No, not that kind of “Lucky”! We were just lucky to
have met up with our old friend Mark who suggested we
come to the Terrapin Festival at a farm about an hour
outside of Lexington. There were a few thousand
people coming in for the weekend to listen to dozens
of Jam Bands and party in to the wee hours of the
night.

Mark had cleared the decks for us. Pete and Brenda
who own the farm were glad to have us. We were lucky,
too, to meet so many fine people over the weekend,
listen to some killer music and have a relaxing time.

The Beatmobile made it’s usual grand entrance. The
only thing that could have made it better would have
been someone sitting on the roof with a loudspeaker.
A lot of these folks are Deadheads and in addition to
Kentucky Bluegrass there were Dead tribute bands
playing continually and all night long at one of the
three performance stages.

As soon as we parked the rig a guy with long hair
comes charging over and starts ranting at us. “Hey,
man, what’s with all this Kerouac stuff?”

“We’re Kerouac.com and we travel the country.”

“Man, Kerouac ain’t nobody, man. The guy that made it
all happen was Neal Cassady! Kerouac ripped Neal off,
man, took everything Neal ever said and wrote it all
down and made a million dollars. It was all Neal,
man! Did you ever hear of Neal Cassady?”

John and Mark and I all kind of looked at each other.
We think there may have been drugs involved.
Obviously the guy hadn’t seen the back of our trailer
with the picture of Jack & Neal or the side picture
with Neal and Tim Leary.

John gave me and Mark a look and then said cautiously,
“Yeah, I think I’ve heard of Neal Cassady”.

“Man, Kerouac just wrote about it. Neal’s the guy who
did it, man,. He blew it up, man! Do you hear what
I’m saying, he just blew it up.”

“What do you mean he ‘blew it up?” I asked.

Long hair looked at me wild eyed. “He blew it up,
man. He just blew it up!”

“Oh, he blew it up. Thanks for clarifying that for
me.”

“No problem, man, I know all about this shit. I used
to hang with Kesey and Babbs.”

We exchanged glances to keep it all on the down low
until we could figure this guy out. After spending
another ten minutes telling us everything he knew Long
Hair stumbled away and we started meeting and greeting
our other neighbors.

Hundreds of people stopped by to check out the rig and
swap stories. We sold some books and John signed some
autographs. We played and danced and met with folks
around the bonfires – it was like Burning Man meets
Kentucky and goes Bluegrass.

The next day Long Hair made his way back to our rig.
He was more sedate this time – someone obviously must
have told him who John was and he was all apologetic
and bashful.

All in all it was one fine Kentucky time.