I found myself singing Tom Petty’s “Breakdown” several times over the days that our big blue bus was at the mechanic getting an overhaul. We brought it to the International dealership so diesel mechanics could fix the radiator and diagnosis other odd noises and symptoms.

After spending an entire day at the dealership, sitting in the “Trucker’s Lounge,” drinking cheap coffee and sleeping intermittently, we boarded the bus again on a flat tire, but otherwise running nicely. The four of us parked for the night at another garage where the mechanic would mend our tire the next morning, found dinner at an all-you-can-eat trucker’s buffet and camped out in the unseasonably warm night.

I slept through the buzzing and whizzing of drills and air pumps in the early morning hours as the tire was being fixed. Once mended and on the road again, we drove the bus a few yards out of the garage just to feel it die. It starts up again; it dies. We coerced it over the freeway and back to the dealership to ask again for assistance. The consensus: The engine gasket melted and #4 cylinder was scored. This was as comprehensible as Chinese to me, but the price estimate was a bit clearer: $800 for diagnosis, $4000 to $9000 for parts and labor. Not good news for a growing non-profit.

On the day before the bus would be parked in the depths of the garage, Nando and I decided to break and go grocery shopping. The closest store, Food Lion, was googled to be 2.3 miles away, a good hour walk there and back. We were unaware that 90 percent of this walk was on the three-foot shoulder of a 65 mph highway, then over a freeway, then up a hill above the freeway and through sticker bushes. The walk took a little longer than expected, so we decided to first grab a snack at the Waffle House, a southern chain as frequent an eyesore as McDs and just about as healthy. We were served by a couple of local boys who told us about life in Ashland, Virginia and all it had to offer. (This included the cheapest cigarettes in the country and parties deep in the woods where only people with big pickups could go. I guess we’ll have to thank Philip Morris for the former, as it set up headquarters instate.) In Virginia, a pack of cigarettes cost $2.50, about what our waiters make an hour, plus tips. Unfortunately, we were the only people in the restaurant to give any sort of tip, which they said was pretty normal. Upon finishing up our chocolate chip pancakes and coffee, we took off to the supermarket.

But first, we had to hit up the tobacco shop and confirm the devilishly low cost of cigarettes and cigars in Virginia. Nando purchased a puro and we each smoked an unprecedented American Spirit in celebration of the “low low” prices.Next to the Food Lion was a China Wok, and out of instinct we checked its dumpster for grease. In the back of the strip mall, we found Chinese grease, Mexican grease, hot wing grease and plenty of Italian grease. A jackpot of golden-brown fuel! Small problem: we didn’t have a bus. So we put out our cigarettes and entered the grocery store.

On the way back, Ethan and Alan called with the bad news that the bus would cost more than expected and would take a week to finish. We could stay on the bus that night, but then we would have to make the decision of whether to go back to DC where we knew people with couches, or try couchsurfing (www.couchsurfing.com) in Richmond, a city we’d never visited and was located about 20 miles away. Frustrated at the news and tired of lugging overfilled grocery bags several miles, we came across a Bingo night starting at 6:45. It was 6:40. Time for Bingo!We bought two books of Bingo sheets (each sheet with nine Bingo squares printed on it) as well as a blue Bingo stamper with the name Stampin’ Champ written across the side. I sat down to catch up with the numbers that had already been called. As I frantically searched the nine 9-by-9 squares for B9 G43 N26, I realized I had Bingo. I had Bingo! Could it be true? The first game I played, amongst all of the smoky weathered veterans of Bingo, and I win?“Bingo!” I squealed. A couple lazy heads turned my direction and widened their eyes. “Well do you have it or not?” someone yelled.“I have it. I have it. I think…” I managed to get out. The game silenced for a second and directed its attention at me, until the man next to me leaned over and wheezed that I wasn’t even playing with the correct Bingo sheet. Oh, sheet.

Red with the embarrassment of my novice mistake, we figured it best to move to the smoking section, a bigger room near the entrance filled with table upon table of Bingo players and plumes of smoke that wafted well into the non-smoking room, rendering the their division meaningless. Old women hovered over their Bingo sheets, sipping diet cokes and nibbling hostess cupcakes, cigarettes hanging loosely from their lips. Elderly couples sat across from each other, whispering upcoming numbers while simultaneously playing on both paper sheets and electronic screens. An old skeleton of a man perched uncomfortably on a bench and yelled, “Peanut Butter and Jelly!” occasionally. No one wore a smile.

The lady next to us had a bag custom-sewed to hold ten Bingo letter stampers. We quickly and tactically befriended Constance and asked her to explain to us the rules of Bingo. She told us how to use the multi-colored stampers to make entries like I16 easier to find. She explained that the electronic screens are the same as paper sheets, and “PB&J” referenced a lotto scratcher you could buy separate from the Bingo game. She told us that the coffee was free but the greasy lasagna was not. She even let us borrow her green stamper, Bingo King, and her orange stamper, Super Stamp.We were into our second game of Bingo when I started to get the hang of it. I was stamping madly and realized a recent déjà vu: I had Bingo. Now if I yelled Bingo again and was wrong again, I might as well have just left. But my new friend Constance leaned over and confirmed my win. I yelled, “Bingo!” The game kept going. “uh, Bingo!” Again, only a couple heads turned my way.“BINGO!!!” Constance belted, in her deep southern voice. The judge immediately stopped the game and his assistant came over and checked my sheet. “Here you go ma’am, one hundred dollars.”

Bingo winning must run in my genes, as my mom won a couple thousand dollars at Bingo on a cruise some weeks back. She received the same dirty looks from the Bingo veterans surrounding her as I had tonight. This game could be dangerous if you crossed the wrong Bingo player and all their super stampers. I decided to downplay my win.

Several cups of coffee and Bingo losses later, we left the community center for our last night on Big Blue.

***

The next day, we hitched a ride with one of the bus mechanics out to Richmond, equipped with our backpacks and laptops and positive outlook that we would find a place to stay. Fortunately enough, we received about 10 responses to the 20 inquiries we sent out on couchsurfing, and came to our first of many recognitions that Richmond would turn out to be a pretty cool place. We stayed with couchsurfer Isaac and his girlfriend Monica and two roommates Chris and Tom the first couple nights. In this time, we saw expressive dancing at a sex workers art show, drank Irish beers at Penny Lane’s pub, ate greasy burgers at a latenight 50s diner, learned to breathe fire with Everclear, attended a Capoeira class at a local community center and fought through several games of dominos.

Our broken-bus serendipity arrived when couchsurfer Kevin Gallagher informed us that there an environmental film festival, “The Biggest Picture,” was being held that weekend in uptown Richmond at the Byrd Theater, and there was a possible opening for BioTour to speak. Kevin got us in contact with the right people, and sure enough we were scheduled to present amongst Ralph Nader, filmmaker Michael Jones, and various films about environmental woes.

After speaking at “The Biggest Picture”, our connections in Richmond grew. We were offered (and cheerfully accepted) everything from free Rieke to places to stay to multiple pitchers of beer. We moved from Isaac’s to the apartment of Jay and Sheila,who hosted us the remainder of the two weeks we spent in Richmond. Visiting Belle Isle and the James River was one of our Richmond highlights. We climbed the sides of mountains, bouldered some rocks, ambled around an old rock quarry and skipped about the layers of smooth stones on the lower river. Ever-present were the remains of an old hydroelectric plant, whose gaping, skeleton-like structures are constant reminders of coal giant Dominion’s take-over of Virginia’s energy industry. Dominion’s corporate headquarters sat at the water’s edge looking shamelessly over the useless hydroelectric damn. I thought about Larry Gibson, who gave us the opportunity to present at “The Biggest Picture” when he couldn’t make it, and whose story we heard months earlier while traveling through West Virginia. I reminisced the account that the mountains were his family’s home and were being destroyed by mountain top removal coal mining, how from his porch he once looked up at the peaks around Kayford Mountain and now his land is the highest point in view. I thought about how a company like Dominion (Massey Energy) tried to buy him off his land, where generations of his family had lived and died and currently lay in the family grave plot, and how he consistently refused. I thought about the death threats he received soon after, his neighbors falling sick and dying young with cancer, asthma and kidney disease, and how companies like Dominion continue to get away with murder.**

On another day, we joined Jay and friend Crystal at a picketing event outside a payday loan office to rally support against loan sharking. Currently there is no cap for the interest these places charge on the loans offered to their “customers,” and its forcing poor people to go even farther into debt. I spoke to Alfonso, a curious pedestrian, who had his own stories about cash n’ loans.

“I went to a place like that for $250 and they charged me $60 in interest. I also know a guy who paid 50 percent! These places need to stop, man.”
“Some places have been known to charge up to 400 percent,” I said. “These loan sharks just come to take advantage of vulnerable people.”
“Ahhh, that’s what the shark is for!” Alfonso laughed, pointing at the person skipping around in a shark suit. We got many enthusiastic honks and cheers from people supporting our picket, and whether or not it had any real effect we have yet to see.

That night, a gathering of old friends from DC and new friends from Richmond collected gear to go camping by the James River. It was the middle of February and bone-chillingly cold, but pizza, beer and a roaring campfire kept us going until morning. At breakfast the next morning, we stood over the smoldering ashes of our camp fire, cooking hardboiled eggs in beer cans filled with river water. Our honorary crewmember Brandon eloquently summed up the BioTour camping experience: “The Boy Scouts’ motto is, ‘Be Prepared’. BioTour’s motto is, “F***ing figure it out.”

I would just like to take this opportunity to thank all of the lovely people in Richmond for showing BioTour such an awesome time and putting up with us on your couches and floors. I hope one day we can return the favor…