[lumberjim]

My Mom was worried for me, and my Dad was upset. There was a whole scene at my house as my dad ( who was there to pick up my younger brother Todd for a visit) tried to talk me out of it at the last minute. At the end, he accepted that we would all be fine, and there was much rejoicing. We had been to multiple shows in summers past, and knew what we were in for. Heather and Jeremiah had some friends from California coming along, and Gina, Shelby, Terry, and I went in the VW. Heather and Jeremiah would follow in the lil’ blue Chevette, and Tony and Rachel in Tony’s beige Toyota pick up truck with cap.

I didn’t know Tony or Rachel at all, as they had only gotten into town a few days before we left to go to the first show. They were real life hippies. So was Jeremiah, for that matter. Heather was about the hippiest of the rest of us. Middle class white kids. Tony, Rachel, and Jeremiah had “different” upbringings, and their mannerisms were noticeably different. Jeremiah had lived on various communes, Tony had grown up on the beach in Ca, and Rachel was only 15 and pregnant. Noticeably pregnant.

We decided on sleeping arrangements in the bus, divided up storage space, and filled the cupboard with rice and beans. Then Gina bought the Trunk. Aquamarine with brass corners, cheap masonite trunk. Why a trunk? Because her clothes had to be neat and unwrinkled. As we left to travel the country for an undefined period of time. She was an Ironing nut. Naturally, the only place the trunk would fit was on the floor, right where you open the sliding door to get in and out. So, for the next few months we would step over the trunk. Fine. Gina got her way most of the time. I was pretty oblivious to this for some reason, but it made Shelby see red, and as I would find out, she could only stand so much of that kind of thing.

Shelby and I bought new backpacks from I.Goldberg, and a nice new 4 man tent for the two of us. We had a propane stove, pots and pans, can openers, Frisbees, hackey-sacks, cards, beads in beadboxes, some leather, some crystals, and all kinds of shit in that bus.

The best part about the bus was that it was manual transmission, and Gina could barely drive it. She had to look the part, though, so whenever we were arriving to a destination, or departing, she insisted on driving. And almost every time, there were long awkward periods when Gina would wrestle with the shifter, buck and stall the van, curse, and eventually gain control of the beast. She held up traffic in Pittsburgh on an off ramp though 3 or 4 cycles of the green light. Shelby had to physically remove her from the drivers seat and get the van going. Gina pouted for a while. She was cute. Most of the time she was fun to be around, and very sweet, but certain things had to be just so