Mike Lancaster was barely a teenager when he hooked up with the famous Merry Pranksters, a collection of comrades and followers of American author Ken Kesey in 1964. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called Furthur.