The Great Americana Road Trip

Noblesville, Indiana is where I went to junior high and high school. Where I became vegan straightedge. Where I met my life long best friends. Where I got my blue Mongoose BMX bike that I had for a decade and a half. Where I became a lot of who I am now.

Noblesville, Indiana is where I left just as soon as I could after high school. Where I try to go back to as little as possible. Noblesville kinda sucks my life away every time I go back.

This visit was no different.

My mom got sick and needed nursing for a couple days. My grandma learned that she's got another aneurysm. My brother strangled me in my van. I hit him with a metal baton. My allergies freaked out and I sneezed one godzillion times. Wifi is a precious rare commodity there.

I did a bunch of work on a client job. I sorted through boxes of old things of mine from high school / the college years. A couple of which went to the thrift store, another couple ended up in the van with me. So, while I'm glad to not have anything in storage anymore, I'm not excited about accumulating more stuff in the van. We had streamlined it down fairly well.

We also scored a nice twin size mattress from the rents basement. Sleeping in the van will be much comfier. It's a bit cramped now because of all the new old stuff. But the upshot is about 4 crates/boxes are things to be dealt with then gotten rid of: pictures/fliers/set lists to scan, cds/tapes/videos to rip, etc.

I did, however, get to eat some tofu and garlic sauce, no veggies at Peking Garden which is The Best tofu I've ever eaten. So, I guess there's that.

Time Lapse of Eli, Hannah, Robin and Bookis in the back of Batvan part of the way from Pentwater, Michigan to Chicago, Illinois.

This is Crystal Danger. She is my co-pilot and partner in crime until October. She also has a blog "Three Months on the Road". If you want more of the Road Trip story, you should follow along there too.

Thanks to Tj Nelson Jr for showing me these.

These are tools I use to produce content for The Great Americana Road Trip.

Hardware

93 GMC Safari Van XT

This is my transportation, my home, my everything I own.

13" MacBook Pro 250 gb/4 gb

The vortex of this rage. The hub through which almost all data goes.

Canon Vixia HF20 Video Camera

32 gb internal memory with SD card slot for more. I want to get a wide angle lens for this real soon.

Canon Canoscan LiDE 200 Scanner

I have a crate of paper documents whose data I need to keep, but I don't need the paper itself. I didn't get them all scanned before I left. So I'm scanning from the road. I also have a crate of zines that I need to scan for (a currently dead in the water) Zine Distro. Once I scan it all, I'll have two less crates in the van. My goal is to always refactor my stuff to get smaller and smaller.

G-Tech G-DRIVE Mini Firewire 800/400 Hard Drive

Time Machine Backups.

iPhone 3G S

Quick and dirty snapshots. Photos I want to post right away. Tweetie for twittering while mobile. Maps and directions. And shooting / uploading videos while mobile, too.

Ricoh GR Digital Camera

My point and shoot. It rocks me like a hurricane. 50mm prime lens. No zoom. Killer macro. I'm getting a wide angle for it. It even has a real hot shoe for a real flash, if I ever go down that path.

FM Tuner

For listening to my iPhone on the van radio. It also serves to charge my iPhone. Handy.

Lighter power adapter

It plugs into the lighter and provides me a grounded outlet for my laptop or camera or whatever. It also has a USB slot on it. How cool is that?

Software

iMovie

For importing video from my camera and exporting it to a format that Vimeo likes. I'll prolly move to Final Cut Pro.

MarsEdit

For blogging.

Tweetie Mac/iPhone

For posting to my multiple Twitter accounts (veganstraightedge, MyRoadTrip, MyGeoLoc and CivTheDog)

TextMate

For every bit of text editing that I do

iPhoto

For importing photos from my Ricoh camera and iPhone, minor editing (color, rotating, cropping) and uploading to Flickr.

Web Services

Flickr

Every single photo I take goes to Flickr.

Vimeo

All the HD footage that I shoot. Totally uncut, unedited. Eventually there will be "episodes" too.

Twitter

Micro updates from the road and location updating.

YouTube

I'm not a big fan of the YouTube, but I'm gonna use it to post video from my iPhone from the road.

Here's a list of my one time up front expenses for the road trip.

Van

$1100*

Van Registration / Tags

$220

Van Tune Up & Repairs

$761

Van Insurance

$516 (for 6 months)

MacBook Pro

$1524

Canon Vixia HF20 Video Camera

$839

Canon Canoscan LiDE 200 Scanner

$109

G-Tech G-DRIVE Mini Firewire 800/400 Hard Drive

$186

iPhone 3G S

$299**

* - I paid $1200 for it, but then sold the two back bench seats for $50/each. So I consider the cost of the van to be $1100. ^

** - I haven't bought this yet, but have budgeted for it. I didn't buy the 3G because the new features (GPS, faster internet, case redesign) weren't compelling enough for the cost and hassle of upgrading plans and stuff. The features on the 3G S that do it for me are: digital compass, maps improvements (using digital compass tech), video camera, better still camera with manual focus and straight to youtube upload for video. Oh yeah, and tethering if AT&T gets their shit together on that one. ^