Monday night – fare thee well

As promised.. here are the pics from yesterdays wonderful grateful dead concert.. it is their 50th year playing together.. and I’ve been seeing them for 39 of them.. Hard to believe. I expected it to be a little bitter sweet.. kind of an ‘end of an era’ thing.. but there was nothing bitter about it

perhaps.. the only sadness was that lead many jerry garcia was not there to enjoy it.. he died 20 years ago this year (hard to imagine !) he was defintely there in spirit.. one very cool story.. At saturdays show.. this appeared over the stadium.. ( a really nice woman who was at both shows took the shot and shared it ) and it hasn’t rained there since march. The internet says it was man made.. i don’t know how to do that.. do you ?

backing up a bit.. the day leading up to the show was nice. we took a run down at the beautiful badlands overlooking the bay.. watched pelicans, egrets, herons..feeding. it was memorable.. it has to be since i didn’t have my camera.

then back to our fun and quirky hotel Dinah’s.. where we watched them feed the Koi and ducks.

we were just heading to check out when i heard someone shout my na,e. OMG>. our good friends Linda and David who used to live in Richmond 20 years ago and then moved to Oregon.. !!! They were here also to see the show.. and had seen the previous night as well .Super small world..

Here are their kids Abby and Gabe.. I think i haven’t seen game since he was a baby ! both cool kids.. musical and talented !

they had a nice gaggle of friends who’s names I’m spacing on.. but it was very festive.

we grabbed a quick lunch then headed to Levy stadium in Santaclara.

Despite dire warnings .. traffic was super easy.. we got there with out any delay.. and walked over to the stadium

great collection of hippiedom.. made me feel nostalgic and at home

levy statdium is beautiful clean and new.. this was certainly an acid test of sorts ..

we had a couple of hours to spare so we headed down to shakedown street and checked out the wares..

we even scored some cheap beer !.. Yum !

then we went in and explored the venue. We walked around for an hour or so.. Our tickets were terrible, behind the stage.. so we found a good place to stand and camped there

we grabbed some food including this vegan dog.. Vegan dog ?!?!? gotta be Cali !

check out this cool relish fly

great view from the stadium

really , really great view (wasn’t it a good, good week !!!!)

we were walking and i ran into my buddy Ken K .. a circuit simulation whiz.. I hadn’t seen him in many ye=years.. again.. small world !

then we settled in to the show

i once heard that writing about music was like dancing about sculpture.. so I will spare you a description of the concert.. other than to say it was wonderful.. trey played the jerry part perfectly.. nice and tight.. but not too showy.. it wasn’t supposed to be a fish show. Bobby and Phil soundded good, Mickey and Bill were in lock step and Bruce hornsy and this guy Jeff I didn’t know played keyboards..

It was as good as any show I’ve seen in the last 4 decades.. and the love from the crowd was amazing