This is a reanimation of the Vicaribus blog as lived by Miro Kazakoff and Ehren Foss in 2004 and 2005. The photos may be spotty.

Don't Panic!

Posted by ehren

Towards the end of our hour shopping mission, we heard over the PA -- and we've always hoped this would happen -- "Would the owners of the blue bus in the parking lot please see the manager at register one?" ha HA!

"Your lights are on" would be the only way to improve the moment.

One of the cart-wranglers helped us stop traffic, since we had to Y-turn out of the lot due to the tight turns and ill-placed corrals.

The drive to Chabot Park brought us across Skyline Drive onto Redwood Road, a winding noodle along the backside of the East Bay's front range. After 6.8 miles we turned onto an even narrower track for 2 miles, and chugged our way into the campsite without incident.

A number of people visited throughout the weekend. Fluet arrived first, then Oracle Jeff (I think), followed by Miro's friends Judd and Tamara. Judd and Tamara left mid-evening, but Judd returned the next day to retrieve his Camelback.

Friday night we played whiffleball for about 3 minutes before destroying the bat (by trying to use the giant beachball purchased two months ago at Wal Mart...in Salinas?), and then kept playing for a half an hour with what remained of the bat, and then a wooden dowel. Miro cooked shish-ka-bobs on the rest of the wire hangers (we stripped the paint off, don't worry), and after glowing around the fire we played poker until reason and consciousness were fleeting. Fluet won, but the most important outcome of the game is that Miro's new nickname is "Sally." I have re-entered him into my phone as such.

Saturday Mi-... Sally, Jeff, and Fluet walked down to the lake while I guarded the grill, and later I hiked to a nearby hill with Jeff and Dale to soak in a view of the whole bay. It is rather large. Clouds threatened rain until past sundown, but never let loose.

Dale drove up for Saturday afternoon and early evening before ditching us for Steer Roast West (I'm not surprised a critical mass of Senior House cruft has landed in the area). Jamie and Marlene came for dinner and most of the evening. I hadn't seen either of them in perhaps three years? Jamie lives 10 blocks from Santos who finally rolled in at 9pm Saturday and left by midnight; He was caught at another BBQ for a departing longtime labmate.

Miro's friends Todd and Elaine arrived in the afternoon and stayed over (in a tent, however). Sexy Wexy (also of Oracle and Redwood City fame) joined us for the night as well, and claimed the couch. Oracle Jeff slept on a therm-a-rest on the floor, and admits spooning the wheel well during the night, but insists it was just casual. Fluet brought an air mattress and occupied the kitchen. Claire and Becca showed for the evening, and told the best campfire stories before returning to civilization.

Erica and Matt surprised me around noon on Sunday with the debit card I left at the Nut House last Tuesday. They left the largest sign-in on the bus to date, one of the first on the left side.

Raj didn't show. Lame and a half!

Everybody left, and we were packed up and ready to go -- 3 week supply of hotdogs and graham crackers included -- by 1pm. It doesn't so much matter when or where exactly we started traveling again. The very familiar feeling of it returned throughout the afternoon and evening.

We stopped in the outskirts of Oakland for internet. I needed to check in with Client A (I'm going to give clients better names from now on, so Client A will henceforth be known as Project Omicron or perhaps The Oort Device), and we needed to figure out where we were going (no research was performed other than exclaiming "Wine Country" as the first destination). I looked for things to do other than visit wineries, and only found that hot air ballooning would cost about 1/4 of my net worth at the moment. I also found a few intriguing communities listed on ic.org that have a certain... Northern California zeal. Miro found Wal Marts, RV parks, and biking routes. I tried to locate ideal diesel prices (they range from $2.45 - $3.29 across the state at the moment) but couldn't find a truck stop on our route.

Sunday, all told, was beautiful and sunny and an ideal temperature. We took 580 through the remainder of Oakland and Berkeley, split off onto 80 into Richmond, and slipped our way through hills and baylets into Vallejo, where we stopped briefly to buy fuel (it was my turn... OUCH: 87 gallons at $2.67 per) and kept the engine running. In another 10 miles we rolled into YOU GUESSED IT... Wal Mart in Napa, California.

After a dinner of corn and hotdogs (cookout leftovers, clearly, will sustain us into June) we biked to one of three local theaters to see "Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy."

At least an hour into the movie, I had my first Genuine Road Moment; I forgot where I was. The film was an entertaining, if PG-sparse retelling of Mr. Adams' book (the best parts of the book were the digressions and asides), and I was swept up in trying to remember parts of the plot, or which details were in the first book and not the others, or how it would end, or sometimes just mindlessly watching. During the sperm whale scene I panicked Where The Hell Am I? and then remembered how I got to the theater, placing myself in Napa, and then rapid-fire the rest of it came back.

Back to normal, if you want to call it that. The start of our summer tour bears no resemblance to the state we were in after leaving Boston in November. The bus is totally different, we're totally different, and most of all, we know what we're doing and how to do it. The terror and uncertainty have decreased, but we're hoping to fill the gaps with more of the adventures we tell people we have all the time.

Before bed I spent an hour futzing with PHPDocumentor, applying better comments and formatting to some of Project Omicron's files, until I realized I couldn't remember enough of the tags.