Can I go to Reading by bus ?!

by Yome NetSan 12. August 2013

I live near Lyon, France. And it looks like there's a direct bus from Lyon Station to downtown Reading, PA !
It's Route 22 from Batrabus.
Very convenient ;)

What dreams are made of

by Yome NetSan 11. August 2013

After the worst nightmare, I had the craziest dream come true.

Yesterday, after being laught at at work because of my lack of luck, I e-mailed TicketMaster to see if we can work something out for my Reading order. I asked for either a (partial) refund, a transfert to someone else's account, the ability to ship the ticket to someone in the US or for someone else to come retrieve it at the venue. The answer came later that day : the only option would be a refund of the face price and the "will call" option but only if the venue accept it. They made the request and I'll have to wait for the answer.

Meanwhile, I tried to find tickets for the Atlantic City run. I made a thread on phish.net. Another thread amoung all the other "ISO AC" threads from fans left over by the TicketMaster website. I add myself in a spreadsheet gathering all the fans who need tickets. I had a private message from a nice fan who has contact me before the public sale and who might has an extra for Halloween night. My new friend from Geneva also failed on TM for Halloween but bought his 3-day pass on Stubhub. I finaly wrote an e-mail which was like a big gamble, with very low hope it might give any positive result.

About 25 minutes later I got this answer :

I'll get you access to purchase a 3 day pass for AC. No worries. I'll set that up later today.

Thanks for staying with Phish over the years.

Wait a minute... WHAT ?!

I guess I'm the luckiest man in the world right now. Later that evening, I received another e-mail this a link to my dream.

In a time span of 24 hours, I went through all the emotional phases : stress, happyness, more stress, sadness, frustration, more happyness !

I don't know yet if my first show will be Reading or Halloween but I'll see my first Phish show in october 2013 !!

Worst than my worst nightmare

by Yome NetSan 8. August 2013

I knew it wouldn't be easy. After losing the lottery, I was getting ready for the public sale this thursday. I read a lot of pieces of advice from several forums and a good link given by Holger.

My TicketMaster account was ready with all the informations saved. I stayed at work later to be before a computer by 18 PM.

To "train" myself with the process, I logged at 17PM and tried to score a ticket for Reading, the show right before Halloween, on the 29th.
Last week, I toyed with the idea of going to this show too on my way to Atlantic City but the timing wasn't right with my Morocco trip and the flights to the USA.
After 10 minutes of "High demand! No match!" I'm finally offered 100 section seats, most of them behind the stage ! I'm still hiting the "search" button until I found General Admission floor tickets 15 minutes later. That's a good thing I tried before the Atlantic Run. I realized that I can have others tickets than the first offered.
I follow the process to see what's next, if I can get to the end and so on. And so I clicked one more time... and found myself too far than I thought.

I just bought my first Phish ticket.

But I'll have to go myself to the venue on the day of the show with my ID and the credit card to get it ! As an international buyer, I can't have the ticket printed or shipped to France ! And then I realize that I have a non-refundable ticket to a show I can't attend and I can't sell it because I can't go to the venue to retrieve it !

And then 18 PM arrive.

I click on the link for the 3-days pass, enter the quantity (just 1, I'm not greedy), select GA Floor and hit "Find Tickets".

And I waited...
And I waited...

20 minutes later, the "countdown" has already showed me "Please wait 15 minutes", "14 minutes", back to "15 minutes", "7", "4", "15", "3"... That's rather random if you ask me !

40 minutes later, after trying on the computer and on my phone at the same time (with the mobile site, not the application because it can't be installed on a french phone !)

A few minutes later, the Twitter account announced that the run was SOLD OUT.

 

 

 

How bittersweet. I paid a ticket that I won't ever see and didn't get the ones I wanted.

My options now are trying to get the AC tickets from extras. But let's see on Stubhub, the prices are insane.
I might find a fellow fan on phish.net but I'm not the only one who wants tickets.
I can do like this japanese fan who'll fly to the show and plan on finding tickets at the venue. I can't take that risk.
I can go to the Reading show only but that would be far too expensive for only one show.

I guess I fail at Phish.

No luck...

by Yome NetSan 7. August 2013

After spending all of yesterday checking my bank account every 10 minutes, I finally got the bad news with an email this morning : I didn't won the lottery. So I don't have tickets yet. My next move will be the public sale on thursday 12AM EST at TicketMaster. That's 18PM in France, a time when i'm usualy at the station, waiting for my train after my day job... I'll have to stay late at work or come back home very early.

Meanwhile, I got e-mails from two french speaking fans in less than 24 hours thanks to my website ! The first one is a french guy living in Toronto and the second is living in Geneva, Switzerland. Maybe will work things out to have their Phish-related stories on the blog and get tickets for Atlantic City...

Will 2013 be finally THE year ?

by Yome NetSan 29. July 2013

When the fall tour 2013 has been announced last week, I read the news like any Phish tour announcement for sixteen years. Where will they play ? How many shows ? Basic stuffs. But when I saw that they'll play 3 days at Atlantic City from October 31th to November 2nd, I got pretty hyped : Halloween + 30th anniversary show during the same run ?! I HAVE TO GO !

Ok, I realized a few minutes later that their birthday was on December 2nd, not November 2nd...

Nevertheless, my brain was already on fire. The run will be at the very end of the Toussaint holidays in France. I already planned a family trip to Morocco but it won't last the 2 weeks. With one flight to the U.S.A., I could attend 3 shows, including a pretty rare Halloween 3-setter ! I talked about it to my wife and her answer was both encouraging and full of common sense : "How much would it cost ?"

Yes, the main concern will be the money, as it has always been.

The following day, I checked several websites for flights booking to have an idea of the grand total.
First surprise : Atlantic City International airport can't be reached from Europe. So I search for Philadelphia from Lyon, Paris or even Geneva. I found several possibilities with or without stopover for a price from 600€ to 700€. I can find cheaper with 2 stopovers but I don't want to spend 24 hours in planes and airports...
A 3 day ticket would be 180$ but I have to add the fee and shipping for a total of 217.10$.
I have also to count 4 hotel nights, a way to go from Philly to Atlantic City (it seems I won't be alone), food and pocket money.

OK so I have to find a 1200€ bill.

I could fight against my habits to buy countless video games or vinyls to finally save this amount until October. The problem is I have to spend most of it (tickets, plane and hotel) at least in august and I don't have it now. So, like many times before, I dug the idea...

 

On Saturday, I received a letter from my company about my annual bonus. Usually it's stuck on a special bank account for 5 years unless I get married, have a baby or buy a house, which is not planned. But for the first time, this year, I have the option to request the full amount to be paid immediately.

 

Wait a minute...

 

This morning, I did something I've been dreaming of for sixteen year : I request tickets for a Phish show on tickets.phish.com

Oh my. I'll go to a Phish show !

Trip to Gorge

by Holger 5. August 2011

Well, here we go again - Spring 2003, NYE 2004, Vegas 2004, Summer 2009, NYE 2009, Summer 2010 we now attend Summer 2011 shows. It is really fun to plan your vacation around shows and I always loved the US like I love Phish so for me it is combining two of the most fun things. This time it was a tricky one. From the day they announced the tour I was checking options. It must fit into the whole year planning and ideally should be in an area where we haven't been before. So I was desperately hoping for westcoast shows which haven't been announced in the beginning. Once they have been announced my phantasy went wild. Only problem - my wife started a new job and taking off 3 weeks was not possible. Luckily her boss approved 2,5 weeks so we got to squeeze the trip a little bit. Booking flights, car, hotels, etc was a routine after so many trips. Then about one week before we wanted to start the complete air traffic control in Germany planned a strike on the day we wanted to fly. Only at 10pm the night before a court ruled against the strike and made our trip possible. Then the flight was delayed in Berlin and I got nervous to catch the connection flight from JFK to Seattle. Thank god we catched up some minutes in the air. But immigration at JFK was the worst ever. Tons of passangers got caged into an underground labyrinth with no windows and no restrooms for 1,5h. People started to become aggressive, babies were screaming, kids were crying, men were close to fighting for space. Next horror news was that our flight to Seattle was overbook by 5 people and they were looking for flexible travellers. Of course we were NOT flexible ;)! Finally we made it into Seattle, fell into our hotel beds and tried to get some sleep. Keep you updated about our way to the Gorge...

[HUMOR] Fucked or not fucked ?

by Yome NetSan 25. August 2010

Online Phish Tour made two great posts about the distance you have to travel to see Phish this fall and since they came back last year.

You can read it thought here and here.

An interresting analysis with many maps but clearly uncomplete.

So let me add another piece to this analysis, with a more global scale...

 




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