Airstream Road Trippin'

[ALANSD]

Here is text of an article I saw on DailyNews.Com.
"Beat museum journey south star-crossed "


By Alex Dobuzinskis
Staff Writer




BURBANK -- For John Cassady, the son of a road trip king from the Beat Movement, the trip from the Bay Area to Burbank's Method Fest film festival included a few bumps.

The mobile Beat museum that he and a friend brought to Burbank as a tie-in to festival entry "Beat Angel" was stranded overnight on the road, was evicted from parking near the downtown festival for lack of a permit, and part of the caravan was towed for being illegally parked in a North Hollywood lot.

"This is a great trip. Of course, it's a five-hour drive (that) took us two days," said Cassady, whose father was the late Neal Cassady -- the legendary folk hero of the Beat Movement captured in Jack Kerouac's "On The Road."

John Cassady, 52, of San Jose and his friend Jerry Cimino, 50, of Monterey made the trip in an Airstream motor home pulling a trailer Cimino sells Beat-related books from.

Cimino's 1987 Airstream, which he bought because it resembles a motor home from the Beat era of the 1950s, broke down on the 101 Freeway between King City and San Miguel on the trip south last week, forcing an overnight stay in front of a gas station. Having it fixed cost $567.

Once in town, the trailer was towed after Cimino and friends parked it and an SUV in the lot of a bank in North Hollywood. Cimino had to pay $267 twice, once for each vehicle.

In Burbank, the duo had to give up a prime parking spot on the Palm Avenue walk near the AMC 16 Theatre because they did not have a permit to be there.

"The road trip's fun," Cassady said. "It's an adventure. Actually, it was expensive for Jerry."

Cimino is still glad he made the trip. He quit his job in sales for American Express to run a museum about the Beat Movement in Monterey and tour with the mobile beat museum and book store.

"I'm just getting started, this is my shakedown run," he said.

Neal Cassady, who died in 1968 in Mexico, was a master of the road trip. In the 1960s, he drove the bus for psychedelic experimenter Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whom Tom Wolfe wrote about in "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test."

Son John Cassady has been on a few road trips himself, although until he was laid off from his job as support engineer in the high-tech industry, getting time off could be tough. Cassady said that now that he is older, a trip in a motor home is more his style. "When you're 22, you can take a Volkswagen to Houston and run it all the way on three cylinders," Cassady said.