Vagabender

Getting personal for a moment, we're all kind of tired. We've had a good run here around the country, but it's a net expenditure of energy being on the move all the time, even if it does nominally qualify as a "vacation." We recognize the luxury inherent in what we're up to here, but on another level -- as the President is fond of saying -- this is hard work.

New York really takes a lot out of you, too. We spent five nights in the Big Apple, and we didn't rest for any of them. Thursday night the guys stayed in at Julia's while I spent an evening on the scene in the Lower East with that girl I met in Memphis (which was kind of "meh," since I don't tend to love the scene, it was too loud to really talk, and she was tired and digesting bad food), and that was as close as we got to a day of rest.

But we're not complaining. Our friends are amazing people who are unbelievably kind and generous about opening their homes and lives to accommodate our excesses. Frank was generous enough to let Mark and Sixto have the run of his Greenpoint man-shack for the duration. We all stayed there the first two nights, and Julia was good enough to open her home to myself and Luke for the remainder. Of course old habits die hard and I ended up crashing in Jeremy and Wes's den of Red Sox Fan Dudedom on a couple of evenings. It's very New York to fawn over the details of real estate, so there you go.

Friday night was especially spectacular. We had a slide show which morphed into a small but zesty roof party. We hit the Barcade just to see it -- which seemed to be what everyone else was about as well -- and then wrangled a car to roll us up to Greenpoint, where we rendezvoused with a local gang at the Palace. The Real Seal (a.k.a. Steve, The Mormon Rocket) never made it in the door, gracing Msgr. McGorlick Park with the contents of his stomach and then attempting to spend the night on a bench. We pre-paid him a car back down to Flatbush. He's going to be a lawyer. (there's more)

New England is strongly influenced by the ocean, and differently from California. You can get fresh seafood in both places, but Cali has a kind of beach culture, the ocean as a source of rest and recreation. New England is more maritime, more about fishing, about work; jives with the whole Protestant thing too.

We arrived late at night by ferry from Long Island, New York in New London, Connecticut, a submarine town. It was close to midnight, so we only made it an hour up I-95 before we went to ground at a Motel 6 outside providence. Motel 6 is kind of a safety net: we know they take pets; we know they're pretty cheap; we know there will be one eventually on any major interstate.

Morning revealed our front passenger tire to be flat. Our tires started out pretty used; they were free, happened to be in Mark's backyard, and did us quite a bit better on mileage than the big mudders. This particular tire has been trouble for some time too -- slow leaks, some stray radial coming out the side, you know the deal. Back in Florida we dumped a can of fix-a-flat into it, which seemed to get it into shape for a while, but on our way out to the Ferry on the Long Island Expressway we'd felt it start to wobble. All we could do at that time was juice it up with more air and drive on, so it wasn't a total shock to see it down on the curb. Still a bummer though.

Another can of fix-a-flat got it off the ground, and while it wasn't pretty it was rolling, so we thought we'd head to Boston where I seemed to recall a bunch of tire places on Comm ave near where my sister used to live. The tire got us there and I was right, but these places only dealt in new tires. Expensive. No go.

We managed to pick up some stray wi-fi in the lot of a gas station though, and google pointed us over to Quincy for the local used tire place. It was a real down-home scene: a couple older guys with thick accents, a big ol' stack of tires, a toolshed and a bunch of floor jacks. No garage to speak of, but they were friendly and jocular and told us to come back in the morning and they'd have pulled something out of their warehouse that would work. Ok, we thought, and so we decided to head north a bit to some camping, see what was locally available up there, and come back down the next day if we didn't find anything.

The universe had other plans. The tire gave out for good on I-95 just north of Boston just as rush hour was descending. It was then that we discovered that the ball and chain -- which holds the spare up under the bed of these Toyotas; you're supposed to crank it down -- was rusted solid. Also, the hardware to operate the crank and to spin the jack was missing some pieces, so we knuckled under and made the call to AAA, who at first sent a teenager with a doughnut tire and a jack before finally getting it together to call out a tow-truck.

After some wrangling and calling a cab to take Luke and myself and the dog, we got the truck towed us into the nearest town, Stoneham, Massachusetts, where we were left in the lot of a closed goodyear place. The cabbie had been a real character, and took us down the road to the hardware store where we bought some bolt-cutters to cut the spare tire loose. We would use applied force to resolve this situation.

And it worked. With two guys pushing from opposite ends we were able to shear through the chain and drop the spare tire to the pavement. We wailed on the lug nuts and used a screwdriver to turn the jack and in short order we had the new tire in place. Generally your spare tire is a little too small, the better to fit in the trunk or whatever, but in this case our spare was actually bigger than the others. We named it Manmohan, and toasted three ice-cold gatorades to our victory there.

After a dinner at Friendlies and another night in another Motel 6, we located a used tire shop not far away in Lynn. These people were quality. Used tire people tend to be; if you're coming into their shop the chances are you're on a similar socioeconomic strata. Everyone's looking to spend less money and get through to the next crisis. It's different from your standard service-industry transaction. We like it.

They had two almost-new radials just off a Jeep, so we got them put on for $70 while we wandered around the corner to get some mexican lunch/breakfast. The guy who did the lead work was a major buddy, the only one who made friends with Sixto. We shot the shit a bit about being on the road, and he told us about going around with one of his friends to a couple Rainbow Gatherings one summer. As I said, not your typical service-industry deal.

With the fresh kicks, we hit the road, bound for Camden, Maine, which Jeremy had recommended to us and which had a state park just outside of town. Maine is great. It's relatively cool, very woodsy, and once you get off the interstate quite charming and rustic. It's kind of like the Oregon coast, but with more people and a longer history of western settlement. Puns abound on roadside signs.

Camden is a picturesque little fishing village/tourist destination. After setting up our camp we had a pint of local beer at a friendly pub and lined ourselves up for $14 lobsters at a little dock-side restaurant. We ate and drank a tasty beer and watched the local kids (seasonal service workers, we surmise) gather down on the deck of one of the boats. Seems like it could be a good life, summering in Camden, but our campground gate shuts at 11, so it's back that way to make a fire and chill out.

In the morning we try a couple methods of attaching Manmohan back to the underside of the truck bed, but succeed only in breaking the cheaper of our ratchet-straps, so into the back he goes and we head on up to Acadia. Fortune frowns and a group of French Canadians have taken the last spots, but we find a private campground that has an opening that's competitively priced, so we head on up the road to Hadley Point Campground, which is a mildly christian family campground, but we're cool with that.

There's also an amazing deal on seafood. On a whiteboard outside the camp office is an offer to deliver 4 Lobsters, 4 Crabs, 4lbs of mussels and 4 ears of corn to your campsite for $60, or a half order for $30. We do the half order and after a fiasco of a run into Bar Harbor for butter and other fixin's (it's the peak of the tourist season) we have the best seafood dinner yet. It's messy. It's spicy (we spice up our melted garlic-butter). It's divine.

The next morning we get up early to meet my old ETW friend Chris Cromwell in town. His special lady owns and operates the Town Motel and Moseley Cottage Inn, a laid-back B&B setup there in town, and he helps her run it every season. So we get some coffee and go out to get breakfast and sit on the big porch and sip the wi-fi. It's a great morning.

And then we're on the road south; skipping the scenery of Highway 1 for the speed of I-95, we make for the town of East Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Mark's good friend Gillian is good friends with a woman, Amelia, who's got a house-sitting gig there with her sister's friend's family. They're Nouveau Riche Texans and their house is big and their backyard pool is straight out of Miami Vice. A bunch of indy kids show up and we barbecue and there's water volleyball and dog wranglin' and all sorts of good times.

A highlight. The neighbors came over to chec out the ruckus, true Mass people. Their comment on the BBQ: "Pork? Whataya talkin' about pork. No one eats pork." And 'pork' is a one and a half syllable word -- poa-ork.

Daylight brings a big breakfast and hilarious conversation. For instance, regarding the war on drugs: "Yeah, man. Instead of buying that dime-bag, I decided to just send the money directly to Osama. I just write out a check to Al-Qaeda, drop it in the mail, and because I hate America it gets me just as high." Plenty more like that, too. Then there's relaxation, a second swim for some, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow for others.

When four o-clock rolls around we motivate to hit the road, and I drive us down to Brooklyn where we surprise Frank for his birthday. It's a hot house-party for the first bit; ice-cold keg in the bathroom and one bedroom straining to stay under climate control with a window AC unit. When it finally gets crowded the consensus is that it's way too sweaty so the scene shifts to the general arena of Enids, with people floating in and out to pick up more keg beer or smoke pot or whatever.

Frank is duly surprised. The crowd is good and wild and includes some cute girls I don't even know -- the upside of letting your social network go to seed for a few years. I bounce around between Enids and Franks, catch up with Alex Uriveck who's just back from the Young Democrats conference in San Francisco and excited about the possibilities of action there. There's a skill photographer with a bomb-ass camera who takes some serious glamour shots of the evening. It's a good old brooklyn time.

Finally it's time for fried chicken, so we hit the Palace and carry it over into McCarren park, where we watch groups of polish men interact. Frank falls asleep on the bench eating his chicken so we herd him back at Laura's (she's already passed out) for some well-deserved rest. Luke's already bagged off with Julia so Mark and I go back to get more chicken to carry up to Jeremy at the Lyric, where we're promised free whiskey in return for food. We goof around there a bit and Mark goes back to Frank's apartment where he and the dog stay, and I close it out with Jeremy and crash on his and Wes's couch. Yet again.

(there's more)

The morning after Frank's birthday party, we left New York and sort of made an unspoken decision to ball it. We are sponges which have become full and our money is running low, so it seemed like the thing to do was to drop the hammer and head for the farm. 36 hours later we are there.

We made three stops. First in Utica to get sandwich fixins and deal with our spare tire. When the front passenger finally gave out the other week and we had to bust out the spare (a.k.a. Manmohan) with the aid of bolt-cutters we never figured out a way to re-attach it. Manmo had just been riding in the back with Sixto, effectively eliminating our ability to have one of us sleep while another drove. This would have to change if we were going to make good on our plans for some serious non-stop driving on our way back out West.

Back in Maine after we'd discovered that we probably wouldn't be able to safely lash the tire back up under the truck with ratchet straps I'd had the idea on the way back from the bathroom that we might be able to do it with a long bolt of some sort. The idea was to replicate the mechanical force of the ball and chain mechanism which had rusted solid and which we'd had to cut apart in Massachusetts. Upward pressure from the center of the wheel. By somehow dropping a long bolt from the undercarriage where the chain used to be, I reasoned, we aught to be able to keep the tire in place with the bolt coming through the open area of the wheel and some sort of plate/washer/lock-nut arrangement holding it up from below.

So after we hit the grocery store and made sandwiches in the lot, we got directions to the local Wal-Mart which had a Lowes outlet in the same complex. The Americavilles in the towns along the NY Throughway are a little more difficult to find since it's a tollway dedicated to long-haul travel. You have to pay every time you get off it, so there don't tend to be commercial developments devoted to serving that traffic. But anyway, some nice lady gave us directions, and with a little wrangling -- I had to go back and get a different sized bolt than we first bought which was alright because the check-out girl was cute with two braids and art-school with classes in calculus and physics and kind of frighteningly long fingernails -- the bolt theory worked out fine.

After that we drove to Buffalo, where we stopped at the Anchor Bar, the original home of Buffalo wings. We got a platter of those and a pitcher of Labatt's, and then cruised on up to see Niagara falls. At 2am, Niagara Falls is an interesting place. Pretty deserted. The US side has a park and some regular family tourism stuff, and then also a pedestrian bridge over to the Canadian side which has casinos and bright neon a-go-go. There wasn't anything open or any traffic, but you see a few clumps of people wandering around; a group still out after a wedding reception, some silent stumblers making their way back from the Canada side, teenagers evading their families, and so on. The falls themselves are powerful, but not as awesome as you might think from the hype. Maybe it's because it's hard to get real close, or maybe it's because to get a full view you need to be over in Ontario, but I wasn't highly impressed. They certainly roar, and the force of the falling water creates some impressive clouds of mist, but somehow I expected them to be, I dunno, taller. We spent a few minutes admiring the natural beauty and then lit out for Chicago.

On the way out of Niagara, Mark slept in back and I dozed in the passenger seat while Luke pulled a heroic 5-hour shift into mid-Ohio. The driving cycle works as follows: one man drives and gets to put on whatever music he likes. Whoever most recently drove gets the passenger seat, where you can navigate, chill or lean all the way back and get some catnapping done. The third man, who will be the next to drive, is in the back, where you can actually stretch out and sleep.

And so it goes. In Ohio I slipped into the back and Mark took the wheel until we reached Chicago, where we were hours early to meet up with Dave and Jessica. Fortuitously it took a while -- wandering the suburbs, visiting the hood, finding and fleeing an over-crowded wal-mart -- to wrangle an oil-change and so we weren't too early for an afternoon visit.

We know Dave and Jessica from high school. Dave was one of the first friends I made when I switched to South Eugene High School; we were computer nerds together, BBSs and all that. We also worked on the newspaper together. Jessica was a rude girl who I never got to know very well at the time because her boyfriends in that era were intimidating and didn't seem to like me. Flash forward a little less than 10 years and they're living in an awesome place in Chicago -- one of these early 1900's warehouses near the city center which have been converted into lofts. I gather the walls could be thicker, but the space is amazing, and there's a chic roof deck with a postcard skyline view and a big gas grill we used to cook up some delicious steaks. They're also gonna get married in the fall. Wohoo!

We had a good little visit, catching up a little and goofing off a lot, and after we'd supped and had a couple beers I downed a cup of coffee and took the wheel for the next shift. Dave had given me some audiobooks to put on Luke's iPod, so I listened to this kind of general science things called A Brief History of Nearly Almost Everything which didn't blow my mind, but which was pretty entertaining and good for keeping me awake. I took us down Illinois and about 100 miles into Iowa (and lost the cap to the gas tank) before turning it over to Luke, who brought us on home.

We're back.

I'll have to write up Iowa when I have a little time, but it was a great stay. Eventually, though, we got the itchy feet and had to leave. We're ramblin' men, in the most honest and true sense, and we were on the move.

It took less than 30 hours to run from the Farm outside Castana to the Bay, just a as google predicts, although we did it by going up through Sioux City, getting new tires, and balling it across South Dakota on I-90, then down through Wyoming and over into Utah, Nevada, and into California.

We left Mark at a public boat launch park in Sacramento with Zya, reunited. She brought us some breakfast fixins' and we left them with Sixto headed to San Francisco, they off to Porterville, then Portland. Arrived in the Bay, went to the Ashby BART flea market, then came down at the Lande-man's in Brokeland. Here for a few days, then up to Humboldt for Burning Man prep.

More soon.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.