Yes, the months of waiting in anticipation are over. The Rig officially left on The First Journey at about 6:30 a.m. on April 16. Loose ends? I got 'em. I wasn't totally prepared and as a result the first day was spent running around the South Bay taking care of final details. Luckily, most everything is in order now and there is nothing I haven't done that will threaten the trip. As I've
come to find out since then, those errands picking up little odds-and-ends would not be the last. I don't want to bore you with verbose accounts of my mundane activities but I did want to mention and give props to one of our most dedicated sponsors, Heinichen's Garage in Palo Alto. I pulled in to their garage on Friday morning to take care of some minor maintenance and to get an oil change before bolting off into the sweet unknown riding a hunk of metal that's all screwed together. The guys at Heinichen's, Doug and Dave (see photo) are the best. They get the job done right, on time and as promised.I had decided that the solitude of the first leg of my journey should be broken into gradually. On Saturday morning the 17th, my best friend Joe Leake and I busted out of the yellow house in Santa Clara that we (and a few others) have so fondly called home for the last year. We headed up to Davis, CA, to the University of California celebration of Picnic Day. Picnic Day's the biggest mixture of random activities and exhibits I've ever seen in my life. It's part family/kid/dog day, part sporting event, part musical showcase, part BBQ and part hippie freak-out. The rest of the activities revolve around alumni getting molared-up at local bars just like old times. Joe and I (dorm mates in '89) did a little of the former, laughed at all the crap that had changed on campus, and then settled in at The Paragon for much more of the latter. My girlfriend, Tara, met us and we all rambled over to the bar and hooked up with my sister and about 50 of her friends. Tara, by the way, took her test that morning to become a Registered Dietitian. I'm keeping my fingers crossed but we all know she will pass! Check out her great work onThe Food page.
Nothing else too
eventful happened that evening but it was surreal spending a day seeing familiar faces, frozen in time. On special request, my sister Susie wanted me to post this photo of us in Paragon's cage ..errrrr.. beergarden. Susie was hilarious that night cause she kept trying to sneak beers into the beergarden like she was 18 or something only to get caught about four times. HR professional by day, lush by night. Sus, you rule!Picnic Day was tiring and the next day did not slow down, either. Joe, Tara and I rolled out of the rack (different beds!) at about 7 to climb once again into the vehicles and head east out of Sacramento and up highway 88 to that rad (80's term) little ski resort called Kirkwood. We were supposed to meet some good friends, Andy Dee and Tony Kadillak but we got there too late and missed the scheduled rendezvous. That's OK, cause the boarding was fine; perfect spring conditions. I guess this day on the slopes kind of kicked off the outdoor activities that I will be doing for the next 5 months. There's nothing like making smooth
turns in the slush/snow of the Sierras to clear your mind. We finally met up with the boyz (and girl, who took pic) when we ran into them (when Andy is involved, this term is meant literally) at one of the lifts and we proceeded to shred, launch phat kickers and basically work our way through the gamut of snowboarding maneuvers and the moronic terminology that has been devised to describe them.After the day was a celebratory beer in the lodge and then the inevitable just happened: I was on my own. Everybody else went back home but I turned a different direction out of the parking lot. I went east. About 10 miles down the road, I just lost it emotionally. I don't know what hit me but I was just overwhelmed with a flood of promise and uncertainty. I was driving into the adventure of my life, I had just said goodbye to everyone I know, and I had put so much work and spent so much time dreaming about this moment that when it arrived, it was like a shotgun blast. It felt good.
It was fairly late to begin with so I made camp at a site somewhere off of Hwy 89 called Crystal Springs. Nice site, very beautiful. The
drive the next morning, however, was stunning. Hwy 89 as it comes over Monitor Pass and looks down into the Antelope Valley was cause to snap a pic (at right). I drove south down Hwy 395 and spent the day looking at some of the local scenery and gawking at Mono Lake. The lake and its weird earth formations really are indescribable. And to think that L.A. almost destroyed it. It was U.C. Santa Barbara biologists who fought L.A. and saved it, I believe. It is was a milestone in environmental protection. Too bad Owens Lake didn't share that fate. (This will come up in a later entry).After seeing Mono Lake, I made it to Mammoth Lakes. At the time of this writing, I have just spent a couple of days at the free winter campground in town and have spent considerable time reorganizing my equipment, building a platform to more efficiently pack The Rig, and getting my food system set.
Tomorrow I'm going to ride one of the local Mammoth Lakes mountain bike loops and hit the hot springs. Tune in soon.
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