A good friend of mine was attending classes at Boston College for the summer. He invited me out to spend a couple of days with him in Boston, and to go see Phish at Great Woods. He was a big fan of the Dead, but this was his first time checking out phish live. The Rift album was relatively new and we were both soaking it up.

Having grown up in a small town, Running free in Boston was a thrilling experience for a junior in high school. We saw and did so much, it was a blast. The beginning of out of state Phish following travels that would take me around the entire country...

I had seen a few phish shows before, but the venues were much smaller. The lot at Great Woods was packed with heads and resembled what one would see at a dead show.

Can remember Trey doing the silent break during Divided sky and we were really thrown for a loop back then... We were looking at each other like "Dude, what the heck is goin on up there." "Is he havin a seisure or somethin?"... We were really stoned...

The second set opener was frickin' awesome. We didn't know the song and had just wrote down "Lights" on the setlist, cause during the climatic parts of the song they were blazing huge ass headlights up into our eyes... (It was 2001)

During Maze, this Kid (I had just turned 17 and he was quite a bit younger) was going nutz. Like a Mr. Roboto dance at warp speed. It was awesome. Seeing others letting it hang out like that really made us feel comfortable too. By the time Weekapaug rolled around we were all bending at the knee into some deep funk. Just completely Free...

My friend was blown off the face of the earth at his first Phish show, and continued on to see many many more. We would bounce back and forth between Phish and the Dead, then Phish and Furthur...