In cold water...

Jill and I woke up on Friday determined to get some work done. Jill wanted to go swimming at Gabe and Ken's so we dragged the laptop up to Golden in hopes that their hotel's WiFi was not completely jammed up. Man was I wrong, it took close to 45 minutes to upload one page, I can only assume every room in the hotel was downloading last night's show. Oh well. I guess Colorado is the land of spotty WiFi, one week with no strong signal. After a quick dip and a long upload we headed into Colorado Mills for some grub with Jeremy, Gabe and Ken. As luck would have it Don, Savannah, and a new addition to our group, Ben, were already at Mimi's. Some shopping in the rain later and then it was time to head back to the Horton House. Back at the shack with grocieries and booze we ran into the Mayor of Red Rocks, Kenny. Kenny is a good friend of my brother in law and lives in Frisco, CO. He has been coming to the House for years now and has it for every big show that rolls through. Panic, Phish, whatever it might be he has first dibs. He knows where to park, how to bring a bar in, and where to sit. We stocked up our coolers, piled in the cars and left for the show. Piling once again into Don's car we headed on up the mountain to park in our same spot and arrived at the same time. While grabbing the coolers Don said that he had made us shirts for the show. The front says Red Rocks 2009 in a Kansas City Royals logo, and the back has the number 85 for the 1985 Royals (World Series Champs). We ran on up the hill again and this time pulled up right at the top of the stairs on Fishman's aisle. Closer forward, just further to the right, a lot further.
Before the show I had been talking to my friend Mike Liska about meeting up. He had made the long trek from Chicago as well (by plane) and I was excited to finally do some shows with him. He had tried to do Coventry with me back in 2004, but due to prior obligations wasn't able to make it. It is amazing the lengths phans will go to in order to see Phish. No amount of travel is too much and no circumstance too difficult to overcome in order to make it to the show. Sometimes you are rewarded for your hard work, sometimes not. Coventry was one of those situations that was not worth the work, Red Rocks however was looking as though it was going to be well worth the wait. The skies where gray and the night air cool, we hoped the rain wouldn't come, but all the hope in the world wasn't holding Mother Nature back.
The first set opened with a pretty standard Runaway Jim, a way too long Time Turns Elastic (not a good new song IMO, a good rendition of it that Gabe, Jill and I all agreed could have been longer), and by time Lawn Boy started up the rain started to come down. Slowly at first, and then it really came down. The rain became too much during Split Open and Melt and I finally had to relent and put on my rain jacket. Set break came and it was time for cover. Unfortunately we forgot a tarp, but the people in front of us were willing to share. My rain gear was already soaked so I held a corner and kept the group dry. The rain let up as I came back from the bathroom (much shorter walk today) and we were rewarded for putting up with the weather with a fierce second set. The one two opener of Drowned>Crosseyed and Painless was awe inspiring. Two of my favorite covers in a row, I was quite pleased. Its always funny that Phish seems to know what the crowd is going through. They knew set break was tough and came on out with the fire. Soaked to the bone everyone started to really boogie. The second set saw a Fluffhead as well, my third one of Phish V3.0. I love how this song has made a reappearance into Phish's repertoire after being shelved for a decade. It's rebirth is akin to Phish's rebirth. They are serious about it this time, and now they are going to do it right. No more flubbing.
The heavens cleared up and it was clear skies for the rest of the night. Two down, two to go. Tomorrow night was to be the Saturday show, always a big deal. Let's see if they would live up to the hype, so far so good.