March 21, 1992
Copps Colliseum
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Set 1
Help On The Way > Slipknot > Franklin's Tower; Little Red Rooster; Peggy-O; Queen Jane; So Many Roads

Set 2
Way To Go; Corinna > Terrapin > Drumz > Last Time > Black Peter > Saturday Night

Encore
Box Of Rain

By the next year a lot had changed in my life. First of all I had given up drinking. I knew I was a problem drinker to begin with, but my heart had started acting funny. It would actually stop beating momentarily, and then start again with one extra heavy beat. It freaked me out, but it took a year and a half before I finally got myself in to see a doctor. He told me that it was nothing. It was like a hiccup of the heart. It was no more threatening to the cardiac rhythm than an actual hiccup is to the respiratory rhythm. But it was still enough to scare me sober. And I didn't entirely buy that it was so harmless. A year and a half of fretting about it left me with a mild case of panic-stress disorder, and I would get a little panicky whenever my heard had one of those hiccups.

The other way my life had changed was that I had effectively made the transition from closet case to sexually active gay man. But pretty much my only gay friends were online. One named Gary was a 2nd generation Chinese guy living in Toronto. The other was some High School kid in Wisconsin. I forget his name. We'll call him Earl. The three of us had become email pen pals. When Earl's Spring Break of his senior year rolled around, he said he wanted to make a road trip East to meet us face to face. He had a gay friend who wanted to come along too. I forget the other kid's name too. I'll call him Joel. As luck would have it, the Dead were playing in Copps Coliseum at the exact time that Earl and Joel would be out here. The venue was located in Hamilton Ontario, which was almost exactly mid-way between Ithaca and Toronto. We decided we'd go for it. Earl and Joel made plans to drive out and I got the tickets. Gary would actually take a bus to Ithaca where we'd meet up with Earl and Joel. Then we'd all drive up to Toronto. Gary would stay behind, Earl and Joel would head back to Wisconsin, and I would go home to Ithaca.

I was still driving the same VW van at the time. Unfortunately just before Gary, Earl, and Joel arrived, the started went out on it. I took it to my local mechanic, who fortunately specialized in old Volkswagens. They weren't able to get a new one for me in time for the trip, but they could cob up the old one as best they could. I was reticent about taking it on a trip of this magnitude, especially considering I was battling panic-stress disorder at the time. I knew I'd be worrying about it the whole time I was away. I suggested that they go on without me. They could take my ticket and give it to the cutest hippy boy they could find who was begging for a ticket. But Gary vetoed this option in no uncertain terms. He said I was going and that was all there was to it.

I got the van back from the mechanic on Friday afternoon just before we were to leave. It started right up. I shut it off. It started up again. I shut it off, and it started up once more. It seemed to be working okay, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and head out. Gary got in the van with me and Earl and Joel followed in their car. When we got to Niagara Falls we stopped to check it out. It was amazing, but it was also really cold out, so after just a few minutes we got back on our way. Or at least we intended to. The van wouldn't start. So I had Gary, Earl, and Joel push it for me. It still wasn't starting. At least until I realized I had forgotten to turn the ignition back on. As soon as I did it fired up on the first bump. From there we drove directly to Gary's condo in Toronto where I parked the van in the parking garage and shut it off. That night we went out to a couple bars. I didn't see one single hot guy the whole night. Oh Canada!

The next day was the show. We were taking Earl's car for obvious reasons. We went to the top of the CN Tower that morning, and headed out to Hamilton after lunch. There was a nice festival going on in the parking lot. We walked around digging the cute hippie boys. But before we went in we had to get some chow. We went to a nearby mall, but almost every store inside was closed. I was really, really hungry now. This aching hunger, coupled with the stress of the trip, got my heart hiccupping on me, which put me in a pretty miserable mood. The only food joint open was some place serving up fish sandwiches. It wasn't what I wanted, but it was all there was. After we waited in line with all the other deadheads that had found this as the only source of sustenance, we got our fish sandwiches and sat down. I was on the verge of a panic attack, which made me not want to eat. But I was desperately hungry, so I had to. On like the second bite of the sandwich I discovered a twist-tie that had somehow made its way into my meal. If I hadn't been feeling so miserable I would have made a federal case about it (or whatever they call a federal case in Canada). I choked down the rest of the sandwich and we went into the arena.

I calmed down a fair amount after we got into our seats and mellowed out. The show was okay, but I was in one of my moods where I would have been happy if it were over. During intermission Gary and Earl went off to be by themselves. I told them to rendez-vous with us at a pre-arranged location when the band went into Drumz/Space. I found out later that when they left us they went up to the far back row and started making out like crazy. When Drumz started we all met up. I said that I wanted to book so that we could miss the post-concert crowd and ensuing traffic. They would have been happy to stay for the rest of the show, but I asked them to humor me. We got back in the car and drove back to Toronto fine.

The next morning Earl and Joel were anxious to get on their way. They had a long trip ahead of them. Before they left I had them help me try to push start the van, but it had been sitting for two days in the cold Canadian Winter (technically it had turned to Spring as the previous day was the Equinox, but for all intents and purposes it was still Winter), and there was no getting it started. Earl and Joel took off, and I called CAA, which is the Canadian version of AAA. The two organizations had a reciprocal agreement, so my benefits worked there just as if I was home. The guy showed up, and said there wasn't much he could do besides try to push start it again. We were more stubborn this time, and by the grace of God we were able to get it running.

Unfortunately the weather was taking a turn for the worse. A big, lake-effect storm was blowing in. In fact Earl and Joel had decided to turn around and leave the following day. I would have been happy to do the same, but I didn't want to have to go through the same drama a second time of getting the van started. I decided to head out. Having driven this van the previous Winter, I had the heat working well enough to at least waft luke warm air onto the windshield. It wasn't enough to keep warm, but it was enough to keep the windshield clear of ice. This meant that all I really had to worry about was treacherous, slippery roads and possible white-out conditions.

As I drove along there were a couple occasions where traffic in the opposite direction was backed way, way up. But somehow I managed to be lucky enough that traffic my way kept on moving, slow as it may have been. I was just looking forward to getting back on American soil again. Finally I got to the border. But it was cold comfort, as the conditions actually got worse. The snow got heavier, and the roads (I was on the New York Thruway) got sloppier. Overall it wasn't too terribly bad. There were two tire tracks in the snow that everyone was driving in. But every so often I would come upon some loser who was going at like 25 MPH. The conditions, tricky as they were, simply didn't warrant that meek speed. That left two options. One was to slow down to 25 MPH. The other was to venture out into the snow-covered passing lane in a harrowing attempt to get by. In an ordinary car it wouldn't have been too terribly bad, but in a big old rear-engined VW bus, it was an adventure.

I really wanted to just pull off and let the storm pass. I had friends in Buffalo or even Rochester I could have stayed with, but because of the damned starter on the van I had to press on. I told myself I was going to make it home or die trying. I pressed on. When I got to Geneva I told myself that it might be less harrowing on secondary roads. I figured that if something happened it would be easier to get to a phone than if I was still on the Thruway. Besides, I needed gas. I got off and filled up the tank. I had to leave the engine running at the gas station. Then I headed down Route 96 between the lakes. The conditions weren't any better. In fact since there was less traffic it was like driving in the Thruway passing lane all the time. I got in behind an old Datsun 280Z with Florida plates. I figure he was probably even more freaked out in his vehicle than I was in mine. Other than the fact that the rear end tended to kick out on me from time to time, I actually made good progress. The big fear was a white-out, and since I was now moving away from Lake Ontario, the likelihood of that was getting smaller and smaller. But I had a white-knuckle death-grip on the wheel the whole way, and my entire body was tense. When I finally arrived back home I had been enduring that condition for seven and a half hours. I had never been so glad to get out of a vehicle in my whole life.

Although I had been going to one Dead show every year, I slacked off after that one. And then just a couple years later Jerry died, and it was all over. Symbolically or otherwise, I didn't even wind up staying to the end of what wound up being the last Grateful Dead concert I would ever attend.

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