I wasn't even supposed to be at this historic concert. But in a stroke of serendipity, my cross-country journey merged with the end of the Grateful Dead's five-decade long strange trip.

One moment I boarded an airliner at JFK for Chicago, having missed a flight the day before. The next thing I knew, manic Deadheads who packed the plane swept me off course, urging me into their rollicking pilgrimage.

I ditched my connecting flight home to Portland. I went with the happy flow I'd first encountered in 1977, when I drove a big old bread truck packed with friends to a Dead concert in Springfield, Mass. A few years later, my ears rang for three days after I saw legendary band leader Jerry Garcia solo at UMass Amherst. He died in 1995 after the band played its most recent show at Soldier Field -- the same Chicago Bears stadium where last weekend Trey Anastasio, Phish's lead guitarist, sang with four founding Grateful Dead musicians who say they'll never play together again.

Memories flooded back. Like the time I stood at the end of a line of hitchhikers at Snowbird ski area, desperate to catch a plane. Up drove a guy with Dead tunes blasting from his car. "Any Deadheads here?" he shouted. "Yes!" I said, shoving my skis in back. Another hitchhiker looked on, dumbfounded. "What's a Deadhead?" he asked. We laughed and waved. I caught that flight.

Friends ask with wonder, how did you get a ticket to the final tour? What was it like?

I do my best to show you in this short video, beautifully edited by Dave Killen, of The Oregonian/Oregonlive.com.

It was an unforgettable event, as all Dead concerts are. Even the venerable Field Museum got into the act, hanging banners between Grecian columns festooned with dancing dinosaur skeletons. "Everything is Dead," said the museum's sign, perhaps referring to its Mastodon exhibit.

Yet everyone there was so alive, from gray-haired hippies too wise to drop acid anymore to pierced and tattooed youngsters eager to catch the tail of a half-century ride. Bliss, nostalgia and pungent waves of pot filled the arena on a clear July night. Flamboyant characters in the crowd brought smiles to the most hardened Chicago cops.

From Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock, from Ken Kesey's acid tests to psychedelic rock, the Grateful Dead forever experimented, sometimes dangerously or disastrously, like the generation they symbolized. People tended to love or hate their music. They shared their tunes for free, encouraging concert recordings by fans.

To me, the Grateful Dead stood for freedom, magic and adventure. My spontaneous diversion 38 years after my first encounter with the band reminds me that it's good to jump the rails every so often, into the cloudy dreams unreal.

-- Richard Read

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