on driving across the country, part two

When I started writing about this the other day, I didn't really know it was going to lead to so many memories...but now that I've started, I'm going to go with it.

So the boyfriend and I stayed in New Jersey with his mother for a few weeks. He worked as a caddy at the local country club and I loafed around. We went up to Westport, CT for a few days to visit his dad and while we were there, his dad bought him a used Subaru station wagon. A red one. Finally we were set for summer tour.

The first shows were at Deer Creek in Indiana so we were headed back the way we had come. Along the way we stopped somewhere - again, my memory is terrible - where there was some kind of Deadhead gathering. (For the record, I didn't party at this time in my life so my memory isn't bad because I was on acid the whole time or anything like that.) At the party, we picked up bags and bags of those colorful woven Guatemalan bracelets that used to be popular. The aforementioned t-shirts and these bracelets were going to pay for our travels.

I'm not going to go into detail about tour; I'll just tell you where we went. From Indiana, we backtracked to Ohio for a show at Buckeye Lake (where the Violent Femmes opened!) and then headed south to Charlotte, NC. That was the most south I had ever been. I remember pulling off the highway and finding a lake so we could cool off with a swim. That was one of the happier moments of the trip. Oh yeah, we were traveling with another car, there were five of us total and I was the only female. After Charlotte, we hit D.C. for a show at RFK Stadium (they played Dark Star) and then we must have taken a few days off because I don't remember going to shows at Giant Stadium which was the next stop on the tour. Then it was on to Michigan for shows at Pine Knob and from there, Chicago. In Chicago, we got to stay at some super fancy hotel courtesy of the boyfriend's mother who worked in that industry. It was sweet. There were two shows at Sandstone in Kansas and tour ended with a show at Mile High Stadium in Denver. I remember feeling like the drive across Kansas took forever. And it was super windy so I couldn't help but think about Dorothy's house flying away in the Wizard of Oz. Definitely could happen in Kansas. From Denver it was an easy shot back to New Mexico, I-25 all the way to Santa Fe and then I-40 to Albuquerque.

So that Dead summer tour was my second journey across the country, albeit in a zig zag sort of way. It was a good time, but I remember many fights with the boyfriend. I was fairly young and it was probably too much time to be spending together. I loved the traveling though. That was the best part. And we did pay for the tour by selling crap in the parking lots before and after shows. I remember being sort of terrified to walk around by myself (shyness), but somehow I managed. In one city, someone actually asked to take my picture because I was a "real Deadhead" which was so not true, and absolutely hilarious. I have loads of my own photos from that summer, but they're all in New Mexico. I'll try to scan some once we're settled in.

And, suffice it to say, a few weeks after we arrived back in Albuquerque, me and the boyfriend broke up.