And now, a story.

It's been awhile since I told a tale. I've been trying to remember a good one to tell. Most of my stories from 1983 to about 2002 involve stupidity (and booze and other assorted mind altering substances), I can dip into that well pretty often and not tell the same tale twice.

If you've visited here a couple times, you may know that I followed the Grateful Dead for a couple years. From 1983 to 2001. Not constantly, mind you, SOMEONE had to have a real job, but as often as possible when they were 'local' (read: within 500 miles)

This is a true story, the names have been omitted because (a) If you were there, you know who we are, or (b) You don't know us anyway.

The Dead played at the Capital Center in Landover, MD (aka DC) many, many times in the 80's & 90's. For several nights at a stretch. Being the good Deadheads we were, we'd go for the duration. Whether or not we had tickets.

Deadheads travel in packs, so our tribe had camped out at some scuzzball hotel near the venue. I think we had a dozen people staying in one room. For the shows, we'd all pile into our vehicles, caravan to the parking lot, and set up camp there. The main event was the band of course. But one had to be in the proper frame of mind to enjoy the show, so altering ones consciousness was the sport of the day. While altering, there was lots of walking around, lots of sitting around, lots of chatting with people. Folks with no tickets looked for tickets, folks with extra tickets looked to trade their extras for whatever they could get.

Of our tribe, only a few had tickets for this show. So the rest of us spent a fair amount of time looking for tickets, and while this was futile, the consciousness altering was very VERY successful.

The parking lot was a depressing place when the show started, and you were left outside. It's really depressing in the rain. Instead of sitting around in the car watching the rain, the non-ticketed of us decided to go back to the hotel. Landover was (is?) a just an offshoot of Washington, and was (is) basically a bunch of housing developments strung together with shopping areas (I haven't been there in AGES, so I don't know what it's like now) Anyway, we all piled in one car, and started back to the hotel.

Of course, we made a wrong turn and ended up in BumFuck Hills, a housing development in or around Landover. Shit! Shit! Shit! We're holding! Shit! Shit! Shit! We're going to get pulled over! We gotta get outta here before we get busted!

After we hyperventilated for a few moments, we turned around, and went back the way we (thought) we came. Ah! A stop light! and a truck! Yay! Civilization.

We pull in behind this pickup truck waiting for the red light to change. We're laughing like hell at this truck, because it's all loaded down with furniture, household goods, just all kinds of shit. So we sit. And sit. And sit. The light goes green, yellow, red. Then back to green. What the hell? So we pull slooowly around the truck to see what was going on.....

THE TRUCK WAS EMPTY, NOBODY WAS IN THE GODDAMN TRUCK. It was just sitting there with it's lights on.

Then our heads exploded.

The End.