So Far

Well, as anticipated, it is taking 2-3 weeks to prepare for the trip. Those of you with romantic notions of my hopping in a van the day after I left work to ride off into the sunset will be sorely disappointed about the realities of dropping out. At least dropping out in some sort of organized manner. So what is taking so long you ask? Well first there was the move from my apartment. "Come on" you say, "it was such a small apartment". As we all know, moving sucks. But, you can always just throw it all in a box (or have the movers do it), and deal with it on the other end (which we never do, because we all have boxes in our basements with little moving stickers with numbers on them). Not in this case however. I had to essentially plan for 3 moves. Every possession I have now resides in 3 places; storage, my parents house, my van. So moving involved sorting through everything and determining where it would belong. In fact I'm still selecting what goes with me.

The 2nd major issue is wrapping up my life such that it can be managed on the road. This involves such joyous things as; setting up mail forwarding, changing addresses, consolidating accounts, setting everything up to be administered from the web, selling a car, benefits paperwork, insurance paperwork etc. etc. This too is also much fun. In case it seems like I am complaining I am not, see, I don't sit in the cube farm anymore. So while all this prep work isn't exactly fun, it's getting me to where I want to be. Just wanted to clear that up in case you thought I was whining.

Which brings us to the 3rd (and last) major preparation task. Outfitting for the trip. This involves installing an auxiliary battery in the van (as well as a trickle charger, solar panel, inverter (to run AC from a battery)), bike rack, cargo carrier on the roof, camping supplies (Woohoo, there is a comma in the total on my receipt from REI!, in case you are wondering, the dining room table in Lana's apartment is 386' above sea level - this information brought to you courtesy of my new GPS), installing a new stereo in the van (of course!), and various other van maintenance items.

There is, of course, a uniform for all of these activities. And being the upright citizen that I am I adhere to this dress code religiously. Bandana (or baseball hat), t-shirt, cargo shorts, Birkenstocks (sometimes hiking boots). This is an attempt to supply some credibility to what is otherwise starting to appear like "Yuppie goes hiking for the weekend".

The combination of all of this stuff, and my usual slacker self has prevented me from building the web page (but I have been reading up on how to do it). I have a "coming soon" page up with my e-mail address. You can find it at: www.findtao.com. My e-mail address is caine@findtao.com. Other contact info is as follows:

Hope to hear from everybody soon, I will send another update next week as preparations wrap up and the itinerary starts to firm up. The concept is still to head up the East coast, across the Midwest to Montana, and then to the Black Rock dessert in Nevada by August 27th to attend Burning Man (check it out at www.burningman.com).

P.S. For those of you who I am not in contact with regularly, May 4th was my last day in the office, I moved out of my apartment on the 15th, and I have been alternating between my parents in Maryland and Richmond since then doing all of these errands. I bought a 1987 Volkswagen Vanagon Westfalia camper for the trip, see attached pictures.