August 18th, 2024 was the ultimate day of Phish’s ultimate festival (as of this writing), which they had called Mondegreen. For those that require it, Merriam-Webster gives us the following definition:

mon·de·green: a word or phrase that results from a mishearing* especially of something recited or sung.

And for those that assume that I’m implying that this was the bestest set of Phish most awesomest festival, well, perhaps Merriam-Webster could help out once again:

ul·ti·mate: last in a progression or series: final

In the end there wasn’t anything very “mondegreen” about Mondegreen and I doubt there will actually be anything “final” about Mondegreen either, except maybe/hopefully the use of the NASCAR track in Dover, Delaware for a Phish festival. Not that there was really anything wrong with the Woodlands (as the site is called). but there wasn’t a whole lot right about the Woodlands either. It was neither picturesque nor conveniently located nor overly user-friendly, plus did I mention it was in Delaware? I mean, c’mon now.

Oh wait, I just thought of something wrong about holding your festival in Dover, Delaware: Pardon me for casting such a large foreshadow, but the area has a high propensity for major lightning storms. More on that soon.

So anyway, when m’lady and I crawled out of our tent on that Sunday morn we joined our crew (which included our ride) in making a plan for the evening. Unfortunately our Plan A – which included raging out to two crazy sets of festival Phish before post-partying it up one last time with countless lifelong friends and brand-new companions – had succumbed to an ominous weather report that predicted a dire electrical storm would reign down upon our precise locale beginning at 8pm. Plan B had been twitted out by the band the night before. Well, their Plan B anyways: the band would now be going on at the unToddly hour of 1pm and everyone was being encouraged to bug out of the campgrounds immediately after the show.

That last part wasn’t a full-on directive though – campers were free to throw their own particular cautions to the gusting, electrical winds and stay for the night if they wanted to – hence our crew’s morning discussion.

We ultimately (see?) decided to cling to as much of Plan A as we could and stay the night, though we spent most of our truncated pre-show day packing up the loosest ends of our camp and battening down the first few hatches.

Then it was off to the festival site, which was muggy and disgruntled. The band did indeed go on at 1pm, where they delivered a set clearly lacking in energy or any meaningful light show. Party Time my butt. And nary a nod to the whole mondegreen thing either.

By the time Bathtub Gin came around it was starting to hit home that not only had the band dragged our sorry butts away from our campsite decompression sessions for an early-afternoon matinee show, but that it was going to be an unannounced one-setter too.

And not in a good way.

Get this: They closed the set with Golden Age and encored – that is, closed the whole festival – with Fuego. Need I say more?

Okay, I will:

After the music was done it did indeed do some raining, but during what would have been show time (ie 8pm-midnight) we sat at our camp and watched a brilliant and constant display of lightning flashes all around us, several miles away. Truthfully, it was like we were in some sort of lightning no-go zone, and had the concert gone ahead as planned tens of thousands of us would have revelled in the miraculous bubble of good vibes that surrounded us and protected us as we got down to one of the coolest bands in the world. Instead, we sat in the remains of a mostly-packed camp aside a lethargic stream of fully-loaded and steadily-idling cars that snaked along every makeshift road in the ever-vacated campground and tried to give away our excess beer.

The next morning we dismantled our bone-dry tents and bugged out of the campsite early enough to catch the breakfast menu at a diner forty-five minutes down the road. After that we tucked in and floored it back to Jersey where our friend Christina drove m’lady and I straight to EWR. We dashed into the terminal and found out in short order that our flight had been cancelled. What we didn’t know is that when the argumentative agent rebooked us (and insisted on charging us $80 for our luggage when our ticket clearly stated that luggage was free) she only booked us as far as Halifax. She forgot – or just didn’t bother – to book us on a connection from Halifax to our penultimate** destination of St. John’s, so when we landed in Halifax as far as the airline was concerned we had arrived where we were going.

We hadn’t, of course.

We finally convinced the agent to book us on a flight to Newfoundland, but we couldn’t convince her to get us on a flight that evening, as there were none. This fact also helped the agent convince herself that the airline shouldn’t book us a hotel, so they didn’t. By this time it was pretty late, maybe ten or eleven o’clock, so we found some airport bench space, pulled out our sleeping bags and inflatable pillows and got as much sleep as we could, which wasn’t a whole lot.

Ultimately, was it worth it? Ask me on my deathbed.

(Actually, you’d probably be better off asking for the password to my air miles account. You can’t take ’em with you.)

*Is there a word for mishread words?

**Look it up.

https://toddmanout.com/