Louisiana 5K

Because I was planning on doing a three-mile Saturday warm-up anyway - and it still qualified me to get the giant Beach to Bayou medal, and Gloria was running it, too - I registered for the Louisiana 5K taking place on Jan. 19, the day before the marathon.

In addition, it would serve as a good test of how my legs would hold up. I slathered on more of that Real Time gel and hoped for the best. The forecast called for rain all morning, but as Gloria and I drove from our hotel, about five miles from downtown Baton Rouge, it was still dry, though very windy.

Upon arrival at the parking garage near the start line, some folks informed us that, due to impending extreme weather conditions (wind, rain and lightning), the race was canceled.

As is now part of the Phish-fan lingo, we had been Curveballed.

After the initial disappointment, we began to wonder - what about that Beach to Bayou medal? I was planning to run the marathon the next day, but this was Gloria's only race this weekend. She came all this way and now she cannot get her award?

Though she was ready to, as she said, "get all Jersey on them," it turned out that these lovely folks were way ahead of us, extending their Southern hospitality to all who came to collect both the 5K race medal and Beach to Bayou medal. 

Not satisfied to collect medals without running, we decided to run the 5K anyway. And we were not alone. We got out on the course, ran an earnest 3.1 miles and felt justified for taking our hardware. As soon as we finished, at around 8 a.m., when the race had been scheduled to start, the skies opened up and the deluge of rain began. Streets quickly flooded, lightning flashed across the sky, and the wind gusted heavily. They had definitely made the right call.

Gloria displays her huge Beach to Bayou bling, along with her Mississippi Half Marathon and Louisiana 5K hardware

As for my hamstrings, running at Gloria's 10+ minute pace made it easy to get through (despite the fact that the slower gait is hell on my back, for some reason), and my legs held up OK. There was a nagging ache and a little pain, but I felt like I was in good enough condition to at least get through the marathon on Sunday.

Four hours might not be in the cards, I thought, but I'll get through it. At that point, it would have to do.

Marathon XX

When I was in Biloxi for the Mississippi Gulf Coast Marathon, I was seduced.

The race booklet made mention of a special medal for runners who participated in any race at that event and any race at the Louisiana Marathon event six weeks later. This Beach to Bayou medal was huge - a giant hunk of metal with magnets on each side, where the medals from both Mississippi Gulf Coast and Louisiana can be attached to form big, mural-like triptych.

I was in its thrall and could not pass it up, despite the fact that my near-PR in Mississippi took everything out of me - destroying my hamstrings in the process. I probably should have rested, repaired and recuperated. But no, I looked up Hal Higdon's Multiple Marathon plan and got right back to work.

Admittedly, it was a relatively small amount of work, with a maximum mileage week of only 36. But almost every run, from the twice-weekly four- and six-milers to the peak 16-mile long run, felt labored at best, painful at worst.

By the time Gloria and I rolled into Baton Rouge on Friday (a 25-hour road trip from New Jersey), my outlook was bleak. At worst, I could slowly run the 5K with Gloria on Saturday, collect the Beach to Bayou bling and let whatever happens happen at the marathon on Sunday.

Driving to Louisiana and not completing the marathon didn't make sense, though. I needed to add a 19th state to my list. So, theoretically, I could crawl to the finish line in the seven-hour time limit, get my marathon medal and cross it off in my effort to run all 50 states.

But if I really wanted to keep my streak going, it needed to be under four hours. By Friday, with my hamstring still in agony, it felt like I needed nothing short of a miracle to accomplish that. At the race expo, a minor one showed up in the form of a topical analgesic called Real Time Pain Relief, which I bought as a desperate, last ditch attempt. The salesman may very well have been offering me snake oil, but I gave it a shot.

Happily, it did ease some of the pain as I continued to slather it on Friday night. The first real test would be to see how my legs held up on a relaxed 5K on Saturday.

From the get go, one thing was for sure - this was going to be a very weird weekend.

Phish at Madison Square Garden - Dec. 30, 2018

Any multi-show run in one venue plays out like a single, giant show, so I listened to the Dec. 29 show on the morning of Dec. 30, the second set while doing my 14-mile run.  That way, I would not have missed anything by the time we went to the show that evening. 

"Corrina" was not only nice to hear, but well played and reminiscent of its bust-out on 12/30/99 (Big Cypress Seminole Reservation, Florida). "46 Days" had a swifter-than-usual tempo and a jam that was rocking in the first half, and pretty in the second half; but Trey pulled a 2011-style ripcord - within 30 seconds of Mike and Page establishing a nice vi-IV pattern that could have totally been explored, Trey forced a segue into a sloppy "Cities". The fun of the first set was a "Wolfman's Brother" into which Trey crowbarred elements of "Party Time", probably trying (but failing) to swerve the jam into that song proper.

Set II of 12/29/18 gave us the absolute best jam of the four-show run.  Shortly into the opening "Carini" jam, they shifted into a major key, and instead of the usual 10-plus minute jam, we got a surprising segue into the jam-of-the-night in "Tweezer". People will be talking about this one for a while. There was such great interplay, with Trey and Fish initiating stops and starts to goad the crowd into some "woo"s and, afterward, they did a pretty, uptempo jam, followed by a segue to "Death Don't Hurt Very Long". But instead of taking the solo himself, Trey threw solos to Fish and Mike before another segue back into "Tweezer", which had another pretty but, by now, perfunctory jam which was brought way down for a segue into "No Quarter".  

With "Death Don't Hurt" as well as "Turtle in the Clouds" played on Dec. 29, we had six remaining Kasvot Vaxt songs on the table as we arrived at Madison Square Garden for the Dec. 30 show. We had decent seats in section 202, across the arena, but with an almost head-on and unobstructed view of the stage.  The sound was not so bad, either.

Opening with "Alumni Blues -> Letter to Jimmy Page -> Alumni Blues" followed by "Mike's Song" gave the show a classic '88 feel, but a big surprise came in the place between "Mike's" and "Weekapaug Groove" usually occupied by "I Am Hydrogen".  Instead of that song, they busted out "Glide II", played exactly once before by Phish, on 5/16/95 (Lowell, MA) - though the real bustout was actually when Trey blew everyone's mind by dusting it off earlier in December during his solo tour.

Speaking of old dormant songs tested by Trey during his solo tour, the short acoustic number, "Bliss", from the 1996 album Billy Breathes that mostly serves as an introduction for the album's title song, also showed up for the first time ever at a Phish show on Dec. 30.  It came off of a "Crosseyed and Painless" that was seamlessly segued out of "Weekapaug" and led into "Billy" as on the album.

After that, there was about 18 minutes of dancing, with "No Men In No Man's Land" laying down some funk and "Weekapaug" showing up again in the middle of a "Tube" jam. "More" closed the set to great and powerful effect, as it often does. As first sets go, that one was pretty hard to beat.

If Set I kept things mostly classic, the first two-thirds of Set II stayed firmly rooted in 3.0 with a fifth Kasvot Vaxt song ("Cool Amber and Mercury"), a large "Everything's Right" that included a big major-key bliss jam, a "Plasma" that had Page tearing it up on the clavinet, and a 20-minute "Light" during which Chris Kuroda's lights were the definite MVP of the jam - not that the band was too shabby either, especially when they peaked, brought it way down, and peaked again.

To close out the set, "Wading in the Velvet Sea" was a pleasant choice, and it was followed by a very 3.0 "Split Open and Melt" (and you know how I feel about those).  That almost did not matter though, because the encore more than made up for it, with a rare four-song selection of classic-era tunes - "Funky Bitch", "Wilson", "Rocky Top" and a "Cavern" that included a nod to Kasvot Vaxt ("Your time is near, the mission's clear, you'll face plant into rock.").  

Despite the lack of any 2.0 era songs in the show, and the way the 3.0 and 1.0 songs were played in separated clumps, this show felt like it had a ton of variety and, most importantly, the playing was incredible - a band doing what it does best on the night before its year-end spectacular.  It was my 10th Dec. 30 Phish show and, once again, it did not disappoint.  I came away satisfied with it being my last show of the year.

The next night was everything New Year's Eve should be, with big, fat jams in "Down With Disease" and "Seven Below"; a fun song sandwich that put "Passing Through" (KV song #8 after "Play By Play" was the seventh in Set I)) in the middle of the "Harry Hood" jam; and, of course, an elaborate production to ring in the new year (this time based around one of my favorite newer songs, "Mercury" and a ninth KV tune "Say It to Me S.A.N.T.O.S.").  I watched it with friends at home on Jan. 1 and it felt like I got to ring in the new year all over again.  

Fans seem to be using "This is what space smells like" (from "S.A.N.T.O.S.") as a catchphrase, but when it comes to Phish's New Year's Run, I think the next line is much more appropriate - "You will always remember where you were."

Phish at Madison Square Garden - Dec. 28, 2018

Happy New Year's Run!  Now that all that Christmas crap is over with, we can get down to the real holiday season.  It is Phish's 17th Dec. 28th show ever (and my seventh!) and by Jan. 1, they will have played at the venue 65 times total, just a few shy of the 69 Elton John will have racked up by the spring.  We see you, Billy Joel, with your 106 MSG shows, and we are coming for you.

For this show, Gloria and I scored floor tickets through Phish mail order, so we got the full sound and lights, with an excellent view of the band and, occasionally, some decent dancing room, staying around the middle.

Being the first show since the Halloween run, it is no surprise that Phish wants to explore the new Kasvot Vaxt songs that they debuted in Las Vegas, so we got two of those songs - "We Are Come to Outlive Our Brains" to open the show and "The Final Hurrah" as a highlight of the second set - and I am sure there are more to come over the next three nights.

"Martian Monster" provided a 3.0 Halloween double shot at the top of the show, but until the "Walls of the Cave" closer (with its awfully bungled intro but high-energy redeeming jam), the first set looks on paper like it could have been from 1998, with a raging "Axilla I"; a rocking "Free" that kept things hot and heavy without pushing any boundaries; "The Wedge", which always feels both out of place and perfectly welcome wherever it is played in the set.

But do not let the set list fool you.  The quick swerve into a major-key in "Ghost"; the herky-jerky, noisy stabs in "Meat"; a "Sparkle" that was well-executed into its speedy coda, but without the frantic, frenetic pace of the old days; Trey's killer counterpoint during Page's organ solo in "Maze"; and an "If I Could" that retained all the beauty of the later versions, but at the more brisk tempo of the earlier versions, this was unmistakably the non-jam side of 3.0 Phish at its best.

Oh, you want to talk about the jam side of 3.0 Phish?  Check out the raging jam that saved "Walls of the Cave", and then follow me into the second set, where "Set Your Soul Free" got things going with a long jam that stayed mostly moored, but explored a lot of pretty textures before getting weird at the end and falling into "Swept Away".

The minute-long "Swept Away" always leads to "Steep".  Any old fan like me remembers the 1990s versions of "Steep" that were merely another brief, two-minute pit stop.  The 3.0-era "Steep" is a beautiful slow jam that builds on the theme of the backing vocal melody. While this version did not quite meet the majesty of the Baker's Dozen version (8/1/17 Maple) at this very venue, or even the 7/10/11 version from Camden, Trey and Page showed - as they did with "If I Could" in the first set and the lovely "Shade" (I am not crying, you are crying) later in the second set - that the tender moments can be some of the best. 

Holy moly, I just realized that Phish has only done this new "Steep" five times since the 2009 reunion, and I have seen four of them!

While it was super fun to have some extended play off of "The Final Hurrah", the bigger, better jam came in "Fuego" which is always reliable, often a highlight.  Count this version, which peaked twice, in that latter category, even if (at only 10 power-packed minutes) it did not stretch out into transcendence like the back-to-back monsters of 7/4/14 and 7/8/14.

Speaking of peaks and transcendence, have you heard this "Bathtub Gin" yet?  After Page gets down on the Rhodes for a while, Fish speeds up the beat and, suddenly, I am transported back to 6/28/00 in Holmdel, for a high-energy, funky/happy jam. The similarity in vibe was uncanny. 

So after all that, does ending with "Possum" leave me a little flat?  Yes, just a little - but watching everyone else, from newbie kids to old dudes, go bananaballs over it always makes me smile.  I am sure it gives Jeff Holdsworth a warm fuzzy, too.

"Slave to the Traffic Light"

And if I can not feel the same about a version of "Bouncing Around the Room" so lame that even I refuse to defend it, at least we ended the show on about as pretty a note as one can, with "Slave to the Traffic Light", perhaps to tie it in with the other such moments on this rainy, yet mild December night in New York City.