June 30th

We started the day working on the blog and end of month banking.  Our plan was to leave the hotel at about 2:00 and walk to downtown Eugene have a couple of beers, get something to eat and then about 5:30 walk over to Autzen Stadium. It’s about a 5-6 mile walk to the Falling Sky Brewery where we decided to go for our pre-concert festivities.  Falling Sky is further than Autzen Stadium from our hotel.  We had heard that they run bus shuttles to all parts of Eugene for events like Dead and Company and we were hoping that we could catch a shuttle back to someplace near our hotel.  So walk the 5-6 miles, eat, drink some beers, rest our feet, walk the 1 ½ miles back to the stadium, enjoy the concert and take a shuttle back to the hotel.  Easy peasy.

We had fun at Falling Sky and walked to the stadium.  Our cheap seats were in the sun and the sun wouldn’t go down until half way through the show.  We settled in seats at the back of the general admission section, these seats had a back rest against a wall and we could stand up and not bother the people behind us.  No other seats in general admission had back rests.  Beer was $9.00/pint but we persevered.  We were set for the show.

It has been a longtime since I was at a Dead concert but starting with the first song tonight, Deal I was stoked!  They incorporated a lengthy jam into this song and many others including St. Stephen and Black Throated Wind.  Both Bob Weir and John Mayer were on.  Sure, I missed Jerry but John Mayer was great.  Two sets, the first was over 1 hour and 15 minutes and after the 45 minute intermission they played over 1 hour 30 minutes.  Even though it seemed like we were a mile from the stage the sound was perfect.  We danced through the whole concert.  The concert began about 7:30 and ended just before 11:00.  Talked to a few other Dead Heads and they agree with my assessment.  If you can, get tickets and go see this band.

After the concert we made our way to the shuttle buses and you guessed it there were no shuttles to our neck of the woods.  After trying every taxi in town and Uber was impossible we settled in for our 4.6 mile walk back to our hotel.  When I looked at my little app that tracks your walking we had walked 12.5 miles.  With the walking and the dancing the bed looked really good once we got back to the room.

Off to the Willamette National Forest and then Bend for the weekend to see our friends Lauren, Robin and Nathan.