On 6/30/2000, I was still twenty years old and my sister Keara wouldn't turn sixteen until that October. We were still totally green in the world of Phish. I had two lawn tickets for both nights of Meadows in Hartford, but the second ticket was up for grabs. I was home for the summer from Rutgers and was trying to convince my mom to let me borrow the family minivan so I could drive to Connecticut for two more nights of Phish. I was also trying to convince her to let me take my little sister with me. Somehow, she let us both go. My parents are awesome.

Keara did not know of her lucky destiny until the morning of. I woke her up and told her to get dressed, she was going to Hartford. To this day, she sometimes tells me this was one of the greatest moments of her life.

We had a nice ride up until we hit some killer traffic on 84 East, but it was all good. We parked in the ghetto lot for Meadows after we checked into our hotel. Great googley moogley! This was one of the craziest parking lots ever. First we parked near some kids that had a beer pong table set up already, it was great stuff. Then we walked to the far end, climbed a big grassy dirt hill, over the railroad tracks, across the over pass, and up the street to get to the venue. I told Keara that it was going to be crazy watching people try to get down that hill after the show. We got a good spot on the lawn, Page Side Rage Side, and met some good people from New York and Pennsylvania.

HA HA HA opener! Game on. It was ominous, awesome, and remains the only one that I've seen to date. AC/DC Bag was incredibly well played and bursting with type 1 excitement for almost thirteen minutes. The muted strums at the end of Bag fed into a first set Tweezer. There is a nice type 2 jam that changes key from A minor to D and transitions into Runaway Jim. We were hanging with a guy out on the lawn in a Fishman dress from Pennsylvania that called himself Runaway Jim. Keara and I felt like it was all meant to be. It was a great Jim that took us all over the D major scale and back again with some detours inbetween. After a few moments of consideration on stage, Phish busted into Sneakin' Sally. Sally was received very well on the lawn and we were getting down through the second quarter. Sally eventually turned into Ginseng Sullivan, which some people frowned on, but not me. I like that song and Phish plays it better than the original, slower version. Guyute was great in the next spot, especially the peak before the new born elf part. People used to get sick of Guyute back then, but whatever, the song rocks. I expected Golgi to close the set, as did many other people, but we were surprised with the first set Tweeprise instead. Hartford was pumping and ready to take a break when the low build up for Possum emerged. No way! Possum closed an incredible first set.

My sister handed out lollipops to strangers during the set break while we chatted with our new friends on the lawn.

Set 2 started with Mike vocalizing the beginning of Halley's Comet which took off into a nice type 2 jam. It built up and eventually turned into The Mango Song. YES! Mango was awesome and jammed itself into a ten minute Twist. The band took a breather while Trey busted out his Taylor Acoustic and played the beautiful Inlaw Josie Wales. A peppy Back on the Train mutated into a reggae groove and Makisupa came to our house. Trey must have read my mind. "One bourbon, one scotch, one...BIG FAT DOOB!" Farmhouse was a nice moment to enjoy being outside in the summer night, Sleeping Monkey seemingly TUCKED the show into bed, but not before one last exclamation point before the night was over. The Bowie hi-hat started slapping away and Phish slapped us all in the face with a terrific version to close down set 2.

The Cavern encore was awesome. It sounded really tight with all the Tweezer tease fills for the intermittent guitar parts, but eventually Fishman dropped the ball which resulted in Trey yelling, "Jon Fishman, MOBY DICK! DICK! DICK! DICK! DICK!" and rocked the ensuing Moby Dick tease. It was one of the best Caverns I have ever heard.

Leaving Meadows was as much fun as I imagined it would be. Keara and I safely made it down the road, across the overpass, over the train tracks, and down the hill to the bottom of the parking lot. Before going back to our mom's minivan, we decided to watch people struggle on the hill. I can't tell you how much we laughed. Drunk and spun out kids were having a hell of a time. People were sliding down the hill and tumbling to the bottom with regularity. The best was when one guy came barreling down the hill, grabbed hold of a tiny, thin little tree that was growing out of the side of the hill, the tree snapped, and the guy came tumbling down to the bottom despite all of his best efforts to fight gravity. It was just like a cartoon.

Anyhow, beer pong was still going strong when we got back to the minivan. We said goodnight to our parking lot neighbors and made it back to the hotel alive to gear up for the next night.