Our journey ended so suddenly. From one final adventure on the Pacific Coast of Washington state, we raced down to San Francisco so Alan wouldn’t miss his flight. Alan and Brian would soon be home, back in Massachusetts and it would be just me, the bus, and a long to-do list to prepare BioTour for the fall tour.

My preconceived images of California—hot sun, palm trees lining the beaches, and everyone roller-blading around did not fit northern California; but, the reality did not disappoint. After crossing the most famous icon of San Francisco, Brian and I pulled off the highway into Golden Gate Park before exiting into Sausalito. Brian put on a winter hat on the chilly morning and we stepped of the bus and stood, gazing at clouds creeping over the steep hillsides, cascading down the valleys across the Golden Gate Bridge toward the Bay. Brian watched quietly. I could sense he was reflecting on the long journey that would come to an end that night when he would board a plane back to Boston.

We found my friend Peggy and drove the big bus through the narrow winding roads of Sausalito—an upscale community filled with tourists and home to wealthy San Franciscans. The hillsides were explosions of life—green vines hung from various trees of green and red, then crawled along walkways and up stonewalls. Exotic plants adorned pathways as if nature chose Sausalito for some of its greatest art. Colorful flowers blossomed and fell to cover the stone walkways. I took a deep breath to take some of it with me. Driving the bus to Peggy’s new place in Tiburon, we found more of the same, lush gardens, fruit trees, and water fountains. It made me wonder if the California climate creates this or if we are just too busy or too lazy in Massachusetts to goad nature into producing such things.

Peggy bought Brian a farewell shot of tequila for the long flight and he was gone. I spent the next few days working from my computer at Sausalito cafes before heading south to Mountain View to visit Dustin at Google Headquarters.

Google is a playground for gamers, geeks, programmers and bus adventurers who stop by for a snack and shower. I dug into the food from the buffet line as Dustin grabbed a couple of beers, opened them and passed one to me.

“Google has this strange idea that creating a fun, comfortable, and exciting environment for its workers will increase general happiness and productivity…” Dustin said ridiculing the fact that this is an anomaly in an economy that typically squeezes every dime out of workers.

Free beer and wine on Friday, concerts a few nights a month, snacks and smoothies, Naked Juice, cashews and food bars in each building, and bikes for people to cruise around campus were just some of the perks. But Google doesn’t stop there, they provide massage chairs when you get cramped from typing at a computer for too long, art and plant life surround, they even have a replica of a T-Rex skeleton and a plastic ball pit (like the ones you find at Chucky Cheese). At Google, you don’t walk the wide and tall hallways of some swanky ostentatious fortress built by people who feel the need to demonstrate the magnificence of their multi-million dollar corporation. You instead walk the rolling hills that surround and the lively decorated cubicles or the cactus lined walkways, or Segway the game-filled halls of a playground-workplace constructed by two computer geeks that developed a billion dollar company.

I trailed Dustin’s truck heading to Santa Cruz and nestled the bus in front of his garage apartment, my home for the next month. Dustin grabbed a bottle of wine, two glasses and we rushed to Moon Rocks to catch sunset. After a short climb up the smooth foot-worn sandstone, we stood looking down on the clouds. Fog rolled over the sparkling ocean like a white blanket. I was reminded of Table Mountain in South Africa, where both Dustin and I had climbed and seen the famous “tablecloth” of clouds a few years before. We toasted to life, drank our wine and then found a campfire and conversation with new friends.

I spent long hours the next month behind a computer, inside the engine of the bus and building the interior of our motor home. Santa Cruz had so many wonders to explore, but I was busy and focused on getting work done, knowing it’ll be easier for all when we are on road again in just over a month.

Dustin’s place should have had a revolving door for the number of guests and “couchsurfers” that passed through. Dustin, on his own initiative, set up the BioTour Intern Program. He would lend his home to nearly anyone who asked, and in return they became a BioTour intern. At least once a week I would pick up my phone and have a conversation something like this:

“What’s up Dustin?”

“I got you another BioTour intern who will arrive later today to help you wash the bus. He’ll be staying at my place for a few days while I’m up here at Google.”

“When you coming back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Thanks, see ya then.”

There was a steady stream of travelers that would share with me Dustin’s garage, shower, sink and internet, and tales of travel.

I initially thought I couldn’t afford to surf this summer, but I felt the waves and water in Santa Cruz calling me, despite never touching a surfboard in my life. The first tour was one of investment, leaving me with little cash and even less room on my credit cards. It normally costs hundreds of dollars for a board and hundreds more for a new wetsuit. Experiencing a union with the curling and crashing forces of nature seem beyond my reach. But within 20 minutes of arriving in Santa Cruz the universe provided—Dustin and I stumbled upon a yard sale that was about to close up, and the vendor cut me a break and sold me a beginner’s long board and a wetsuit that barely stretched over my body for a total of $85.

For more than three weeks the board taunted me, sitting in corner of Dustin’s apartment as I ground down the to-do list and dealt with the website crashing. There was too much to do and too little time. With two weeks left before Burning Man and then the start of the Fall 2007 Tour, I had to make time. I just said, ‘Yes,’ grabbed my surfboard, drove the bus to Pleasure Point just before dawn, just in time to watch the ocean light up as the sun rose behind me. With the YouTube surf lesson from professional surfers Phil MacDonald and Trent Munro fresh in my mind, I paddled out. There were only a few surfers on the water and the waves were few and far between. I caught two waves, pushing my chest up but remaining laying down, riding the waves down until they died out. The last two I tried to stand, wobbling onto my feet for a brief moment in time for the wave to fizzle out and I sank into the water. I remember Alan’s words, “Surfers paddle. They paddle and paddle and catch a few waves in between.”

I was stubbornly addicted to surfing even though the waves were mere ripples in most surf spots in Santa Cruz in August. My second surfing attempt occurred at the famous Steamers Lane. Even when it’s flat everywhere else, occasional sets still roll into Steamers Lane. This point break is supposedly notorious for its localism and I was told that I would get a lot of flak from experienced surfers who would have no tolerance for a guy with a foam beginners board, a half wetsuit that didn’t fit, who got in their way as he fell off wave after wave. But I went anyway, and out on the water nobody spoke a word to me.

I walked down the wooden stairs, stepped onto the rocks and jumped into the water on my board. I could see tourists in front of the light house looking over the cliff at the surfers who paddled just along side that sheer cliff. Only a few feet from rocks, a surfer would pop up and catch a ten foot wave, surfing away from the rocks and toward me as I waited for the smaller waves they would let pass. The waves of Steamers Lane were much bigger had enough force to propel me and my foam board to shore, making it much easier to catch waves. Wiping out, flipping over, and eventually standing briefly, I learned a lot, and I’m itching to surf again when we reach the east coast.

The rest of the summer before Burning Man was mostly work with some excursions and adventures in between. I took a trip up to Belden in northern California, shuttling people for a pre-Burning Man event. Dustin thankfully dragged me out from underneath the bus to climb Tree Nine, a redwood in the tall dark forests of UCSC. I took breaks to bike Santa Cruz, Natural Bridges being one the best places for sunset.

One adventure of note was the pot grower’s convention in San Francisco. A fellow vegetable oil bus driver and friend had flown to San Francisco with most of the staff of a hydroponics store that he owned and managed. Will invited Dustin and me to an event being held by one of his company’s product suppliers. I was given all information second hand, something about a big party by some fertilizer company, free food and drinks and entertainment. Of course I would go. Money was tight, Will was in town, and my friend Matt had just turned twenty-one.

Perhaps it was because I worked on a hydroponic tomato farm when I was young that I missed something everyone else well understood: the clientele for hydroponics retail stores are ninety percent marijuana growers. Even a half hour into the party, I still didn’t get it. I was the child in the room who didn’t understand what the adults were talking about. As I stood on the dance floor, I pieced things together—“hydro”, the clouds of smoke billowing from the lungs of onlookers, the hosts throwing money into the air as people scrambled to pick it up, the snake charmer show, the belly dancers that offered me a drag from the hookah in the tent with Persian pillows, and looking at Will’s friend Ustin, who smiled and nodded at me looking blazed. The light bulb went on… ‘These people are pot growers!’ I felt like such an idiot. My friends all laughed. “You didn’t know!” The night was…interesting to say the least. But it’s too long a story that will have to be told another day.

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