Intermission: Aldebaran's Holiday Card



One of the victims of the Fierros' rampage.

It's an interesting time in the lives of the Aldebaran crew. The Fierros, lacking their better halves, have set New York on fire with all-night binges, destruction of property, harassment of department store Santas (mistaking them for Greg--see Part One), cruelty towards pigs, and all around hooliganistic behavior. Maybe some pizzas have been made...maybe some records have been mixed and audio kits sold...I really have no idea. All I know is, watch out for Don and Lisa! 

#1. on the list: laser tag!

And Carl? Well, I have no clue what Carl is doing in Michigan, either, but  rumor has it he's been making a list and checking it twice, and this list (of things to do before he aborts his nice cushy energy management position in Seattle) keeps getting longer, much like Pee Wee Herman's proverbial sweater that he keeps knitting, and knitting, and KNITTING...To make matters worse for Carl, Raleigh hasn't been paying his child support(s), and is therefore on the run from Johnny Law this holiday season. Carl thinks he's snuck over the border to Mexico, but has high hopes that Raleigh will once again find a band of missionaries to infiltrate as a "rescue dog," and will meet us right on time in San Diego.

Andy's 200 yard espresso stare.

All alone in a cold, cold world.



At least I can always count on Andy to be fastened down to a reasonable schedule of sensible behaviors. Wake up at dawn, stretch, eat a bagel with hummus and avocado, teach snowboarding all day, come home, stretch, watch some sport, in bed by ten. Then again, he must be freaking out about the shitty espresso in Colorado, and missing New York, and Lisa, and the holidays with family...and he is definitely missing harassing and getting harassed by me and Don! He very well may be setting things on fire too.

I've just been getting set on fire by hot yoga in little old Fair Oaks, CA, and Henkeling around with the Henkels in a different pair of boat shoes every day. Mom used to work for Nike in the eighties, and has about a thousand pairs of shoes stored away in a bomb shelter, just in case World War III happens in our lifetime and there's a massive food shortage. It's good to know that we will be both well shod, and well fed, by her passion for fashion! Anyhow, I guess Nike owns or owned Spalding, who made some very nice topsiders which I now possess. Since I've been driving around in a car without a radio, I made up a song/rap about it. I hope to perfect it on the boat so I can make it a solid gold hit in New Zealand. Amy Poehler can come perform it with me, and people can see how much we don't actually look alike.

...I  make the more comical faces.

 

While we both enjoy a buttery chard...

Chorus:

I got more boat shoes than you!

I got more boat shoes than you!

I got more boat shoes, tell you what I'll do

Gonna walk all over the boats in the blue!

Walkin on the harbor, Ventura or Ann Arbor

Ain't no finer feet you gonna see

I got Sperry Topsiders, Spalding No-Sliders,
No one's got more boat shoes than me.

[Chorus repeats]

In Brooklyn they all got pairs, but they never go nowheres

Their boat shoes never ever seen the sea

But their fashion don't matter, don't mind their pitter patter

Cuz no one's got more boat shoes than me.

[Chorus repeats]

Aldebaran flees marauding gingerbread men.

Hmmm. Maybe I'm freaking out a little myself. Merry Christmas, Merry Festivus, Happy Haunikau, Jolly Qwansa, and a very Jingly Nothingness to the atheists! I promise Part Duex of Aldebbie's Smooth Move will be up by 2011!

Aldebbie's Smooth Move, Part One

or, Part One of The Heartwarming / Heartbreaking Holiday Tale of Moving Aldebbie Out of Sausalito, Told Semi-Backwards.
by Leslie, photos and captions mostly by Don

The power stance

       The fog horns have finally stopped, so we uncleat the dock lines and toss them up on deck with a jaunty flourish. I've got my watchmen's cap and deck shoes on. Don's got his beard. Both of us are wearing nearly every warm article of clothing we've brought. We either look like sailors, or we look like people who think they look like sailors. We're way too Brooklyn-pale to actually pull off the complete nautical look, plus everything we're wearing was made by snowboarding companies, but we feel like sailors, at least. At last!

Built in wind vane 

Actual sailor shown for reference

As far as we got. No radar = no foggy forays

       Pay no mind to the unimportant fact that the only sailing executed in the unfathomably long-feeling week we'd spent stuck in the Bay, waiting for the engine work to wrap up and a storm to pass by, was on the way back to Sausalito, our sails between our legs, so to speak, after our first failed attempt out to sea the previous evening. The chowda' thick stew of fog beyond the long legs of the Golden Gate; the approaching nightfall; our radar appearing to kick out of service as the convoluted auto pilot seemingly kicked on--then off--then on??? None of this bode well for a three-night, overnight sail/motor to San Diego. Don put it best that evening at dinner (goddamn fancy Sausalito and its Mexican restaurant's $3 basket of chips!!!):

Wait, you wanted the 25 year old auto pilot with worn
off labels to work? Is it not supposed to go hard to port
every 15-30 minutes? Lemme get the manual

       "I feel like that guy in Clerks. 'I'm not even supposed to be here today!"

       But, there we were. Which meant that, however sailory we may have looked or felt, we were going to have to motor most of the way down the California coast in order to get our hired Captain, the venerable Mark Kocina, home to Los Osos by Monday night,"on penalty of death," warned his wife, likely no stranger to the way these boat deliveries tend to lag. Which, in effect, makes us less sailor and more yachter now. But, c'mon. We're not like these Sausalito yachters! Not like the charter yacht blasting holiday music for all the marina to hear. Not like the multiple diamond sporting, well-kempt and presumably kept woman docked next to us on a giant motor yacht, who clutches her face in horror as we inquire into the marina's bathroom key we'd forgotten to ask for after we'd pulled into our slip for the night. Who, as we explain this, and our lack of holding tanks for our  heads (toilets, in landlubbers' terms), makes repeated, breathless exclamations of, "Oh gosh!!"
       "I don't know what to tell you! We have three heads on board, so I didn't even bother to get a key for myself."
       I try to imagine the lavish rooms which must contain her three marine heads; each one the size of our entire cabin, decked out in matching monogrammed hand towels; little shell-shaped soaps in golden shell-shaped bowls; a midget in livery who pumps away her "caviar dreams" and complements her new manicure as he drys her hands.
       "I'd let you in but the owner's away..." and doesn't like riffraff on his yacht!
       "Are you members of the yacht club?!" she asks desperately. Well, it's  nice of her not to presume that our dishevelled little crew doesn't  belong there.
       "You should try going to the yacht club!"
       Oh, we all end up "going" somewhere. Don and I use our [the] head anyway, giving the old f-you to the Sausalito marina, while also becoming one with it in the most un-Zen way possible. Captain Mark takes the higher karmic road, quieting his stream on the woman's yacht. That about sums up how we all feel about Sausalito by this point. By no means do we endorse peeing on other people's boats, or crapping in their marinas. But honestly, you can only, excuse the pun, piss away so much time and money in one place before you start to resent that place a little. Okay, a lot!

I'm so hungry right now

       Now, you all may be wondering how such nice people got to such a dark place of disdain and deplorably unyachtsmanlike behavior. Why, aside from the pleasant man at the car rental place and everything about the Indian restaurant (open for breakfast! Cheap! Filling! Delicious! Arguably the best samosas in the country! Thermoses full of hot chai premixed with soy milk--decaf and regular!!!), we felt such rage against both Christmas music, and a picturesque little seaside town?
       Let's start with the core culprit and target of our growing angst. Greg. The thorn in our side. Greg. The fly in our soup. Greeeeeeeg. The shop vac in our bank accounts. Say it long enough, drawing out the e's with a vomitous tone, and it'll start to sound like the dirty word it fast became amongst our crew. Has Greg called Don back yet? No. Has Greg measured the life raft and cradle? No. What's Greg done so far? No idea? Oh, nothing?! Yay, he's finally called! Are you f-ing serious?! He can't work on our engine like he said he would? He knows someone who can? He hasn't called the mechanics yet? He called them a week before our planned departure? Is he Satan ?!!!
       So that's Greg. We came to Sausalito guns-a-blazing for his no-gooding hide. We were going to "talk" to him in person. Don was going to use his Tai Chi skills to overpower him, while I used my yoga skills to force feed him maggots and boogers after we heard his astronomical total for doing nothing and putting us behind schedule. We were going to make him cry and buy us all backrubs and ponies. What actually happened was not nearly as satisfying.
       Don: "So, we need to talk about settling up."
       Greg: "Oh, you don't owe me anything. Just the money for the life sling I bought. I didn't really get to do all the things I said I'd do. Just made some phone calls, mainly."
       And, to make matters worse, the guy looks like Santa Claus!    

Sal's safety central

How you doin?

       Greg may have even misquoted us on the price to recertify our old liferaft, but by the time we suspect this, after a fun-filled trip to Sal's Inflatables to buy a brand new, super shiny and not-at-all-cheap liferaft and cradle, our rage has turned inward. It will soon calm to a simple sting of regret for trusting people remote from us, combined with the slow burn of waiting around for all of Aldebbie's immediate engine needs to be crammed into a week, when the work was supposed to be taken care of three weeks prior. Aw, Greg. I'm sure you're an alright guy to have beer with, but please never tell anyone else you are a "mechanic" or a "captain."
       Who else made our burn list? Ug. West Marine. We had to patronize three of them. I imagine that once upon a time in port cities, there were small mom and pop supply shops all around marinas, perhaps even offering reasonable prices to compete with the competition. Then, much like Walmart, West Marine came galumphing into town and forced all the little guys out of business. Now, West Marine is simply everywhere you want to boat from. Like God. Or Santa. Or Starbucks. All you can do to avoid feeling too much of their iron grip on your wallet, is to research what you need early, try to find it cheaper online or elsewhere, and learn what you can do without, or do with what you've already got. Captain Mark told us a good story about about a guy who went to sea with a tree trunk (or was that a tree limb?) for a mast.  We won't be resorting to that, hopefully, but between that guy, and the Pestilence kids, we have a lot of leeway (amazing how many sailing puns you can make without even trying) with which to improvise and strategize cutting corners.

Way up there

       Speaking of the mast, I should probably stop being such a pessimist and get around to telling you the nice things about not tearing out of Sausalito straight away. The first being time to check out the rig. Damn, I don't remember unfurling the genoa being  this hard! That harsh, squawking noise coming from the top of the mast doesn't sound so awesome either. Yep, our easy peazy roller furling foresail was not feeling or sounding so easygoing, so with Captain Mark's help, up Don went in the bosun's chair. We didn't figure much more out about the problem, other than that the former owner of Aldebbie (so nicknamed because boats are supposed to be classy dames, and Aldebaran sounds rather like a masculine gladiator to us) had replaced part of a shackle with a ring of wire, but even that didn't seem like the core of the issue. We did however, get some great pics of Don in action, and Don got himself a nice view and a killer ab workout.

Coming down is actually
a lot more awkward then going up

       Another positive: eating lots of that good Indian food in Sausalito (once with my college friend John, once with my dad, once with Mark), and lots of cheap Mexican food in San Francisco's Mission District. No freaking $3 basket of tortilla chips here! Here, the chips are free, and you can get refills! The salsa bar is epic, and includes roasted jalapenos, spicy carrots, and radishes, providing Don with plenty

Damn you autofocus! but this place
is definitely worth a second photo

of fodder with which to make fun of my "condiment problem." As in, I have a problem not  using all the condiments available to me, especially at a Mexican joint. Lisa has attributed this problem to me growing up with "hobo stew," a delicious, recession-friendly meal that requires pouring every canned legume and veggie imaginable into a giant pot. I made it once for Don. He wasn't too sure how he felt about it. Fancy Fierros outta go live in Sausalito!

"Whipping" up close

       Last, but certainly not least, was being able to hang out with my mom and aunts in SF while they were all in town for their annual Christmas shopping spree! Mmm, mmm! Two fancy dinners with cocktails? Now I really sound like a brat for all my beeatching above! Spending nights at my sister's nice Russian Hill apartment, whipping lines and watching Mad Men, wasn't too shabby either.

whippin fa days

       Yeah, that all sounds great, but what about the part where you actually moved the boat? Oh what? You're getting impatient just waiting around for this thing to go somewhere? Welcome to Part One of our story. Part Two of this beast of a tale will commence very soon. Stay tuned, and have yourselves a merry little holiday in the meantime!

We'll go "under the gate" in part two

"Because it's there"

       So as Leslie and I unpack and sift through our recent adventure moving the Aldebaran, things continue to move forward.
       I have begun to feel like a bit of a veteran uprooter (if you'll allow me such an in-eloquence). Every precious photo boxed up, every favorite chair sold, and all the broken routines in the world can't compare to the first time someone leaves a home permanently.
       Andy finished packing and I called him a car. We stood on the curb in the freezing shadow of our building. He made fun of my shoes. I teased him about his new "performance fit" jeans. The car rolled up. We packed him in. With a hug, he was off.
       So Andy will go off to teach snowboarding for 2 weeks. Then it's my turn to leave, and I will meet him the first week of January at Aldebaran to begin building our home for the next year. Until February 1st, Lisa and Leslie will stay in New York wrapping up any loose ends and selling all our crap. Carl is wrangling his own life into submission all on his lonesome in Seattle through Feb 1 as well.
       These days are the hardest in your standard uprooting. There is this messy mayhem that leads to little micro bursts of regret. That person you didn't get to see, your favorite sandwich shop you didn't get to go to, and the whole world you begin to notice around you as your surroundings come into retrospect. This stings, and not the slow burn or torturous pangs that mire pre-college breakup letters. It's a punch in the gut every time you think of something, it's a bar fight. Shit flying everywhere, you're never quite sure what's going on, you just know you should get the hell out of there. But you can't, there are things you need to do before you can leave.
    The one thing I can say from experience is that I have found that all the credit card companies, banks, utility companies, and phone companies will happily track you down after your move. They may act a little mad but as long as you pay, they are all bark. So screw'em and go see that friend, get the sandwich, and have one last hurrah with the presently nostalgic world you are about to leave.

In 45 days the entire crew of the Aldebaran will be together for only the second time in the 2 years since this endeavor began.

¡Larga vida a las malas ideas!




.

Operation San Diego - let's limbo!

It's limbo time here on the olde Aldebaran. But the only bending over backwards we're doing is for a rude storm front and for various West Marines eager to take our cheese from us. But, Mr. Storm should be minding his own business by Thursday, and we will hopefully be on our way Friday. In the meantime we'll be replacing lines, testing our engine, cleaning the bilge, eating non-perishables, and wishing we'd brought our laptops.

Lookin' into the depths of the engine compartment...

Aye-aye Captain, full speed ahead!

There's something intensely satisfying about buying a one-way plane ticket, 2 days before you plan on being somewhere. Especially if that plane ticket ends up being retardedly cheap. Such is what Don and I have just done, getting our tickets to San Francisco for this Friday; trusting that our man Greg has gotten the engine up to snuff; hoping we won't have to buy too many new doohickies and whatchamacallits at the local West Marine; praying that nothing major impedes our progress down to San Diego; and crossing our phalanges that Captain Mark Kocina will be as cool as he sounds on the phone and on paper, and is right about Sunday, our planned shove-off day, being cold and wet, "but nothing we can't handle. The rest of the week looks good, with a rising pressure front." Let's see if I remember this from my sailing textbook: high pressure = not stormy? Low pressure = stormy?

Okay, sweet.

Saves the environment, searches for cancer cure, looks like a good egg!

By the way, picking a captain who can put up with your vague schedule and murky maintenance updates is hard work! And for someone like me, a chronically indecisive Libra, choosing between over a dozen applicants who all sounded pretty damn good was rough stuff! I liked Mark because he's sailed this route a dozen times before, has an impressive on-the-water resume, has a mutual interest in our type of boat for his family cruiser, was reasonably priced, does not adhere to the yelling method of teaching, reminds me a bit of my dad in this picture, is highly invested in cleaning up the oceans, and...oh yeah, is trying to find a cure for cancer?!!! He's like, the best human ever!

Besides being indecisive, I also harbor that hard-to-scrub-off Catholic guilt thing. Therefore, I'd like to point anyone who needs to (or knows someone who needs to) get their boat somewhere, to the following runners-up in our Mr. Captain Beauty Pageant: #1.) "The Twins." The one I talked to sounded like a lot of fun, very exuberant, and would allegedly sail our boat even if all it had was a mast and two giant mumus for sails; #2.) Thomas Todd (no link) offered to show us around Catalina, get us a slip in San Diego for free, and buy us a pony; #3.) Dave Brotherton offered to negotiate a package deal and not charge us for weather delays; #4.) The beloved Jose Miranda, Lisa's and my sailing instructor, only lost out for living in Fort Lauderdale and having a packed schedule (because he is so awesome and sought after). My apologies to all you sea dogs, but I'm very excited to break a champagne bottle over the bow with Mark this weekend!

Mood report sign-off: I'm listening to Beirut right now, and "Rhineland" in particular is fitting in perfectly as the soundtrack to the imagined movie in my head about this boat trip, if you replace Rhine with Aldebaran. It's not about the words anyway, so much as the sweeping, epic, monotonously uplifting feeling of this song. Yeah, I know monotonous and uplifting don't seem to fit together in a sentence, but from what I've heard, that is essentially what cruising the high seas manages. More about our sail to San Diego soon!

 Life, life is all right on the Rhine
 No, but I know, but I know
 I would have nowhere to go
 No, but there's nowhere to go, to go...

A bit of entertainment while you're waiting...

Writing posts together takes a long time! Don and Carl argue about floating paragraphs and indents vs. none; Raleigh keeps gambling away his opposable thumb surgery money at the track; every time I edit something, the formatting gets whacked out and Don has to fix it; Lisa lives in a pizza oven, Andy in an espresso machine, and the internet service in both is spotty, to say the least!

In conclusion, Floating paragraphs win, and until we can get our act together, we'd like you to devote an hour or so of your day to watching this fun and educational doc. This crew makes us (who like to fancy ourselves a motley crew of miscreants) look like yachting aristocracy. We may as well buy ourselves matching monogrammed blazers now! Seriously though, the crew of Pestilence is a shining example of what sailing should be all about. Good laughs, ingenuity, and learning a whole lot about yourself in the process. And they've even made me reconsider my anti "direct-deposit" stance. Haha. Stance. Unintended puns are the best. Click on the pic to read their story and watch the documentary.

Inflatible Wishes, and Spreadsheet Dreams

    We haven't posted in a while, so I'm gonna let you in on all the action you've been missing.
    I hope you guys love spreadsheets as much as we do, because that's been the name of the game for the last two weeks. Carl put together a spreadsheet of all the worthwhile stuff we inventoried during our 48 hours of fun. It's riveting stuff; here's but a small taste:

Ya gotta have guts

Main Salon area - under port-side benches
Diesel Kleen - octane boost - treats up to 100 gallons
lighter fluid (x2 bottles)
paint stripper
new winch maintenance kit (Lewmar)
compass fluid

- And how could I leave out these heartfelt lines?:

Locker/lazarette next to deep locker
fish beater
2 boat hook extension pieces
plastic bin
2 fishing weights





  Some of the more interesting things we found were all the original boat plans and documentation. These will primarily be used for storage planning, but it also gives you a better idea of the boat layout.

Don't be a deck

    Inventory is pretty heart pounding stuff, so before you read this next section maybe a little respite is in order.

    Captain selection for the passage from Sausalito to Aldeberan's holiday hang out of Ensenada, Mexico was yet another prime opportunity for a spreadsheet. Featuring such columns as Name, Origin, T Rate, LD rate, Time, Notes, Contact. Now most of those are obvious but the T and LD may not be. They stand for Travel and Lay Day. Ahh the lay day rate, nothing like paying someone to wait.
    Now onto the hotly debated and heavily advertised finale, the life raft research!! This is one of those areas where you're naturally an easy sell on the bells and whistles. Because of this fact I would advise anyone looking into a life raft to not buy last minute.

We would have been easily talked into
something like this on the first day

    After researching what's needed, we found that adequate is not a compromise, it's the ideal. Somehow we'll survive without the 'calming blue liner' of the more expensive model.
    The talk around the cruising forums all refers to life rafts as "the sailor's curse" or some other drama soaked nickname. I guess the reports of people found in a life raft tend toward two main options. Either they're saved but their boat is found still afloat, or they're simply found (not saved). So you have a lot of people who don't make it, and a lot of people who probably should have stayed with their boat. Not very promising. Kinda makes you want to work more on plan A rather than plan B.

Maybe a bit of a compromise

    Now some of you may be saying 'wait the boat doesn't have a life raft already? was this guy nuts?'. That's the kicker. The boat does in fact already have a viable life raft, but it needs to be repacked and certified. This will run us about 75% of the price of a brand new life raft. Considering the one currently on the boat is 15 years old and the apparent technological leap in raft design, it seems like we'll be buying a shiny new raft. I hate buying things I hope to never use.

 Alright, Goldilocks, we get it

Another 48 Hours

   I'm not sure if I (Don) was Eddie Murphy or Nick Nolte in Carl and I's two-man production of this 1990 classic, but either way it was a blur.
   So this trip seems to have cemented what will now be considered standard operating procedure for the next few visits to the boat.

• First - have someone tell you you need to pay an unreasonable sum of money (we are learning that this is very important to the boating world, the metaphorical guard house to the gated community). 
• Second - realize that there is a far simpler task that must be attended to before even beginning what we came to do. 
• Third - realize we are quite uncertain on how to sort out this simpler task. 
• And finally Fourth - get suspicious looks and questioned as to whether we are supposed to be on the dock, let alone a boat.

   The first step stings, and is one of two major factors to our wanting to get the boat the hell out of Sausalito ASAP (the other being seasonal rough seas in Dec). We have no photos of this as it is truly something we would like to forget.
   Now for the idiot twins in full swing. The second step, in this case, was to hook up shore power. A theoretically simple thing that should have been handled in 15 minutes max. Over the next three hours we managed to to get things going.  It started with a trip to the boat's old slip to recover our left behind shore power cable. Once there, we realize the broker's directions of "it will be the only empty slip" is not going to cut it. So we do what any reasonable person would do---start opening dock lockers. This of course led to suspicious looks and the eventual "Can I help you?". After sorting out that we were not looting the place, the harbor master told us of her time spent in the pacific islands. So then one more quick lap between the broker and the old slip and we have our shore power cable and 30 to 50 amp adapter.
   I'll let the photos tell this next part, but the gist is that we spent two hours running back forth to West Marine for an adapter we didn't need.

Carl realizing the adapter we already own doesn't work.

Of course we didn't bring the cable to measure, so here's hoping the one we bought works!

Crap! It's the wrong one & the shop closes in 5 minutes!

Drive! You filthy idiot!

We somehow managed to get  the man to re-open the shop & swap out our part.

Hey look, it's still wrong! Dammit! Oh wait, what's this other outlet over here? It looks like the cable will plug in without any adapter.......Schmucks.

    So once that debacle was over, we realized we had no clue as to which of the many unlabeled switches switches us from house power (batteries) to shore power (plugged in). Not a fun project after the sun goes down. One headlamp and 30 minutes later, we had lights.

1/3 of of our time in Sausalito spent.................and we have lights.

Now for what we came to do---Cleaning! Oh wait I meant dinner.

Carl post Indian food

Ok, now cleaning.

After an hour or two we managed to free up a lot of the storage space in the aft cabin. Yes that is a dot matrix printer,  yes it weighed a ton, and yes it was slimy (you were going to ask, right?)

 Time to check the lights.

Aldebaran lookin' mean

So one very cold night's sleep later and it's back to work.

Oh wait, first we need to return that adapter we didn't need

And now a lot of reaching into dark places and finding slimy things

Crap, crap, and more crap. Although to be fair there is quite a bit of good stuff too

This is 1/2 to 1/3 of what we threw out.

Another cold night's sleep (but not as cold) and we have a few hours to finish the inventory and meet a friend of Carl's for brunch before getting on a plane home. So we rip through inventory and the one or two remaining corners of the boat. Now we have about an hour and a half to get changed (we haven't yet done this on this trip) and then have breakfast with Carl's friend.

en route

A quick pack between rental car return and terminal

Desperate for a shower

  So in that end we got a ton of garbage off the boat and have a very long list of good stuff still on the boat. And while I don't think I'm much of an Eddie Murphy, Carl is definitely Nick Nolte.

Happy Halloween from the Aldebaran Crew

who is this talented weirdo?

The time has come, today's the day

Carl and Don are on their way.

They're going out to sift through crap

And check on things...like the distributor cap!

They'll sort and scrub to get Al clean

No candy for them this Halloween!

What will they see? What will they find?

A massive crack in the boat's behind? 

Ghouls, goblins, a peg-legged ghost?

Read of the horrors in their next post!

by Two Girls One Couplet

You won't believe what these girls do with a couplet! 

"So I think we own a boat" - Don Fierro

Hi there, I'm Al. Only my friends call me Al though. I barely know you people, so you can just call be "De Baron". I'm a salty, worldly, C&C Landfall Cutter, and I've got some questions for you wily punks who are claiming to "own" me. Let's get one thing straight. I own you! Now that that's clear, who are you and where do you think you're taking me? 

Braincloud: Hi Al! We're "Braincloud", and we're taking you to New Zealand over the course of 8-12 months!

De Baron: It's "De Baron" to you Braincloud! Nice name, hippies. Why not Moonbeam? Or Rainface? Ooh, I've heard some great things about New Zealand. Hobbits hang out there, right? 

BC: Don started a gmail account with this name many moons ago for the crew to share info. I guess he thinks we make a pretty cloud of brains. 6 brains, in fact, including one canine brain (Don's). Oh. Don tells me that it has something to do with Joe vs. the Volcano. I barely remember that movie! You're right, hobbits do hang out in NZ. But one escaped and is on our crew. His name is Andy. The hobbit community kicked him out about 10 years ago for being too tall and looking a bit like Keanu Reeves and Tom Cruise's love child. They're a jealous bunch. Basically, he wants to return to NZ with a burly braincloud to fight his way back into the community. 

Joe has a "brain cloud" which causes him to quit his job and go sailing. I get it now!

DB: Weird. Tell me more about this so-called crew.

BC: Well, Andy, aside from being an exiled hobbit, is our navigator. He likes to stare at weather reports and speak in the language of tradewinds. Carl is a lot like Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He's on board to do the Charlie work, which, in this case, is the electrical stuff. Good thing he's an electrical engineer and a mad scientist. Carl's dog Raleigh is an Australian shepherd. He's very cute and has blue eyes, like all of us except for Lisa. He's also a black belt in karate. Don is the savant-like lion cub mastermind of this crazy idea, but he also knows engines and mechanical stuff, so he's also doing the Charlie work. Lisa has brown eyes and can stare directly into the sun, and is therefore in charge of meals and provisioning. (Lisa interjects, "But my eyes are sun-sensitive! They aren't even useful brown eyes!") Great. So all of us will be cowering in the tropical sunlight. At least we'll be well fed by a trained chef. And I'm Leslie. I'm taking an Emergency Medical Training course with Andy and will be contributing emergency medic skills, so-so Spanish, cultural/medical/nutritional/ research, storytelling, activities planning, ice cream socials, etc. Just call me Julie from the Love Boat. You can read more about us in our bios on the "Crew" page.

Leslie sort of has this haircut already!

DB: Gawd. What a ramshackle group! So what's the route looking like? 

BC: What? You haven't clicked on the route button yet? I guess you are a boat and don't have fingers. Or toes. So we are leaving from San Diego by February 15th, then going to Baja, La Paz, to a wedding in Puerto Vallarta, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cost Rica, The Galapagos Islands, Easter Island, Pitcairn Islands, Tahiti, and NZ! Boom! 

DB: Oh jeez. Well, I guess we'll be spending a lot of time together. Hurry up and get down to Sausalito! I need a good swabbing and some new bling. Let's go!

BC: Pretty soon, Al. We'll keep you posted on our movings and shakings on your deck. Don and Carl will be gutting you in about two weeks. You better start being nice to us!

And by that I mean Carl will be gutting the boat while Don kicks back.

DB: Ouch, be gentle! I'm very refined and sensitive. See you chuckleheads later!

BC: Aye-aye Al!