IT was a long strange trip...

i love to drive. i really do. the thought of driving 14 hours to see one of my favorite bands was not a strange one for me; i had done it on several occasions in the past, and been very glad i did.

we left Old Forge, NY at 6:30AM on friday morning. we had wanted to leave earlier, but some of the crew had to work late, and this was decided to be the best time. the gates opened at 8:00AM, but the shows wouldn't begin until saturday.

additionally, rather than taking the highway route down I-90 to I-95 to Maine, we took Route 2 across Vermont, New Hampshire, and much of Maine. this seemed more direct.

along the way we encountered a few traffic issues, but we still arrived in the Limestone, ME area around 8:30PM. at this point, we ran into a traffic jam, but this was expected. we figured we probably had a 4-6 hour wait to get in, annoying, but tolerable.

16 and 1/2 hours later, we parked on the airfield.

you might wonder why we would do this to ourselves. "who the hell would wait in line for 16 hours to see a band?!?!" of course, we really had no choice. although we could have turned around an arrived home before we actually got in, we had all spent $150 to go, and driven a long way; we were there for good.

in truth, we didn't know how long we were going to be waiting. we expected some wait, and due to a change in course we took a different route in than the other Limestone veterans had taken before, we didn't know how far away we actually were from the venue.

we were about 13 miles away.