By summertime 1995, I was 3000 in debt. One hot afternoon, I slowly walked up the stairs to my apartment. I wasn't too winded as there were not that many stairs but it always seemed like a long way up, even though it was just 2 floors. Add in the summer humidity and you've got one long flight of stairs. I saw from the first few steps of the landing that was closest to my floor that On the door was a white folded peice of paper attached by a small piece of scotch tape. I was somewhat confused as to what this could be, because I had never seen anything like it on my door before. I was being taken to court for not paying my rent. I called my second mother and cried and told her what happened. I didnt have too many people I felt that I could call for help. At this point it's all a blank. A few weeks after recieving this piece of paper, I was given the money from my father's insurance policy. The money that arrived that august saved my life. My father in death, had kept me going at a bad time. Just as he did in life. The second cross country trip I took was just a few weeks after recieving the money, after Jerry Garcia died. I felt the pull to go to San Fransisco where the Dead began and I found myself itching to go SOMEWHERE. I called up my best friend at the time, and invited her and the guy she was 'dating' with me. Jerry had just died, and we had to make the trip. It was a deadheads trip to mecca. 710 ashbury where the dead notriously lived. The corner of haight-ashbury where all the pictures were taken of them standing right there at the corner. We also wanted to see the Warfield Music Theater. The Jerry Garcia Band, aka JGB used to play a lot at this venue. We wanted to just give thanks to all that Jerry had given us in our souls. All three of us were deadheads in some sort of way and this trip was a necesssity. We got a room in an old school, but nicely renovated hotel that was also a theater/playhouse. There were all kinds of couples going in and out of the elevator dressed to the nines for a play. There we were wearing cords, birkenstocks and patchwork. The first morning, we awoke, 21 floors up from the ground and peered out our windows. The entire city was shrouded in fog, and we decided to wait before heading out to do anything. We had rented a car, and wanted to visit all of the Grateful Dead places that we had only read about or listened to on tape. The first stop, was to take a drive down the main strip and pass The Warfield. We started to get closer and as we pulled up in front and threw on the hazards, we saw, on the marquee, that Bob Wier, one of the remaining members of the Dead was having a show that night! All of us pooled our cash together to get some tickets and took off for a day of sightseeing before going to stand in line for an actual show at the warfield! It was kismet. It had to be. We went to fisherman's wharf, ghiradelli square and even visted the mission. We drove through Golden Gate park staring at the polo fields and various landmarks(to us) where the 'summer of love' had taken place. After returning home from San Fran, trouble arrived in the form of a friend named Joe. He had been caught having sex with his g-friend by his parents and needed a place to live after his preacher father had kicked him out. I of course said yes when he asked me if he could move in because I cared for him and would have done anything he asked. I felt that way about all my friends. I would give them the shirt off my back, or a couch to sleep on. We shared the one bedroom togther, but we had separate beds. I was fooled into thinking that he was falling in love with me, but in the end, this was not to be. I thought maybe moving to Brattleboro, Vermont was the answer. I almost moved there in October/November 1995. I met Heather in the Grateful Dead chatroom. The internet was still pretty new to the average person like me at this point. I had just gotten a computer in August and found a whole cyber world of people who liked the same things I liked in music. The Grateful Dead had their own forum on AOL and that's where I was destined to be. He was a hippie kid, like me, I thought. We decided to hang out in real life and possibly get an apartment together somewhere in Vermont. I packed up my backpack and hopped the greyhound bus. We motored up through the beautiful fall leaves of western New york and I ended up in New Hampshire. Heath's parents were kind enough to host me in their house for the 2 weeks we were taking to find the right apartment. Heath and I spent the days searching the apartment ads for Brattleboro and scouted out the grocery stores and music stores. We spent quite a few hours in the music shop and I ended up buying an accoustic guitar. I really wanted to learn how to play it and figured that at 21, I was still young enough to pick it up. Eventually we found the apartment that we felt most comforatable in and placed a downpayment on it. The two of us headed back to his parents house, packed up my stuff and I returned to michigan with Heath in tow. It was impossible for me to move an entire apartment without help and I just couldn't find anyone who was willing to help me move, including my future roommate. I decided this was a trait in a person that I was not willing to look past.I intended to move there. But it was something that was just not to be in the cards. I'm not sure why, but I sent him home about 3 days before the RV rental, returned all the money he was owed, and stayed in Michigan. In Dec. of 1995 I decided I wanted to travel the country again, but this time, by car. I had flown to California, but that was it. Just there and back. I made this decision while I was in pittsburgh. I was spending time with a friend but in the end decided to just hop in my car and head home to plan this trip with my roommate. I needed company. I asked my roommate if he wanted to come. I had an online buddy, Joker, heading out from the east coast to travel with me and I was somewhat a little nervous. I figured that with Josh around things would be a little more comfortable if I didn't get along with this guy. My roomate told me that he didnt have the money to do the trip, but I didn't mind. I trusted my roommate. He paid his rent. Was a good friend. Many a nights we spent talking till all hours if neither of us worked. We had shared many tokes, and drinks.I was confident he would pay me back and I would've gone to the moon and back for him if he had asked. I let my roommate plan which highway we would take to cross the country We decided that we should crash at his brother's house outside San Fran in the middle of the trip, spend 10 days there and then head back home. On the way to San Fran, unbeknownst to me my roommates plans to move to California, we took the southern route down to Tennessee. This was the first time I was seeing this part of the world by ground. I had spent most of my life flying to Arizona, but you don't see from a plane, what you see from a car. Not even a hundredth of what you see when you are driving on four wheels. The first night on the road, we camped at a state park in Tennessee. In the morning we woke up in our tents and I poked out my head. There was this beautiful marshy lake filled with croaking frogs, lilly pads and cat-tails. We were camped in a spot right on the edge of this beautiful fairy land. The sun hadn't come up yet and the mist was hovering over the lake making it seem almost like a dream world. As we brushed our teeth and changed clothes, the sky turned pinkish and the sun lazily rose in the sky. It was a crisp morning and we all wore the heaviest wool sweaters and warm warm clothes. As we pulled out onto the highway and officaially turned west, the fog on the highway lifted and our path was cleared. In Alabama, we made camp in what seemed like a beautiful state campground in the hazy, pinkish December sunset. We pitched our tent, built the fire and my roomie and I took a short walk to this slab of concrete that was sticking out into the water. We lay on our backs and looked up at the twinkling stars. This was the first time the plan to move to California was mentioned. I hadn't even thought about it, but it defintely sounded appealing. I didn't have anything holding me down to the state I was born in. My family is small and no matter where I lived, I knew I could see them. We laid there and the evening turned into early morning. Finally the two of us made our way to the tent, zipped it open, crawled into our sleeping bags and extinguished the light. When we woke up in the morning, we all had happy smiles, remembering the beauty of the campground in the evening twlight th enight before. To our shock and surprise, the campground we were camped in, had a lake yes, but this lake turned out to be a cooling pond near what was an Old Nuclear power plant. That was definitely one of the most memorable mornings. Standing up in our long underwear, crawling out of our sleeping bags and starting the morning breakfast on the campfire, at the campground, at the nuclear tower?!?! The next big stop was the grand canyon. I had been there before when I was little with my family but this time was different. I was with 2 friends and we were camping at the official Grand Canyon Campground and spending a few days there. When we woke up after a restless night filled with howling coyotes, we all woke up, ate our breakfast and walked to the little postoffice/store that the Park provided. We had a styrofoam cooler and we left it out with rocks on the cover to hold it down. We knew that animals always try to break in and I know that I forgot about this as the natural grown buddies that were taking me along for a trip started to kick in. I remember climbing down off the beaten path and just sitting on the edge of the grand canyon looking at the colors and the vast emptyness. Thankfully I had enough brain cells left to realize that when we returned to our Grand Canyon campsite for lunch, the animals had decimated our styrofoam cooler. Best advice to anyone camping. Get a plastic cooler and leave it in the car! We stopped at the Cali state border and took all the perfuntary pictures. We gaped at the windmill farms which were things we had only read about on the internet. We decided to stop at the hotel to take a nice warm shower and sleep in a bed. We needed to recharge after a week or so of camping in the wild. My roommates brother and sister were waiting for our arrival anxiously and we wanted to be well rested when we arrived. While spending the 10 days in San Fran, besides looking at all the cities surrounding the city and scouring the want ads and help wanted ads, Josh and I decided to get tattoos on haight street. We both decided to get a Grateful Dead related one.I got a green dancing bear on the inside of my right ankle and Josh got a Terrapin Turtle. During the trip, Josh started putting the idea in my head to move to california. The first time he asked me about moving was on the porch of his brother's house.We were smoking cigs and he asked what i thought...I was totally excited at the thought of moving west with him. I thought at the time that it was the right decision. We ended up driving back to michigan almost 24 straight hours from denver. I remember Josh was driving and spending a lot of time inthe back seat of the jeep sleepily looking up if we slid int he snow of the mountain passes and the got rocked back to sleep with the swish and swash of the window wipers of the rain as we headed into some of the rainy places tha werent getting snow. It was now the beginning of 1996 and the plan was to move at the end of Feb. I paid for the rest of the apartments lease (I sure didn't know at the time that you ahd to BUY out a lease! Well I still had the cash, needless to say...we moved there at the end of feb in 1996 ...i
paid for everything...the whole move..the apartment which was 950 a month
(first and last months and deposit)..his total debt to me added up to about
3000 dollars..anyways..life with josh for the first few months was awesome..i dated a few guys..but i was still in love with josh..i would come home from work with a 6 pack and he would have dinner waiting..i was in bliss and couldnt imagine life getting any better..or anything wrong going on..i was slowly starting to make friends up in san fran because i would go up there all the time..and i became a weekly participater in the dead night at nickys (a bar on haight street that would play dead music). Fast forward to May of 1996.I spent much more time up on haight street then at the apartment and got to know the kids there. One of them being "manny the hippie" who ended up on letterman. We dated for a few weeks, maybe 2 months, he smacked me once, I dumped him, and he dumped me again after we got back together and then he got famous. The show aired on a Monday and he dumped me on a tuesday. It was pretty devestating but that night I went with Joe and his brothers to a Box Set show were I met Liam,who ended up becoming a very good friend and marrying and starting a family with another good friend of mine. karma I suppose . Ii got asked to house sit for a friend of mine in the city. Joe and i lived in menlo park which was 30 miles south of san fran so I took her up on the offer to house sit for a week..and ended up never going back to the apartment until years later. I just couldnt stand the what was going on at our apartment. I couldn't figure out why Joe was being such a total prick and not paying me back the money he owed and i didnt know what to do. I ended up inviting vinnie and drew whom i had actually met back when i was dating manny, over to the house. It was a very intense night as Drew spent that first 24 hours completely withdrawling from heroin. Everything between puking his guts out, screaming in absolute pain to massive diahrrea happened but he was not strong enough and by the afternoon of the next day he snuck out and got himself a fix. Drew and I had a connection that was strong for many years, but we never started a relationship because he was a 3 needle a day heroin junky. He told me later on that he didnt want to put that habit onto me as well..even though it already was...those 2 guys took care of me.I was a sheltered little girl at that point, homegrown in the tight assed suburbs of detroit. i didnt know what else to do.i was kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place since i really didnt know anyone who could help me because besides them, Joe and this girl whom I barely knew and Liam were the only 3 people I knew in that entire big city.I could have always gone back to michigan with my mother,but who at 21/22 wants to go back home to mom?. Only a strong person willing to admit defeat would do that smart thing which i was not at the time, so the first 2 weeks of june i spent sleeping every night in golden gate park with vinnie, drew and me. A happy little family of three. Every night I would fall asleep to the chirping of the birds, the sounds of small animals in the bushes, brush and trees and of course the star or two that would peak through the bright San Francisco lights. We would park the jeep in the free spots off to one side of Golden Gate Park and then hike back to the tree where we had dropped off our gear and either vinnie or drew. Neither one of them would ever let me be alone. I was safe as long as I was with them because they were 'known' I was starting to get 'known' simply because I had a car. Most of the kids that were there were either flat out from the suburbs and faking it or a full on runaway, which I guess in a way I was even though I was 22 at this point. We would wake up and roll up our packs and sleeping bags and slowly make our way to the jeep. We would put our stuff away and pull out our toothbrushes and make ourselves somewhat clean. The next stop was the Chevron bathroom which was the only public bathroom in the main part of the haight. There was always a chance of finding a dirty hypo or even a passed out junky in there but I always just needed to go potty. Loading back up in the jeep, heading out towards the higher haight, we would eat our breakfast of pork chow fun. It was usually the only meal of the day, unless vinnie found something that was edible in the trash cans, and we would swing nugs and walk up and down the street. 3 times a day we would go to the mission and score some heroin for drew and every night we would go back to our tree in the park. June 14th came. I remember the date so clearly because the remaining members of the grateful dead played as a group for the first time since jerry had died, andthe city was crawling with all sorts of deadheads. Right before we were going to head up to the show, one of our regular customers came up and said hey kids, the cops have been taking pictures of you for a couple days now. I never actually exchanged money with customers,but would hold the pot for Drew,who would do the exchange. I was still part of it. Not a minute after our buddy walked away, the car full of undercover cops (us kids who didn't really have a home to go home to knew what the undercovers looked like. in some instances, even knew their names. They came to care about us in a way even though they could never catch us doing anything illegal in front of them. We knew where every camera was, and which fake hippie was in fact john, or joe. We would walk down one of t he streets that had 2 cameras and point directly at them and laugh. The undercovers had been trying for years to catch Drew in the act but he was so good at eluding the cops. While walking out of the local grocery store, they would stop us and ask us how we were doing. Even thought their job was to catch us, they really seemed to have this small bit of a heart and care of us in the same tone. Almost like a father figure type role at these times. The car drove up where we were standing and they gotout of the car and went into the convinence store there. We all turned around and walked off haight street. That was the last time I ever made the forray into illegal activities. My mom must have done something right because it was definitely a path I could've ended up going down and thankfully did not.I have been back to Haight Street many times now that almost 10 years have passed. The most recent time, just this past year with my husband. He had never been there and with my background, being there as a tourist, I could show him a lot of things that the average person who lived there might not know. I also decided that it is a lot better then being there as a street kid. After this close call it was decided that we should probably get out of town and the most appealing thing to all of us was to go on Furthur Tour. There was a large group of musicians, Bruce Horsnby, Mickey Hart, Bobby Wier, that were all invited to play in this day long festival type tour. It was only one day long, but was playing in many cities across the states. Jerry was gone, and phish tour didn't start till later on in the summer so this Furthur thing was the obvious choice. The guys were doing their thing, but I was making hemp jewelry and using my culinary tour skills to make hot fatty grilled cheese to make money. I had decided since the almost bust to go legal and stay legal when it came to making money. A lot of people I knew on tour supported themselves by selling drugs, but I was not going to loosen my morals and stoop to that level. I was happy with the choice to go on this tour because after all, I am a deadhead always. "hey..lets go up to portland oregon. I know where to get food and where to sleep and we can make some cash on stark street" Vin said. "sure" I said. "sure" said Drew.

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