Grateful Dead

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seems to have been too much for the chat room, which is currently MIA. I've got a note in to the tech folks. Thank you!

Where are the Florida DeahHeads? :) You know the saying "Maybe it was the roses"?

yabba dabba dooo

the shakedown cruise/beta test of our new improved chat room. We're hoping it proves a bit more stable than the old one. Check it out and let us know how it's working for you. Thanks!

Hey oh fine Ant- I take your chat and comment shenanigans with all good grace, well-being and twinkle of spirit, as I'm sure that's how you mean it. Perhaps I can match my mundane-ness and willy-nilly-but-never-chilly posting with yours...we will see, as we continue "...going down the road feeling baaaaddddd" (which is good). Tis a grateful day...be well...till later...gotta mine salt all day. G

How can i chill with these awesome stories! I am sorry. I type a character that is more colorful then he actually is) I love your stories, they are appreciated, as is your advice, tempo and beat. I promise I am calm/chill and relaxed as can be. I like to create an air of situation in words to break some of the mundane minutes of my day tis all. I take advantage of this internet and sometimes fill it with challenging/immature material, on purpose, but not with the intent to elicit anything negative. Though I could see how that could be. Chill I shall, as i patiently await the next chapter with baited text)

First off, Deadant, take a chill-pill, as I've got a few months to hammer away and tell you the story you so eloquently requested a few days ago(before the Seahawks crashed and burned in that wee little football game on Sunday); And Marye, thanks for putting up this pseudo-use-when-necessary-because-the-chat-line-crashes area...cause I think it might be a politically correct place to tell this story; I was bonafidely (new word, Deadant) starting to tell this story when the chat crashed twice...so if the story police are monitoring this bit of cyberspace, it is legal, necessary, and altogether appropriate to continue it here. DeadGeek said the chat crashes if you type too fast, or walk and chew gum at the same time, or whistle Dixie in Boston... PS, Any of you other Deadheads reading this story, start at the bottom where Deadant whines and work yourself up, or go take out the recycling or build a house of cards, cause this old deadhead might ramble on, just like the rose Jerry sang about. ....our story continues...25,000 deadheads roll into town, and where can they stay on this dusty mountainside...onsite, of course, but where does the band stay? In the Motel 6 at the corner? No, I think not...for they are Rock Stars! They gotta be cooler than that. How about a wilderness resort, run by hippies who stepped back in time back in the early early 70's and bought a bunch of land way out in the middle of no-where...Sure, that's the ticket. And the roads are winding dirt bumpy narrow and almost non-existent, so you can kiss the limousines goodby, as a long bed pick-up couldn't traverse those roads. I know, Jim said, let's helicopter them in and have them land over there, next to our tomato garden and corn-field. It'll be cool! And that, my friends is the beginning of how the Grateful Dead hooked up with some long time, laid back hippies, not ne'er-do-wells, but certainly some were nefarious but still kind folks, and started a catering company out of a couple of pot and pans with two or three world-class chefs who had found out about the mountain hide-away, took said catering company on the road with a bunch of dead-heads and hangers-on, and built a small but casual and friendly empire, called Avery Ranch catering, and catered to the good old Grateful Ded as their personal chefs for the next five plus years... Who is Jim you might ask, and what was Avery Ranch, and did they/we/I have fun, did the bus run well? Did Bobby really want 6 bottles of Montrachet' Chardonnay,1989, no other year, no other brand, did Jerry like hot-dogs, who wanted the Apple Pie the most? What about the mountain of M & Ms? And Nilla-Vanilla wafer at 2 AM, are you kidding me? Those stories may or not be told as others remember them, but for me, I gladly hopped on that bus and rode, drove, pushed, sang and danced my way along that ride for a good five years, and I'll share some of those with you if that's alright, just to pass some time while we wait for tickets....more later, ok? Peace...G

*pets his three-legged frog* more story more story waaaaa

So Bill Graham booked the fairgrounds to have a massive Grateful Dead concert, right in my backyard...as I lived in Columbia, which was right across the Stansilaus River (which is now a reservoir-waahhh), a stones throw from Angels Camp. We all used to raft that river back in the day, and it was majestic. Friends of the River was founded to save that river, btw, which ultimately failed, not for lack of trying tho. FOTR did end up saving the Tuolumne River and making it wild and scenic, and that's a good thing. The GD may have thrown some money at FOTR through their Rex Foundation...but this story is not about the river, or our environmental fight in the 70's to save it... So roll back the clock to 1987, summer, August, about a hundred degrees in the shade, with 25,000 hippies rolling in to this paranoid town (Angels Camp) to celebrate the last blast of partying before school started, etc...August 22, 23, the end of the west coast summer tour, but the start of our journey... Deadant, you still with us?

okay, where were we...oh yes, in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains, in the County of Calaveras, a quaint small town called Angels Camp, population around 5000 or so, at at the Frogtown Fairground that Mark Twain wrote about in his book, The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" By the way, the Hells Angels, long before Altamont, way back in 1957, roared in to that small town and took it over, and scared the bejeebus out of everyone, and effectively shut down the downtown for around 20 years every year,the weekend the Frog Jump took place...but I digress, because this story is not about Frogs, or Hells Angels, it's about the Grateful Dead and a small but pretty cool chapter in their touring lives...one which I was so very fortunate to be a part of...