bracelets today already – most not as convincing as mine, either.  I got a couple extra clippings, but screw Smokey and Spitz, they gotta learn to do this themselves…

Too fucking easy.  Let’s go make some friends.

Woke up a couple miles outside Angels Camp where Furthur is playing tonight, and was sleeping in the back of my car until the sun turned it into a pressure-cooker situation.  I’d left the hatchback trunk door cracked open when I parked last night, but did not realize the panoramic view I’d set myself up for until my heat-stroking body kicked it open in a last-ditch twitch for air. So fucking beautiful, and not just because of the oxygen depravation…

Now as soon as I find my pants, I’m off to gatecrash Furthur Fest.

Me: Yeallo?

Smokey: Sig! Are you driving right now?

Me: Yup, headin’ north, are-

Smokey: Are you smoking a joint?

Me: You know me too well.  What time you guys getting there tonight?

Smokey: See here’s the thing – me and Space both have class tomorrow, so we’re either gonna get in really late tomorrow night or early Saturday.  Do you think you can get wristbands for us and save us a campsite?

Me: I’m on it.  Gimme a call when you’re close. Peace out, man.

With the sun out, I reached to the flip-down sunglasses dispenser in my car’s ceiling, and realized that I was right before when I thought I’d forgotten something.

Sunglasses.

Damn it.

Continuing north!