Here's what happens. First he pours you a glass of water and tells you with a wink "You'll need this". Then he sets out shot glasses and pauses dramatically. "You won't smell it, you won't taste it, just drink it right down in one gulp" he says, then fills the glasses with a clear liquid poured from a bottle hidden in a paper bag. When you have downed your shot he tips the glasses over on the bar and lights the dregs, which burn with a blue flame. It is pure grain alcohol. You have now been Hyderized, and will be given a certificate to prove it.

You are also entitled to write your name and home town on a dollar bill and staple it to the wall. There are said to be over 60,000 of them up there (mostly Canadian, lots of American, quite a few Deutsche marks). We wrote "Berkeley Geography" and stuck it up by the door — look for it when you are there.

Drinking grain alcohol gets the party off to a fast start. We hung out there until after midnight. My friend Heather named all the animal heads on the wall, and made Gerald repeat them back to her. We staggered back to our tents, luckily only a hundred yards away, at Camp Runamuck, just as it began to rain. By morning it was a deluge and our campsite was a shallow lake.