Everyone in America older than 55 or so knows where they were when the Kennedys and Martin Luther King were shot... And then there was that fateful summer of ‘69 when man first walked on the surface of the moon and half a million hippies declared a nation of peace and love for one LONG weekend in upstate NY.

Memories are often wispy little things that are easily carried off somewhere far away when exposed to the tumult of our daily lives, rarely to be seen or heard from again.  But some memories seem to get coated in epoxy and resist the gradual weathering of time or are stored in some underground vault that keeps the fragile contents intact until opened periodically for inspection.  My vault is disproportionately filled with entries dated Summer of ‘69.  It's not clear to me why we relish round number anniversaries and tend to seek out those memories and pay our respects at these times - perhaps to dust them off and preserve their longevity.  In that spirit, a sampling from the vault…

We arrived in White Lake by thumb after having crashed my bike (bicycle that is, not motorcycle) about 40 miles out of town.  It was totally my fault: we were coasting down a long downhill at a great clip and I was gaining quickly on the bike in front of me – after straining up long steep grades on our over packed 10 speed mules it felt like a sin to apply the brakes and waste even an ounce of that energy that I had righteously earned...  

The others had just graduated high school and this was a celebratory journey for them – I was a year younger but felt like this trip was an opportunity not to be missed.  Little did I know how true that was.  Setting off at the start of the summer-long journey, my three friends and I had attempted to travel lightly, e.g., I cut the legs off a pair of jeans and installed grommets so I could wear them as either shorts or long pants by tying the legs back on with leather string (many years later I saw a version of my invention being sold in stores).  But to quite the opposite effect, our bike panyards (the old fashioned metal ones that kids used to  deliver newspapers with in the old days when kids actually worked to earn spending money) were overflowing with essentials for a two month camping expedition.  For example, we were equipped with the world’s smallest stove – a Svea from Sweden that weighed less than a pound – but also carried a gallon of gasoline

weighing more than six pounds to fuel it.  Bicycle technology was not nearly as advanced in 1969 as it is today and even if it was, we could only afford bottom of the line, clunkers.  So if you add the weight of those seemingly cast iron bike frames (compared to the feather weight composite and alloy frames available today) and all the gear we were schlepping around, we truly felt like pack mules going up the steep grades that pepper the landscape of the Berkshires and upstate New York.  On numerous occasions we’d shift down to the lowest gear available, peddle as hard as we could and still wind up having to get off and walk the bikes over a particularly steep crest…  

So you can imagine the temptation to squeeze out every last second of downhill coasting possible rather than squeeze the brake handle and stay safely behind.  As  I impulsively decided to move out and pass the slower coasting bike,  all at once I heard the blast of the horn, the breaking of glass, and felt the impact of the car trying to pass us on the left that crushed and bent my handlebar and front fork into a pretzel-like pose.  The broken glass was the remains of the car’s right headlight.  Miraculously I stayed on the bike and somehow was able to ease to a safe landing on the side of road but the bike was totaled.  Rather than launch into a rage about what an idiot I was for such reckless riding, the older gentleman I hit wanted to make sure I was OK and drove us into the nearest town where we could use a payphone to call for help.  

We were able to reach a friend who lived nearby and graciously came to the rescue by picking up the bikes to store in his garage while we hitch hiked the final forty miles or so to Mecca.  The Woodstock Festival was to be our final destination - traversing throughout New England in no particular order and on no prearranged timetable as long as we wound up at the Festival site before August 15.  We weren’t even sure where that would be since the location was changed several times before securing all the permissions at the very last moment to hold it on Max Yasgur’s Farm in White Lake, NY.

Like music-fest bookends, one of our first destinations that fateful Summer of ‘69 was the Newport Jazz Festival when it was still being held in Newport, RI.  That particular year the organizers experimented for the first time with the integration of soul and rock music to boost interest.  The experiment was a huge short-term