As Ken Kesey said, "either you're on the bus or off the bus".

"The bus came by and I got on.
That's when it all began.
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to Never Never Land."

With Beat legend Neal Cassady (the notorious Dean Moriarty of Jack Kerouac's On the Road) behind the wheel, the bus trip bridged the gap between the Beat Generation '50's and the emerging psychedelic scene that became California in the 1960's. Kesey had proven to the literary establishment that he was a master writer with Cuckoo's Nest and then proved that he could "best" himself with Great Notion. His next challenge? To prove "nothing."

Ken Kesey

B: September 17, 1935 -- D: November 10, 2001

Kesey's belly was hurting and the docs did a scan and found a black spot on his liver. It was cancerous but encapsulated which meant there was no cancer anywhere else. They decided to cut it out and the surgery went okay. He had sixty percent of his liver left to carry the load but in one of those dirty tricks the body can play on you everything else went to hell and this morning at 3:45 AM his heart stopped beating.

A great good friend and great husband and father and grand dad, he will be sorely missed but if there is one thing he would want us to do it would be to carry on his life's work. Namely to treat others with kindness and if anyone does you dirt forgive that person right away. This goes beyond the art, the writing, the performances, even the bus. Right down to the bone.
-- Ken Babbs