“Lately it occurs to me / what a long strange trip it’s been.” — Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh

Bob Weir is off truckin’ for real now. The Grateful Dead mainstay was last seen headed west at 78. Years, not miles per hour.

I was never a huge Grateful Dead fan, though for years I looked more or less like their target market.

But who in their right minds, or even the wrong ones, didn’t love “Truckin’?” I mean, other than Robert Crumb, who came to hate his iconic “Keep On Truckin'” cartoon after it took off without him seeking someone else’s fortune, copyright law be damned.

I saw the Dead just once, on Sept. 3, 1972, at Folsom Field in Boulder. No idea how I got there — I may have had a driver’s license by then, but certainly no car. Could be I caught a ride with my old high-school bro’ and fellow music lover Bruce Gibson, if he wasn’t already in the Navy by then. I was in my first year at Adams State College in Alamosa, missing the dean’s list by light-years but probably making it onto a few less sought-after rosters.

We were way up in the cheap seats, and someone in the band — Jerry Garcia, maybe? — started throwing shiny objects to the crowd. Couldn’t quite make out what they were, thanks to our distance from the stage and the platoon of brain invaders setting up a perimeter in my cerebellum.

“Hell’s that?” I mumbled. “Cans of beer? Silver dollars?”

Nope. It was lids. Of weed. Oh, how I wanted me some of that San Francisco treat. But I seemed to have been lag-bolted to my seat in the nosebleed section and my mind soon wandered off by itself, muttering, “Forget this dude, he ain’t going nowhere.”

It came back, of course. Hence this blog.

It may be a while before we see Bob Weir again, Dog willing. But when we do, he’ll be jamming with Jerry, Phil Lesh, Pigpen, Robert Hunter and the rest of the old gang. Peace to him, his family, friends, and fans.