It was certainly our intent to see the last Phish show in Coventry, VT. Tickets purchased well ahead of time, flights, rental cars, friends to tag along with, etc. Mother Nature, apparently, had made other plans.

The closest we got was about 25 miles from the campsite before Mike Gordon got on the radio with the local constabulary and announced that they were going to begin turning people away. We were roughly 15 miles from where they were going to setup that roadblock. Being the pseudo-responsible citizens of the world that we are, we turned the car around, and went home.

A significant portion of the people in the immense snake of cars, though, had different plans. Some 2100-2500 groups abandoned their vehicles on the interstate and hiked the rest of the way in, and saw the show. In retrospect, it would have meant abandoning our food/drink filled cooler, slogging along 25 miles on a gouty foot (yes, my gout took that opportunity to flare up on me) and spending the remainder of the weekend muddy and/or wet. Did I miss an opportunity there? Sure. Do I regret that we turned back and avoided alot of pain in the process? Not so much.

Additionally, based on an official statement from the band manager, folks who still have unripped tickets will additionally get free downloads of the show and sound checks from their site, as well as an exclusive, signed photo book of the band. No, it isn’t a replacement for the missed show, but it goes at least down the right road of giving us some recompense for the trouble we went through. On the whole, I’m pretty ok with the whole thing.

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