The Greenroom

It was a summer Friday afternoon when the regular crew (I don't know exactly who was there but it was pretty much always the same people) headed off for another one of our concert road trip adventures. The general direction we were headed was North and West into the Pennsylvania wilderness. Our road trips during the late nineties were always an adventure and in general (to me at least) we didn't care where we were going but just that we were leaving the mundane traditional routine of daily life. All the standard stuff that goes into a 16 year oldish (not exactly sure how old we were, old enough to drive and thats all that matters) road trip: Show up late, Directions... Who cares, Danny, "I forgot something. Can we swing by my house?" Josh,"Danny. I don't really think your house is on the way", and the list goes on and on.
You may be wondering, "What amazing band were they going to see that would prompt such a trip?". It was Dogwood of course.

Anybody who is anybody listens to Dogwood (duh!). We are some of the only people who could be considered Dogwood regulars at their East Coast Shows. My brother jumped off of the stage into the audience of 25 -30 and nearly killed himself when he got knocked back into the stage. The band stopped playing to check on him. The night went on without a hich.

Of course the first place that we headed after the show was Denny's. Any self-respecting road tripper does this to signify the beggining of the trip home. Who do we run into at Denny's after the who but Dogwood! What luck. The budget these guys are operating on must be HUGE to be able to eat out at Denny's after every show.

Alright this story is starting to get long so I will try to expedite things a bit. Plus I am getting tired of typing.

The Trip Back...

We somehow ended up in Baltimore (we were not supposed to end up even close to Baltimore on our return trip) heading the wrong direction on the interstate. Don't ask me how it happened I blame the car in front of us. Then to recover from our near death, wrong way on the interstate eperience we turned off of the nearest exit and headed into what must have been a pretty shady neighborhood because we got pulled over by the bpd and told to get out of wherever we were. Most of this is a bit of a blur to me simply because at this point it was about 3:00 A.M.

Finally we escaped the streets of Baltimore to the empty roads back to Sussex county. Up next... Hurlock. Now Hurlock is your typical small Delmarva town. One road in and one road out. We found the Road in but where in the world is the road that leads out. We tried everything. Turned down every small side street that little town had. We were unable to escape. Trapped by the deadly grasp of smalltown America (that was entirely too dramatic). At this point most everyone nerves were shot and we had played about every traveling game imaginable. The sun had also started to come up which was nice, but I knew that I had a ten hour workday ahead of me since it was now a Saturday. Finally somehow or onother we found ourselves out of town and on a B-line home. We had been on cell phones regularly throught the night with family and friends trying to have them talk us though the roads on their maps. We didn't need a map because we were to cool for school and planning was for adults of course. We were going to fly by the seat of our pants and make this trip happen.

Finally we made it home. I put on my work clothes and crawled into bed for an hour of sleep before waking up to head into work. It was one of the best trips of my life and I think back on it often. From that point on whenever friends and I are together and want to remember a good time we simply say, "All roads lead to Hurlock".