Vagabender

Hey ya.

So you'll note there's a bunch of new audio clips up. I basically decided it was time to clear the decks. We're going to open up vagabender.com for our wider social network to publish their tales of daring-do on, and so I'd best get done with telling everyone what I did with my summer vacation.

There's more from the trip to write, and I think we'll be posting some audio archives that include music we found especially nice on the road. But soon I'll re-vamp the frontpage and layout here to accomodate new authors being front and center.

First to come will be my man A-stock and his trip to Singapore, plus my mother and her trip to France. Anyone else who would like to use this site to post, let me know.

This was a story that wasn't blogged. How we lost our registration. It's a simple tale of blinding sun and the folly of storing papers above the driver's sun visor. The details are mundane, but the riffs are pure Vagabender. Hope you enjoy it.

When we were in Memphis enjoying the hospitality of Hailey's family, one of the more memorable moments was when her father, Rex, got going about Adam and Even and the Garden of Eden. It's a bit jumbled because there were really three conversations going on and the burbon had been flowing for some time, but I think it still captures the moment. Listen.

Real quick clip with crappy quality (because it was recorded direct onto my iPod) I discovered from the 4th of July. I'm asking everyone, "why do you hate America?"

It's worth it to hear Luke's response to the question: "excessive individualism."

This audio clip is another take from the Guadalupe Mountain recording session. It's just a tale of what happens when you're driving the unmarked back-country mountains of Utah after a night of pirate camping and you find a briefcase sitting in the middle of the road.

Hope you enjoy it.

Vagabender came to a close this past Sunday at around 3pm Pacific. Lucas flew to New York out of Reno -- essentially direct from Burning Man, an experience I do not envy -- and Mark and Zya packed it out shortly thereafter. I stayed Sunday night in Black Rock City on my own, which was a good choice for me, but that moment was, for all intents and purposes the end of the trip. It's an existential time. I am spent, both literally and figuratively, after twelve weeks on the road. We saw a lot, said a lot, drank deeply from the well of experience. We had a blast. Digestion will take a while.

For the moment all I can offer is the promise of more. It looks like our last batch of photos -- half of what we got from Iowa and all of the last leg back to CA -- may be missing, but there are plenty of other things to put up.

I will write some more travelogueish posts -- there are unpublished notes and audio going all the way back to the Mojave in June -- and pen my own epilogue to things once I have the critical distance. I'm hoping the others will come through with some final words of their own, so it's not just me giving a look back. Finally, the website such as it is will get some re-org/design at some point. At the very least I'll reverse the order of the posts on the front page, so that newcomers to the story can start at the beginning.

In any event, I'd like to thank anyone and everyone who followed along with our journey. I hope you enjoyed what we were able to bring you. I'd also like especially to thank all the people who we met along the way, all the people who made this possible. Without the hospitality, help and camradre we found, this wouldn't have been the trip that it was. You are America (or in some cases Germany, Mexico, Finland, Russia, Israel or any number of other places) and you are beautiful.

It was our pleasure.

We're headed to Black Rock City. Sorry for the paucity of postings; these things happen.

If you're headed out there, look up Vagabender at the playa info station to find our address. We'll have a big japanese flag.

The group has fragmented for the moment. Mark is on up in Portland visiting his ailing Grandma. I'm over in San Francisco catching up and trying to secure my immediate future. Luke is back in Berkeley, dealing with the last of his responsibilities there.

At this point I don't have any written updates and I don't have any Iowa photos because me and the camera are separated. Also, things have gotten a little hectic. The truck was broen into last night over in Brokeland -- ironic that after all this travel it would happen back in a relatively "home" zone -- and there are complecations with us staying for any length of time up in Humboldt.

So plans are in flux. We have certain things to get done, and I've been list-making and planning pretty hard for Burning Man, but at the moment who knows how the next five days will go down. Hopefully there will be more time for writing and downloading pictures from the camera, but we'll have to see.