My First Trip To California with The Dead/1986 (Part 2)

As I wrote in Part 1 of this story in my last blog entry, my friend Ron Bronson and I were driving from Minneapolis to Oakland to see the Grateful Dead at the H.J.K. Convention Center on 12/30 and 12/31/86.  We brought my friend Sean Morrison with but had dropped him off in Albuquerque, NM on the way there and would pick him up in Lovington, NM on the way back.  After 63 hours on the road we finally made it to the Kaiser at around 9 pm on December 28^th.  The Dead were playing that night but we only had tickets for the 30^th and 31^st.  We parked on the street next to a park which was across the street from the Convention Center.  We excitedly jumped out of the car and headed into the park where hundreds of Deadheads were milling around, drinking, smoking, dancing, and selling their wares. 

At a Dead parking lot scene you can buy pretty much anything you want from tee-shirts, jewelry, art and pipes to drugs, beer and food.  Speaking of food, we were starving.  For the last two days all we had eaten were Sean’s mom’s Christmas cookies and gas station food.  I gave Ron $20 out of the $120 I had left and put him in charge of getting us some food and a couple of beers while I went across the street to the Kaiser to see if we could possibly get in…maybe for free like we had for Huey Lewis an hour earlier.  I discovered there was no way of sneaking into the concert, but there may have been speakers set up outside because you could hear the music pretty well and there were a lot of people dancing around.

 

I went back to the car to meet Ron, but when I got there expecting a veggie burrito and a beer I instead found Ron carefully picking at a small, round, dark-greenish plant.  He looked up, and with a huge smile he triumphantly produced a tin foil wrapper with five more of the wet greenish-brown things.  “Peyote buttons!” he said excitedly.  What the hell?  Ron had used the entire $20 to buy half a dozen peyote buttons…a golf ball sized psychoactive cactus that contains mescaline and can produce trippy acid-like effects.  Who needs food when you can just trip?  Ron handed me one and said we should eat three of them each.  I declined, telling him I was tired from the long drive up the coast that day and did not want to trip.  Ron ate one button and then we went back over to the Kaiser and danced outside until the show was over.  We hung out in the park for a bit and then went to our car to sleep for the night with me in the front seat and Ron in the back.

 

The next morning, December 29^th, we woke up to a beautiful sunny day and decided to head over to San Francisco.  They Dead were playing 4 shows this run on the 27^th, 28^th, 30^th & 31^st so we had a day off from the Dead.  We found a Chinese restaurant just down the block that sold egg rolls for 50 cents, so after scarfing down a couple of egg rolls each we drove over the Bay Bridge to San Francisco.  We went to the Haight-Ashbury district and took pictures of the signpost at the famous intersection as well as the Grateful Dead’s old house at 710 Ashbury Street.  Ron got a picture of me doing a headstand on the porch steps.  We checked out all the cool shops and the hippies and then climbed up the hill at Buena Vista Park and hung out for a bit taking in the sights.  It was nice and peaceful and felt good to just relax and chill up there.  Then we walked over to Golden Gate Park and hung out for a couple of hours.  For some reason we climbed up onto the roof of a building and we could see seals inside.  Strange.

 

Then we found our car and headed to the Golden Gate Bridge.  Instead of going over the bridge we pulled off onto a side street under the bridge near the water.  The bridge towered above us.  Ron pulled out a joint and although I rarely smoked pot anymore, I decided how could I not…I was in San Francisco with tickets to see two Dead shows!  We finished the joint and then Ron brought out the tinfoil he had purchased the night before.  He opened it up and the five remaining peyote buttons were now a giant pile of greenish-brown goo.  He reasoned that we had better hurry up and eat them before they got any grosser.  I could not argue with that logic so we hunkered down in my car for a meal.  Ron solemnly explained to me that the guy who sold them to him told him that you cannot just eat the whole button…you have to carefully pick out the white hairs in the middle because they are poisonous and you will die if you eat them.  Um, okay.  So after spending about a half hour carefully picking thru the wet gloppy mess we decided that we had removed every last dastardly hair.  Isn’t half the fun of doing drugs the preparation of doing the drugs?  Then we set about eating what was left.  They were wet, mushy and very gritty…just horrible, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

 

It was now mid-afternoon on a Monday…normal people were getting off of work and rush hour was just starting.  Dammit, with my low tolerance that joint had gotten right on top of me and the peyote was starting to kick in.  Coming from the flat Midwest I was completely dumfounded and amazed that people actually drove cars on these crazy-steep streets.  Ron had a map so he directed me towards the top of Lombard Street, wanting to go down the famous curvy street.  To get there though we had to climb up, up, up in bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic in my stick-shift Toyota Celica and I was starting to freak out.  This was absolutely insane I thought.  We were on a 45 degree angle going up with cars right behind me.  It was impossibly steep and I was certain the car was going to tip backwards and roll end over end back down the street, or at the very least I was going to roll back and hit the guy behind me. 

I was having a hard time discerning what was real and what were the peyote effects.  We would move 5 feet, stop, and I would have to put on the emergency brake to keep from rolling backwards because my legs were shaking so badly…all part of the freak-out process.  Then the car ahead of me would move a few feet so I would have to mash down on the brakes as hard as I could, take off the emergency brake and then floor the gas while my shaky leg slowly let off the clutch.  The car would lurch up a few feet and die while the cars behind me honked.  I could not do this, but I was not going to let Ron do it.  While I was sweating and hallucinating and freaking out behind the wheel Ron was next to me laughing his ass off telling me to turn right, left, right, left.  The map was upside down and he was clearly incapable of navigating much less driving.

 

After what seemed like many tense hours we were suddenly at the top of Lombard and heading down…holy sh*t…this cannot be real…this has to be the peyote talking.  How do people live like this I wondered?  I was really starting to lose it so at the bottom of Lombard I grabbed the map, shook it violently in front of Ron’s face and yelled at him to get me the hell out of this goddamn city!  Ron suddenly stopped laughing and told me he knew of some friends in a rock band that lived about an hour or two north of Oakland.  We eventually made it back over the Bay Bridge to the Oakland side and headed north on the freeway. 

It was dark now and I did not care where we were going.  I was just so happy and relieved to be out of the city and those crazy streets and on a wide open 5-lane freeway.  We drove for a couple hours and then Ron admitted he had no idea of the address or phone number of these friends of his.  I was fine with that because I was still pretty loopy from the peyote and not feeling very sociable.  So we turned around and drove the two hours back to the Kaiser.  We found a parking spot on the same street next to the park and went to sleep, happy that we were going to live another day.

 

Waking up on the morning of December 30^th we decided to take inventory of what we had in our possession.  We had a pile of dirty clothes, the concert tickets, the cassettes, my camera, some cookies and about $90.  Figuring gas was about a buck a gallon and my car got 30 miles to the gallon, we had enough gas money to get us 2,700 miles.  After carefully studying the map we figured from Oakland, CA to Lovington, NM and then back up to Minneapolis was about 2,650 miles.  That was way too close.  Plus that left no money for food and we were down to our last ten Christmas cookies.  What were we going to do for money?!  I told Ron I was going to walk around and think and I would bring back some egg rolls.

 

When I got back an hour later I could see Ron standing by my car shouting something.  What was he yelling?  When I got closer I could see that he was standing behind a folding card table shouting:  “Tee shirts, cookies, cassettes for sale!”  What the hell?!  I ran up to him and he was maniacal.  He quickly explained that he had found the table in a ditch and was trying to get us some money.  He was frantically trying to sell everything in my car.  “We need money!” he shouted at me.  He had also found a pen and paper and had everything marked…cookies for 25 cents, cassettes for a dollar and shirts for $5.  I grabbed my shirts off the table and threw them in the car.  When I went back for my cassettes he had grabbed my shirts from the car and put them back on the table.  We went around in circles like this for a bit, the whole time him yelling at the top of his lungs at the people walking by until finally I grabbed the front of his shirt with two hands and started shaking him.  “Ron!  Stop it!  Quit selling my sh*t!”  “But we need money!” he blurted in rebuttal as he tried to grab the cassettes out of my hand.  He was losing it so I slapped him across the face and suddenly he stopped…he was calm…everything was going to be okay.

 

I handed him an egg roll and told him I had a plan.  I had been watching the acid dealers in the park and they were selling sheets of acid for $50.  That’s 100 hits, or 50 cents each.  If we turned around and sold individual hits for $2 apiece we would quadruple our money…we could turn that $50 into $200!  So as evening approached we went into the park looking for some acid.  Before long I saw a guy walking around quietly and carefully saying:  “Acid...I got sheets…$50.”  Sweet.  I pretended to know what I was doing by asking him what kind, how strong it was and how long before it kicks in.  He told me it was strong white blotter and he would hang out with me until it kicked in.  Well that seemed like an ironclad foolproof way of knowing it was real.  The whole time he was talking to me though a distressed hippie was standing behind him shaking his head at me and mouthing the words:  “No, no, no!”  Whatever…he probably just wanted in on my guy’s action…that wasn’t cool.  So I handed my guy $50 and he produced a square piece of paper with 10 rows of indents across and down.  Upon first glance it looked real…sort of.  The hippie sadly shook his head and walked away.  I ripped off one little square each for me and Ron.  We excitedly turned to each other seeing dollar signs in our future as we placed the paper on our tongues.

 

We decided that we would wait till the acid kicked in, then we would know it was real and we could start walking around selling as many hits as possible before the concert started.  I turned to ask our new friend a question, but he was gone.  Huh.  He must have had to take off.  No matter…the acid had to be real…nobody would just walk around selling fake acid.  Knowing we had money coming our way we splurged and bought a couple beers and talked happily about the concert starting in an hour.  It was finally here…this was what the journey was all about…road-tripping across the continent to see the Grateful Dead in sunny California!  We finished our beers and I asked Ron if he felt anything yet.  “I think so” he said.  “You?”  “Yep…it’s definitely kicking in.” I said as I stared at my hand and waved it around to see if I could see any trails yet.  Not yet…but I think it was starting.  15 minutes later and we still weren’t taking off…it had to be soon.  We decided to go into the show...we would sell the hits after the show.

 

While walking to the concert we ran across a girl looking for tickets.  We knew we had money coming in so we weren’t interested in selling ours, but for the heck of it I asked how much she was willing to pay.  “I’ll give you $75 for the pair!” she replied.  Wow…we had only paid $17.50 each for our tickets, so that would be more than double our money!  I looked at Ron…we stared at each other for a few seconds and then I shook my head no.  That was a LOT of money, but we came here for these two concerts.  We have to go in.  So in we went and found a kickass spot on the side balcony to the right of the stage.  The Neville Brothers were opening and they were awesome but we were getting excited for the Dead! 

After awhile though we realized we were not tripping.  Did we just happen to get a part of the sheet that was accidentally not dipped in the acid?  We were grasping at straws, not willing to believe that we had just handed a guy $50 for a 4”x4” piece of worthless paper.  I pulled the paper out and ripped off two more squares and we ate that.  Looking carefully now at the paper, it was starting to look more and more like some random piece of thick white paper that the guy had made little perforation marks on with a paper clip or a knife point.  We got screwed…totally f*cking screwed and we were down to about $35.  How were we going to get home?

 

It was a great show and we had a great time dancing to the Dead…my highlight was the awesome ‘Estimated Prophet’ into ‘Eyes Of the World’ (“California!  I’ll be knocking on the golden door!”).  Our money problem weighed heavily on us though and was in the back of our minds the whole time.  Should we still try and sell the acid in individual hits?  It seemed like a dirty thing to do, but we had gotten screwed over and we needed the money.  We decided we could not sell it there in the park though…after three days these people had become our family and we could not screw them over.  We decided we would head back over to the Haight-Ashbury district the next day and screw those people over.  We did not feel good about it, but we decided we had no choice.

 

The next day was the 31st.  After eating our daily ration of two eggrolls each we drove back over the bridge to the Haight.  Armed with our worthless little piece of paper we tried to figure out how to do this.  As we had seen done in the park, we stood in one spot waiting for ‘cool’ people to walk by…hippies, freaks, long-hairs…anybody that looked as if they might like acid.  Then we would mutter “Acid…need any acid?”  After a couple of failed attempts where people just smiled and kept walking or gave us dirty looks or ignored us completely, something ominous was coming our way.  It was about 6’ 6” tall with a black tee-shirt, black fingerless gloves, black jeans, black boots and a full black leather coat that went down to the ground.  He had long black hair on the right half of his head, and the left side was shaved smooth allowing everyone to see the large black raven he had tattooed onto his skull and face.  He skin was white as chalk but he had black eye makeup, black lipstick and black fingernails.  “Just ignore him!” Ron pleaded, but I was desperate and we needed to make some money.

 

“Hey man, do you need any acid?” I said, my voice quaking.  Raven stopped, looked down at me and sneered.  He regarded us like two sniveling bugs who had actually dared to talk to him.  I think he respected that.  He stared into my eyes for awhile and I felt like he was trying to read my mind.  I was scared shitless.  I was thinking about how to abort this doomed mission when he said that he would love some acid, but that if it was not real he was going to break all four of our legs.  He said we had to hang out with him until it kicked in.  “Oh my god, we will not have to worry about our money problems anymore because Raven is going to kill us.” I thought to myself.  He pulled two dollars out of a wallet that was on the end of a long chain and I pulled out the little piece of paper.  I ripped off a small piece and handed it to him.  He stared at the pathetic little scrap and said:  “This isn’t real…is it.”

 

“No no, it’s real!” I protested.  “Here…you take the acid and keep your money, and if you like it, then you pay us.”  I reasoned that if we didn’t take his money, maybe he wouldn’t kill us.  There was no way I was going to hang out with Mr. Creepy for the next hour though just waiting for the inevitable beating.  Ron and I were small, wiry dudes while Raven was huge with massive heavy boots…he would never be able to catch us.  We were following Raven down some street to god-knows-where.  When we got to the corner I motioned to Ron and we both took off running as fast as we could.  “Get back here you little f*cks!” shouted Raven, but we just kept running for about 10 blocks.  When we dared to stop and look back there was no sign of him.  Now we just had to loop around and get back to our car without him seeing us.  We walked back up onto the hill at Buena Vista Park and hid there for about an hour while keeping a careful lookout.  No sign of Raven, so we walked back down, took some side streets to our car and took off for our ‘home’ in Oakland.  Just as poor.

 

We parked on our familiar block by the park completely dejected and feeling hopeless.  Real home seemed like a million miles away.  Then I remembered seeing a commercial where you could get money wired to you magically over the phone lines.  Western Union I think they called it.  Should I call my mom and see if she would do that?  I did not want to and I did not tell Ron my idea, but I kept that vaguely possible option in my back pocket.  I tried to make light of the situation by taking out the piece of paper, ripping it in half and shoving it into my mouth.  “Look!  Ron!  I just took 50 hits of acid!”  We both laughed and walked across the street to the park to hang out.  We only had about $30 left, but at least it was New Years Eve and we were seeing the Grateful Dead. 

Before long we saw a dude selling his New Years Eve ticket to somebody.  Suddenly another dude ran up breathlessly and asked if had another one to sell?  Nope.  The guy looked sad so I walked up to him.  He asked me if I had a ticket to sell.  “I’ll give you $200, cash, right here, right now.” he said hopefully.  Holy f*cking sh*t.  $200?!  Face value was only $25.  With $200 we would have MORE than enough gas money to get home.  We could even buy some real food…get a good meal and some beer!  Could I really drive over 5,000 miles to see the Dead on New Years and then sell the ticket though?  We were desperate, and we had already seen them last night I rationalized.

 

With a heavy heart I said:  “Okay.”  He happily handed my $200 while I placed the ticket in his eager hands.  I looked at Ron sadly and he shrugged and said he would do the same thing.  I told him not to bother…we had plenty of money.  We bought a couple beers and walked around for a bit when suddenly I heard a guy asking if anybody needed a ticket.  “How much?” I asked.  “$100.” He said.  “I’ll take it!” I shouted.  We would still have enough money to get home, and I would get to go to the concert!  Just then Ron was about 20 feet away talking to a guy.  What was he doing?  He walked back over with a smile and showed me a wad of cash.  He had just sold his ticket for $140.  “Dude, you didn’t have to do that…I have $100 and a ticket now!”  A few minutes later though Ron found another guy selling an extra ticket for $100 so Ron bought that.  Suddenly we had $140 more than we had an hour ago!  We were saved!

 

We went into the show as happy as could be, excited for the countdown and the concert.  We found almost the same spot up in the balcony just to the right side of the stage and had a blast.  David Crosby opened first, and then the Neville Brothers.  Close to midnight Bill Graham appeared at the back of the auditorium dressed as an eagle.  He flew over the crowd tossing down roses, and then descended to the stage during the countdown.  Millions of balloons dropped as the Dead started the second set with ‘Touch Of Grey’.  The Nevilles sat in with the Dead for a few songs.  After the last notes of ‘Brokedown Palace’ drifted away to end the third set we blissfully filed out of the Kaiser.  We had a couple of beers in the park and then went to bed happy.  Now for the journey home.

 

The next day on January 1^st, we woke up excited for the road trip and happy to be getting the hell out of Oakland.  It was a new day, a new year, and who knows what 1987 held for us.  We jumped on Highway 5 and zipped down to Bakersfield by mid-afternoon.  Taking turns driving we crossed Arizona and got to Albuquerque in the middle of the night.  We stopped at a rest area and slept until morning before heading down to Lovington, NM to grab Sean and head back north to home.  We got to Reinhart’s place around noon on January 2^nd and it was weird and a little bit disconcerting walking around in the wide open desert after hanging out in a crowded hectic city for the last few days.

 

Reinhart was renting a little pink house (think ‘Pink Houses’ by John Mellencamp) for $75/month that was in the middle of effing nowhere.  I think he thought we were going to stay awhile, but after driving an additional 4 ½ hours south out of our way from Albuquerque to get Sean we just wanted to get back on the road to home.  Plus, sorry Reiny, Lovington just looks so desolate and boring.  It’s always nice hanging out with Reinhart for a bit and catching up, but we only stayed for a few hours.  We went to an old Pony Express station not far from his house and took turns shooting his new .357 Magnum at bottles and cans.  That was and is the only time in my life I have ever shot a handgun…not a fan.  We also went over to his friend Mike’s house for a couple beers and to smoke some weed.  As any normal New Mexican would, Mike thought Ron was gay because of his short spikey blond hair, his long trench coat, and his short black boots with heels that zipped up the side.  Ron was not gay but he fancied himself a quirky rock star because he was the drummer in a band called Three-Car Garage.  Mike’s weed turned out to be strangely dark green and no good.  We left after a bit to go back to Reinhart’s place.

 

Despite Reinhart’s protests to stay longer we pulled out of Lovington late that afternoon on January 2^nd and were finally heading home.  Within minutes we were in Texas and not long after that I got pulled over for speeding through some tiny town.  I think I was going 30 in a 25.  The town sheriff took a long, slow suspicious look at the three of us but without too much hassle let us go with a $50 speeding ticket.  I never paid that sucker and may still be a wanted man in Texas for all I know. 

Eventually we got to Kansas City on the morning of January 3^rd and instead of continuing on with the final 6 hours home, Sean took the off-ramp into the city.  He informed us that we needed to stop and collect on a guy that he used to be in a band with.  The band had been touring out in California and the gigs dried up so Sean quit, but the band stole Sean’s guitar and all his equipment.  Sean wanted to find this drummer and either get a guitar from him or some money or he was going to beat the guy up.  Really?  I just wanted to go home but Sean did not give us an option.  We drove around all day making phone calls and trying to track this guy down.  I was getting pissed at the huge delay when we were so close to home but Sean was determined and finally got an address on the guy.

 

It was afternoon and light was fading.  Sean had a grim look on his face as we pulled into the guy’s neighborhood and parked a few houses down the street.  He told us this shouldn’t be a big deal, but then explained that if the guy got uppity or had friends with him he might need some back up.  Some muscle.  Me and Ron muscle?  I was a peace-loving hippie and Ron weighed about 100 pounds, but okay…we were Sean’s muscle.  Sean knew the guy would not answer the door if he knocked, so he wanted me to knock on the door while him and Ron waited in the bushes.  Then when the guy came to the door Sean would appear.  After a minute the guy came to the door wondering who the heck I was.  Sean slowly merged out of the bushes and you should have seen the look on the guy’s face.  He was almost crying as he immediately started apologizing and blubbering to Sean that he did not have any money or his guitar and that the band had ripped him off too.

 

So after talking to him for awhile Sean let him off the hook (it’s hard to beat up a whimpering grown man I guess) and we got back on the road to Minneapolis.  We got in late that night on January 3^rd.  I was exhausted and completely broke but so happy to be home after 9 full days on the road.  Lona was glad to see me but she was a little pissed off as she had been expecting and waiting for me all day.  I explained about the delay in Kansas City and then curled up in our bed…an actual bed instead of the front bucket seat of a Celica.  We had a fantastic trip to California, but it was just the first of many…

 

My First Trip To California with The Dead/1986 (Part 1)

It was December of 1986.  I was 20 years old, in my 3^rd year of college at the University of Minnesota and really starting to get into the Grateful Dead.  I had only seen them 5 times prior to this but they were quickly becoming a way of life.  One day I got a call from a buddy of mine who had seen a couple of Dead shows at Alpine Valley the previous summer and had got all caught up in the frenzy.  He had bought a VW bus, plastered it with Dead stickers and suddenly he was a Deadhead.  He even went so far as to mail-order for New Years Eve tickets to see the Dead in Oakland before he realized he was not that into it and did not want to “drive all the way to California in the middle of winter to see a couple of freakin’ concerts.”  He had scored a pair of tickets for the 12/30 & 12/31/86 Dead shows at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland, so he called me up and asked if I wanted them.  I hung up and called my buddy Ron ‘The Snake’ Bronson and he immediately said yes, he’s in.  We’ll take ‘em!  We decided the two of us would drive out there right after Christmas in my yellow ’78 Toyota Celica.

 

I had been visiting my parents for Christmas at their house in Waukesha near Milwaukee.  With deep and valid concern in my mother’s eyes as I pulled out of the driveway, I headed up to Minneapolis early on December 26^th to get Ron.  I got there around 11 am and our friend Sean Morrison was at Ron’s house.  Sean had nothing to do and thought it would be fun to visit our friend Reinhart Simpson who lived in Lovington, New Mexico.  He asked if we would drop him off in Albuquerque on the way to Oakland and pick him up in Lovington on the way back.  Sure!  The more the merrier!  Wait…I asked him if New Mexico was on the way to Oakland.  “Practically”, he said.  He noted that it was a littttle bit farther south than one would normally be going from Minneapolis to Oakland but that it was almost as fast if not faster because one would avoid the worst of the Rocky Mountains in the winter.  Fine, no problem, let’s do it.

 

I had a small pack with some underpants, some tee-shirts, the concert tickets, a briefcase full of cassettes, a camera and about $200.  Gas was still just under $1/gallon so I figured $200 would be plenty to get us there and back, and any leftover money would be for food.  Sean had a small pack, and Ron just brought a case of beer.  We had everything we needed.  The three of us set out from Minneapolis around noon heading south on I-35 with me behind the wheel, Sean riding shotgun and Ron in the back.

 

By the time we had gotten half-way through Iowa Ron had plowed through half the case of beer and was puking and obnoxious.  By the time we go to Missouri he had passed out but wet his pants and he was really starting to stink up my car.  I begged Sean to let me pull over at a rest stop and leave him there.  I rationalized that Ron could hitchhike back to Minneapolis and Sean could take Ron’s place.  The voice of reason, Sean said no but that we could stop in Kansas City where his mom lived and get Ron cleaned up.  She was a very sweet, understanding lady who had seen a lot in her days of raising Sean and his brother.  She washed Ron’s pants, gave us a large plate of Christmas cookies and sent us on our away.

 

It was about 9 pm and a blinding ice storm had moved into the area.  Sean was driving now as we continued south towards Wichita and then Oklahoma City.  After an hour we had finally gotten clear of the Kansas City metro area and into the open plains, but the ice storm was making the going very slow as Sean slid around on the highway trying to avoid the ditches on either side.  I was up front holding on for dear life while Ron snored away in the back seat.  It was getting late and Sean reasoned that with all the beers he had drunk there was no way he was going to make it through the night without some extra help so he produced a baggie full of mushrooms.  He held the bag up and with a nod motioned me to dig in, but I declined citing the need for sleep.  He placed the bag on his lap and started munching away while driving.  I fell asleep but at some point during the night was awakened by a large “THUMP”!  We were still moving, but Sean sadly told me that he had hit a large white dog running across the freeway.  In his hallucinogenic state I could not be sure if that was true or not, but we had definitely hit something.

 

I woke up the next morning and looked out at bright sunny Texas.  No more snow and ice!  Sean was still driving and grinning and said that other than a few fishtail episodes on the ice, the hassle of avoiding all the cars that were off the side of the road and the one huge dog he had hit, everything was groovy.  We pulled over in the desert, got out and climbed around.  I marveled at all the cactus and tumbleweeds and lizards and stuff I had never seen before.  At a lonely gas station in the middle of nowhere there was a large cowboy about 20 feet tall pointing a pistol, so I had Sean pull over and take a picture of me getting shot.

 

Ron and I eventually realized that Albuquerque was nowhere near San Francisco, but the three of us finally got to Albuquerque on the evening of the 27^th.  We met up with our college buddy Reinhart at a bar, had a few beers and talked about old times.  Then Ron and I continued on into the night heading for California with Ron driving while I slept.  I woke up briefly as we approached Winslow, AZ and I made Ron pull over and take a picture of me next to the sign so I could say that I was “standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona”.  It was, in fact, not such a fine sight to see and not one single girl in a flatbed Ford slowed down to take a look at me.

 

I woke up early the next morning at the California border with Ron stopped at a checkpoint.  Huh?  They wanted to know if we had any fruit.  Hell no I thought, but I hope they don’t search us and find Ron’s weed.  Nope…we continued on and got to Los Angeles around 9 am on the morning of December 28^th.  We decided not to stop in L.A., but just head straight up to the Bay Area.  We could have taken the faster way on Hwy 5 which is only about 6 hours, but we had heard how beautiful Hwy 1 is along the coast.  So with me behind the wheel we took the 9 hour way up the scenic winding coastal highway.  It was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful for a couple of Minnesotans who had never seen the Pacific Ocean before, but after a few hours it got tiresome…left, right, left, right, constantly turning the whole way along this never-ending winding road.

 

Late in the afternoon we made it to Big Sur near Monterey.  We sneaked past the checkpoint and went into the Big Sur State Park looking for a free shower.  We hiked around for a bit, showered, and I called my girlfriend Lona to let her know that I had made it to California and everything was groovy.  There was a lot of noise in the background and it sounded like she was having a party.  She did not seem interested in hearing about what a great time I was having so I made it a quick call and hung up.  Feeling refreshed we got back onto Hwy 1 and headed for Oakland.  We did not have tickets for the Dead’s show that night or any extra money to spare, but I started thinking that maybe when we got to the H.J.K Convention Center we could somehow score some free or cheap tickets for that night’s show.  Four out of my five previous experiences with the Grateful Dead had been at Alpine Valley, so I just assumed there would be a nice friendly camping area and plenty of extra tickets.

 

We finally got to the Bay Area and were heading northing on Hwy 880 around 8 pm on the night of the 28^th.  Suddenly I saw a large arena off to the right packed with cars in the lot and I assumed it was where the Dead were playing.  What luck!  We had no idea where the Kaiser was, and we just happened to stumble across it!  We joyously pulled into the parking lot and slowly drove through the rows of cars looking for a spot.  But wait…this was weird.  The lot was packed with cars but no people.  Where were all the Deadheads?  The VW buses?  The hippies milling around selling tie-dyes and beers and bracelets?  The loud Dead music with a different bootlegged concert blaring out of every other car?  I realized the show had already started but the lot was like a ghost town.  Maybe they do things differently in California?  Maybe once the show starts everyone with a ticket goes in and everyone else leaves.

 

So we parked our car and headed towards the arena.  We could hear the music playing and we were getting more and more excited as we got up to the gate.  Then…we just walked right in!  Nobody asked us for a ticket!  Holy crap, we had just gotten into our first California Dead show for free!  We stood in a stairwell near the stage to check it out and look for open seats, but something was not right.  Was that even the Dead?  I did not recognize the song at all.  I did not have my glasses on, but it sure did not look or sound like them.  Ron had never seen the Dead and he had no idea what was going on, so pointing to the stage I asked a guy if that was the Grateful Dead.  He just stared at me, then slowly shook his head and said:  “No…that’s Huey Lewis and the News.”  Dammit!  We were not at the H.J.K. Convention Center…we were at the Oakland Coliseum.

 

(Weird side-note:  I am typing this here at work on my lunch break.  Just a second ago at the exact moment that I was on Google getting the correct spelling of ‘Huey Lewis’, the girl in the next cubicle took her headphones off and I could hear the familiar sounds of the popular 80’s song ‘The Heart Of Rock And Roll’ playing.  Am I mistaken or is that a Huey Lewis song?  Yep…I just Googled the song and yes it is Huey Lewis.)

 

Anyways, we sheepishly backtracked out of the Oakland Coliseum, jumped in the car and headed further north looking for the Kaiser.  After driving around for a bit we eventually found it right smack in the middle of Oakland.  After 63 hours on the road I had finally made it from Waukesha, WI to Oakland, CA.  We found a parking spot on the road across the street from the park which was across the street from the Kaiser.  For the next four nights this block on this street would be our home.  I will close the story here for now, as the entire story is going to be very long.  This first part is the intro…getting to Oakland.  Part 2 will be all the stuff that happened in the Bay Area, as well as getting home.