Quote:
Originally Posted by WidespreadMule3
Whoa - that's dope as hell! Would you do a write-up going through what that was like?
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I wrote this in 2015 in this thread, so I'll just paste it and add a few things
I was going to go with about 20 of my friends. We had planned to take up a vanand a care or two, but when the time it came to go everyone bailed. So it was just me and a friend who said “screw it, let’s go”.
We decided to ride up on his 250 Yamaha Enduro, so at 3:00 am Thursday morning we stopped in our local Texaco station filled up the tank and each of us bought a full bag of Jamaican weed for 20 bucks a piece from the attendant, and having everything we needed we were off.
For most of the way the trip was rather uneventful except for getting a ticket for not having our helmets on somewhere in NY and getting a tune-up for the bike. We stopped a few times on the way to rest, get baked and wave to the steady line of honking cars as they drove by.
At about 4 pm we were about 25 or so miles away from Watkins Glen and started hitting some major traffic, so we rode up on the shoulder the rest of the way and thankfully didn’t get nailed by any car doors.
The gates were down by the time we got there. We took our tickets and the ones that our friends gave us to sell and threw them up in the air (an action I still regret to this day, but it was cool when we did it) and rode in.
We drove around the track once and then parked the bike under an overpass.
We then set up our tent in a pretty empty field, which by the time we got up next morning was filling up with tents and people.
Then we made our way down to the concert area and wound up at the base of the center speaker tower, which we thought would be a good place to use as a visual reference. The tower base was claimed by a group of kinda scary looking freaks that looked rather intimidating. We later found out that they worked at some sort of insane asylum, and were really a great bunch of people. They sort of they sort of took us under their wing and we ended up staying there the rest of the weekend and never did get back to our tent
We then made the rounds on drug alley which was just a path where people had set up tables and you could get anything you desired. We dropped a hit of acid (or two) and people watched and actually met some friends from our town.
When we finally realized that what we thought has house music playing was actually the bands doing sound checks we headed back to the tower and caught the end of The Band’s one hour sound check followed by The Allman Brothers and The Dead’s 2 set sound check.
After that I needed a break from all the people, saw a group of trees off in the distance and stepped over people and said “excuse me” for what seemed like hours before I was able to get a little solitude.
Saturday started out great weather wise and we watched the National Guard helicopter ferry in water and supplies and bought some outrageously priced food. The Dead started the concert around noon followed by the Band. Originally Leon Russell was supposed to be playing instead of the band, but was switched out supposedly at the request of Jerry. Leon was my man at the time and I was kinda bummed that he got bumped, but I got over it
During the Bands set some parachutes opened up above the concert with the people holding colored flares. One guy looked to be in trouble and drifted off. We found out later that he had died.
After a few songs by the Band the skies opened up and it rained cats and dogs. I swear that everytime I go to upper state NY it rains at least once.
The Allman brothers came on later that night, and during their set some workers came by to wrap the tower speakers in plastic. The dudes from the asylum told them it would be in their best interest to leave the roll of plastic behind (which they did)
The Allman Brothers played until almost 3am jamming with members of the Dead and with a crapload of people dancing under a long snaking piece of plastic by the towers .
Next morning we found the bike parked exactly where we left if, kicked it over and were gone. We had to stop at the police station to pay our ticket on the way home. They had a bunch of pot plants in buckets that they had confiscated from somewhere and when asked if we knew what they were, we assured them we didn’t.
All in all a great experience and I'm so glad I didn't bail like my friends. We got a lot of lucky breaks during our trip and it sort of felt like someone was watching out for us