Thunderstom warnings among the mountains

We leave in the cool of night, eight travelers headed west.


Ben: Renowned expert adventurer, master explorer

Who defrosted after a harsh winter camp
Mt. Shasta, Rainier, St. Helens, Olympus.
Who shattered unbreakable dinnerware and slayed the magnanimous
Shop Vac.
Who faced charging Bison in the first national park.
and braved the murky depths of Grand Canyon.
Who emerged unscathed from the jungles of Uxmal.
Who has bled with a lost brother.

Corina

Salmon of the San Marcos
Who peered deep into the blue abyss and was not afraid.
Her hat spans the breadth of time.
Who defeated the Francs at Normandy.
Queen of the one-wheel.
Whose coffee never burns and knows
no equal in the game of Farkle.



Jaime: Chef extraordinaire and international relations correspondent.

Who fell from his mighty steed only to rise again
both childhood bicycle and man-hewn machine could not hold him.
Whose now crooked gait inspires both fear and passion.
His knives of steel create dishes of intense wonderment.
Who fought the drunken Spaniard atop a rabid bull. And won.
Who looked straight into the Nordic sun.


Jessica: Princess of the fourth Incan Dynasty

Who rode a Humpback whale off the coast of Ecuador.
Whose gaze no man can hold
because she flinches not at the Amazon tarantula on her mighty shoulder.
Who climbed Paris' steel tower and fought her way back home.


Katelynn: Panhandler for Bus Change

Whose poetry melts the most Cool-Minted hearts.
Who bartered with the most hardened of Antiguans
and traversed Caribbean waters.
Whose dancing transcends physical boundaries.


Sarah: President of Funky Bus Operations

Whose hair is the color of blood-red sun,
her fiery spirit exceeds the expectations of a thousand dreams.
Who owns the Scrabble board of the most gifted linguists.
A descendant of the proud line of Goeths, who has
been known to Hand Jive with the best.
Who ascended the walls of Caprock Canyon despite
a broken shin.



Taryn: Sergeant of arms, master napper of kitties

Whose soccer skills have, on multiple occasions, embarrassed the English Premiere League.
Who survived the fatal intentions of a reckless car - at the age of five.
Trout rescind in fear when her fly-rod touches the water.
Who obliterates any tennis ball within her reach.
Who devours lobster.



And myself.

Who, since it's his blog, will offer no further description.

I am colorful

Sorry folks. No pictures. But here's an anecdote.

The wheels go round. Highway passes by. I sit behind the wheel and colors expand and fall, the fading sunlight making shapes and casting shadows out across the I-35 corridor. Strip malls and shopping centers, cattle grazing in seas of grass, geometrically aligned plots of farmland, rows after rows of furrowed ground, all find new hues and dimensions in hazy dusklight. We move through it.

Carried and jostled and noisily we move towards Waco. An old friend is there. Chris Buck. Always, without fail one must refer to him using both first and last name. Chris Buck. It will also suffice to repeat first and last name in rapid succession. Chris Buck Chris Buck. You can even affix a motivational slogan if you so desire. Chris Buck is capable!

This shows what good friends we are.

In the night we drink beer and catch up on old times, revisiting stories which steadily become more myth than reality and spouting new tales that will doubtless follow the same course. In the morning we pack an ice-chest and sit by Lake Waco. We soak in sun like snakes, with a necessitated urgency that our subdued exteriors repress. When the sun becomes too strong, we head for water, sometimes stopping to throw a frisbee for a few minutes but the wind refuses our efforts and we vow no further attempts until aided by either some higher power or a better frisbee.

An older man with scars on his mouth and beneath his shades and his funny hat and a limp in his slowed walk sits down with a friend at a table some ways in front of us. As evening falls, I find myself walking alone back to the bus and strike up conversation with the man with the scars. He tells me his name is Karl - with a "K" - and hands me a frisbee better adept at windy missions. He tells me he used to play frisbee before his leg got fucked up, and he tells me the whole story. I listen because he seems in need of an audience. Karl talks so fast I can only catch every third word, but I piece together a roughly hewn narrative about a motorcycle accident, a girl, the ensuing multiplicity of surgeries, rehab, and billiards. He tells me of his abstract designs - t-shirts with various text slogans and brightly colored boxes and images. One says Psycho vertically down the front with eyes and tongues and other things worked in to the text. On the back it says, I am colorful. He describes another that has 1+1 written on the front pocket. He asks if I know what it says on the back. He holds up two fingers. I wait. Peace, he says. As Sarah and Chris walk up, Karl tells me about his website, Walligator 7 (although I still can't find any trace of it on the internet). As I leave, he tells me that we should play frisbee again someday.

After goodbyes, we head down the road for home - or some semblance of home - and look forward to continued adventures ahead. Soon enough.

Update! With Pictures!

The slow, steady course of a San Marcos summer day is most typically filled with late mornings, later lunches, a dip in the river, and an evening (or prolonged night) with friends. Rest, relax, repeat. While somewhat routine and potentially mundane, life on the bus affords us similar activities: at least for the time being.

Getting the bus livable has been (and it's safe to say that it will continue to be) an ongoing task. In Wimberly some time was devoted to affixing shelves and mounting various speakers and audio equipment via industrial strength Velcro. With the help of some friends (and soon-to-be traveling companions) we got by.

Ben, master of cabinetry

Notice the mess

On Monday we braved randomly strewn but nefarious Texas thunderstorms, eventually securing a canopy for ultra-lounging in true Funky Bus fashion. Thanks, Don and Marsha- doesn't it look great??

Notice how precisely the shades of green complement the bus.

Over the course of Monday night and Tuesday morning, Ryan (the brother-in-law for those less knowledgeable) built some seats that serve dually as sleeping and storage space. My only veritable contribution was helping locate wood scraps of appropriate length, holding an occasional board or two, and intermittently boosting morale.

These pictures show that the amount of sweat is directly proportional to actual work done.


The end result was absolutely fantastic, freeing up space and helping us look less like a circus-on-wheels and more like nomadic explorers.


Upholstered seat-cushions and backrests that detach for more bedding space are still in the works, but I certainly like the improvement. Any ideas on what to paint/affix/cover the boxes with? Sarah mentioned maps from cities or State/National Parks along the way, but we're open to whatever...

Fragments of a day

Let peace follow you. I sit and look out beyond the metal walls that carry Sarah and me over rolling hills of green-gold sea, saturated and made quick by yesterday’s thunderstorms. The purr of the bus is less like a kitten and more akin to a rabid tiger – one whose teeth jangle in metallic sing-song and whose joints have lost all previous ability to absorb impact. She sounds fucking fantastic to me.

We’ve left the comfort of Wimberley behind. (A friend who’s doing an internship abroad has let us park outside his place, use his electricity, and shower in what smells like sulfuric rain). Abnormally cool temperatures replace the usual humidity gouged by scorching heat. These hills, mostly farmland, give way to the continual, inevitable spread of San Antonio, the shifting and moving of people over a given terrain – something neither unusual nor contemporary. A sharp dip in the pavement sends household items noisily to the floorboard, promptly reminding me of our journey’s transience.

After attempting to locate a spare rim and tire at a South San Antonio establishment, we venture (everything in the bus is done at about half pace, comparatively) to the Goeth’s (Sarah’s parents), hoping to secure and organize all our shit more effectively. Later, in an effort to fulfill a long-neglected promise, we drive to John Glen Elementary to pick up the niece and nephew. As Isaac rounds the corner he whirls about and places his hands on his head in dramatic fashion: “The bus! It must be an illusion. It must be.” This is either thinly masked disdain for the especially funky pick-up or sheer anticipation of bus-surfing without repercussions. I guess the latter. Illiana just keeps saying how cool it is and running around and sitting in every available seat. I hope for success of this magnitude throughout. 

Meeting the Machine: Or Why We're Doing This

We bought a bus. And we're going to take a trip. Seems rather strange in today's economical landscape to forsake home and school (for a summer's time) and move steadily west and north, meandering towards nothing in particular and with no stated goal. In a sort of bellicose dualism, the whole notion seems simultaneously romantic and whimsical, either a lengthy diversion of self-indulgence or a mindless submission to whatever happens along the way; however, I hope to get beyond this.  

Also, I apparently structure blogs the same way as a damn seminar paper. 

While somewhat unnecessary, I still tend to formulate reasons for action, and a grand funky bus adventure is not exempt. Here, in providing myself framework for the trip it would be fiercely tempting to generate an analogy using motivational-poster images of highways and sunsets, replete with a tawdry slogan, "life-is-a-journey" or some such shit scrawled across the landscape.

Instead, I can only offer some thoughts on what I hope to encounter - People. Whether it's close friends and new bus members or strangers in a small town, the fabric of the trip exists not in the attractions or the destination, but in engaging those around you. Humanity diverse, eccentric, normal, conjoined, intertwined, distinct, pulsing, moving, existing together in the same place and of the same substance. 

Is this lofty and unrealized? Most likely. However, there does exist a need to be constantly reminded that the world is bigger than you. Much bigger.

But enough elementary philosophical rambling. 

The important news is that our apartment lease is up in two days, and since Jaime works in San Marcos and sleeps on our couch, three people will be bus-bound by Thursday. In the near future, more pictures and posts will appear as we start to make it livable. And maybe stories about previous funky bus adventures (if anyone shows interest).