The Lazy River Road    

     In service since 1991. It was first started as a (don't have to
     call the hotline; remember what the hotline was like in `91)
     diseminating service, but soon grew into a communication tool
     for diseminating Grateful Dead Tour Information. From 91 -
     `94 these ends were met by newsletters and old MA Bell, and a
     bulletin board at the local head shop.


      LRR BBS
     The Newsletter's became a sucess  so there was a need to
     streamline the way the info was getting out. Remember this is
     before the Internet push, in fact the Web was just being
     invented in 1994. Yes there was life before the WWW. Not
     very graphical and DOS based. If you had a modem and a
     computer you could dial in and get the latest. Funny note: The
     lowest baud allowed on LRR BBS is 300, today's standard is
     56,0000. With this new medium it was easier to present more
     than just Grateful Dead stuff. So with the advent of the first
     online version of The Lazy River Road with the LRR BBS, came
     the expansion into covering other bands.

      LRR BBS Officially went online February 9th, 1994.  

     LRR BBS has a very strong emphasis on communication between
     people through local Message Boards and international News
     Groups, such as Rime and Fido Net Newsgroups via a front
     door connection, as well as carrying many of the Internet's
     Usenet Newgroups. Since this is a BBS, most user's dial in
     directly, or now, can telnet in from the Internet.


     Hello World Wide Web

       On March 25th,1995 the LRR came to the Internet.
     In June of  1997 The Lazy River Road got a major face lift.
     In fact the music links page is the only original file left.
     It's main structure went to frames. It was transformed into
     a general information site with a reference and a sports
     section, while still holding on to the intial cause with a
     beefed up Music site and other features for your
     everyday hippy
     I would like to acknowledge all the people that made this possible.
     1997 - September, Final Music enhanced
     1997 - November, Political Corner Added (replaced in 2001 w/ virtual library US Government)
     1998 - February, Java enhancements are added to pages
     1998 - Feburary, Yearly Sports Base, Sports page enhanced (abandoned in 2001)
     1998 - April, Environment Section Added
     1998 - September, New Times Added
     1999 - February, LRR BBS updated
     1999 - March-April, Maintainence Revision
     1999 - April, Newsletter Added
     1999 - September, Taper's Pit Added
     2001 - March, Virtual Library established.
     2001 - April, Maintainence Revision (possible last)
     2002 – January, Lazy River Road is Archived and bare boned, no longer maintained.


     The Lazy River Road CD rom

       In January 2002 the decision was made to longer maintain The Lazy River Road. However the music section still made a great archive source, especially with the setlist depository. So it was decided to archive the site to a CD Rom which could be distributed. It’s main function today is to serve as a digital version of Deadbase, ABBase, Pharmers Almanac, and Everyday Companion. Along with that many of the links have not expired, so it can still serve as a web gateway to some degree.

What’s left online of The Lazy River Road is bare boned, sorta like a ghost town. I want to thank everyone that made Lazy back in it’s heyday the place to be. The discussion boards on LRRBBS were full and kept me overwhelmed much of the time (over 1300 users at one time). Then with the Web page needing to be updated on a daily basis, sometimes a few times a day, it all got to be too much for me to keep up with, especially post-Dead. 

 

The On The Bus Network

       The “On The Bus” Network was established in order to coordinate various sites and servers to share and exchange information more easily. The initial sites were “The Lazy River Road”, “Shakedown Street”, “The New Speedway Boogie”, “Wheel To The Storm”, and a few personal homepages. While being on different servers they shared a common hub. As the membership grew, the need to transfer files, instead of sharing files, between members grew. The best method for doing this is using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). FTP is actually older than the WWW. The first ftp server that was a member of “On The Bus” was dedicated to transferring end of day sales, inventory, and op reports for a Head Shop in Pittsburgh back in 1994. No public access was allowed. Most of the ftp servers at the beginning were not public access servers, but performed a specific function for a member site. With the advent of CDR’s came the digital trader and the need to transfer shows via the Internet. This was first done with MP3 compression. This however was a lossy form and there were no sites dedicated to MP3 in the “On The Bus” Network. Then in comes shn and flac compression. This is a lossless form. This breakthrough, along with DSL/Cable modems and speeds, made trading shows viable via the internet. On The Bus soon established a public site that transferred it’s first show on February 11th, 2003. Today the sites that are served by “On The Bus” include web sites, BBS’s, ftp servers, and sql servers. Below is a list of improvements or additions to the main public sites of “On The Bus”. Many of the member sites are not mentioned, as it would be impossible to keep updated.

 

2003 - February 11th, ftp.onthebus.com established.
            2003 - February 17th, Wheel To The Storm’s Audio Lists created.