The crew was initially composed of:
Jeremy:
a 27 years old white male from Berkeley born in Seattle and raised in Southern California. Although he would describe himself as ridiculously good looking and culturally refined, Jeremy is essentially a confused human being with a very strong sense of adventure and fairly good amount of energy. Jeremy studies philosophy at Berkeley and his main belief is that if you cannot define your philosophy, your philosophy will define yourself. Indeed, as Jeremy has become increasingly obsessed with his own philosophy, his life has turned into a philosophical journey towards the exploration of conflicts. Jeremy does in fact believe that everything that is likely to turn into a good story is necessarily worth doing, regardless of the fact that it is often likely to result into a series of completely unforeseable consequences. This is probably the main reason why he has eventually agreed to engage into this dangerous adventure on the road with his very own car and his very own house at the same time. As the official owner of pigpen, Jeremy was the main person responsible for driving the RV, although he did not even own a valid driving license at the time. Jeremy also declared himself as the official mechanic for pigpen, a role which he successfully accomplished in spite of his limited knowledge on the matter, for he is more stubborn than most.
Trietly:
a 21 years old girl from Vietnam and currently studying at UC Berkeley, who was brave enough to voluntarily engage into this adventure on the road. The name Trietly, which translates into Philosophy in Vietnamese, is however not her real name, although nobody from the crew has ever called her otherwise. The name had been given to her a few months earlier by Jeremy while he was tripping on acid, and it has since then been acknowledged as her actual name. Nobody really understands her philosophy though, because Trietly is not a human, she is a dancer. Indeed, Trietly spends her all life dancing, even when she is not supposed to. But she is an excellent dancer, so she can be forgiven. She also has never been seen wearing shoes, as she believes walking barefoot is much more comfortable, regardless of the circumstances and weather conditions. Trietly can generally be seen wearing a mohawk, which is sometimes combined with the ying and the yang. As a member of the pigpen team, Trietly assumed the role of physical trainer and instructed every member of the crew on the techniques of stretching and the wonders of dancing.
Tomatha:
a 2 years old pitbull that Jeremy adopted a few weeks before the departure. She had been given to him by her former owner who had to leave somewhere and we thought it would be a good idea to bring her along in the road trip. It turned out not to be a good idea, but we could not know at that time, although she had already given demonstration of her aggressive behaviour whenever she would come too close to another quadruped. Tomatha is however extremely friendly with human beings, but only to the extent that they are taller than her, because Tomatha hates babies. Tomatha was an invaluable component of the crew, whose main role was that of guarding pigpen and maintaining the RV into a state of permanent chaos.
Christie:
a 23 years old girl from Berkeley who has been enticed by Jeremy to engage into this dangerous adventure on the road, in order to celebrate her recent graduation from UC Berkeley, where she was majoring in psychology. Because of her intrinsic qualities, Christie has been identified as the most responsible person of the crew, and since she is now working as an accountant, she has been put in charge of taking account of the pigpen funds. Christie was also the main person in charge of taking pictures in order to document the trip, not only because of her artistic skills, but mainly because every one was either too lazy to take pictures or too poor to afford a decent digital camera.
Lyyli:a french or italian girl from France or Italy who thought working on her phd in Florence was somewhat boring and a road trip to discover the wonders of the USA would probably be more fun. Lyyli purchased pigpen together with Jeremy while she was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, and subsequently sold her share to Jeremy before going back to Italy. It is common general knowledge that she still owns a 1% share of pigpen, although Jeremy sometimes tends to disagree. Lyyli is generally understood to be a nihilist, mainly because she doesnt care about anything except for her beautiful computer. As long as there is Internet somewhere, Lyyli can be easily kept under control. In spite of her nihilism, Lyyli also loves brownies, perhaps more than anything else in the world, although she is absolutely unable to cook them, even if she may pretend otherwise. Lyyli was at first the only other member of the crew who actually knew how to drive pigpen, although as a result of her chaotic approach to driving, she was often prevented from driving pigpen if not under thorough surveillance. Lyyli therefore declared herself as the official co-pilot and henceforth became an essential component of the crew because pigpen cannot be driven by only one person.
So here we are, all together with pigpen, getting ready to leave for this long adventure accross the USA.
June 4th 2009 was a great day for all of us..
The morning was spent fixing pigpen and packing things up, the goal being to depart in the early afternoon, even though we knew by then that pigpen was far from ready and that according to jeremy's frantic mechanic work and exclamtions of problems under the hood, yet for some reason we were okay with that.
On the way, we stop by Kyle and Briana's to say good bye. They give us some recording equipement to keep track of our adventures, as well as a map of the USA with all the interesting locations from Wikipedia's unusual articles that we are supposed to stop by. These are by far the sweetest possible gifts one can get and yet... they never seemed to be used...
And so begins the first stage of the odyssey towards Yosemite. While it is a wonderful route into the sierras on a beautiful summer evening it is not quite so wonderful a drive. The driving process can only be described as nerve wracking and bastardly test to prove the endurance of both driver and the driven. The idle, due to some particularly bad mechanic work has, at this point has descended into the depths of non-existence. Which is to say that in order to keep pigpen from shutting off the gas pedal has to to be held down at all times if ever so slightly. This isn't really a problem when headed down freeways but becomes a minor and embarrassing inconvenience when at stoplights and serious, rather alarming crisis when headed down hills. Just try to imagine plummeting down a steep sierra valley when at roughly 70 mph your engine cuts out on you right at the moment you were attempting to take 11000 pounds around a corner. You see the powersteering is powered by the engine and the only way to keep the engine going without an idle is to continue pressing the gas regardless of the terrain one is traversing. In short the excursion of a lifetime began with some life/trip threating danger and some engine/brake destroying driving and that's about as foreshadowy as one can be if you consider the rest of this ridiculous story.
though Jeremy (driving at this point) seems to be loving every minute of this insanity Pigpen doesn't seem to share the sentiment. As the alititude increases pigpen's the average speed descends down into the 25 mph range and the average milleage is seems to be 6 gallons per mile or less. The climb is slow, tumultuous and rather ridiculous. The crew at this point is entertaining the notion of running out of gas on a mountain side and failing to even achieve the modest goal of Yosemite (3 hrs and 180 miles by google's account) and just as the empty line has been straddled for what seemed like far to long, a gas station sign begins to rise above the mountainous road we were ascending advertising redemption, hope and 4.00$/gallon gas. The bastards know they can charge whatever they damn well please up these parts.
Trietly is very happy. She smokes her daily dose of weed and start dancing in the RV. However, the combination of Jeremy's driving skills, particularly bad suspension and mountain roads lead to an upset stomach and triet ly proceeds to to puke out the side of pigpen (twice) marking pigpen with a bile stain that would stay with us for many states to come.
We somehow managed to arrive in Yosemite, granted in the middle of the night, and spend a rather dumbfounded moment staring at an incomprehensible map that refused to show us where we were or what direction was what. After a preliminary investigation of the map, we decide to give up on understanding it just randomly drive far enough to pull over at the French camp next to what we thought were the food containers, where people store their food so that it doesnt get eaten by bears. We were pretty excited about the prospect of free food and were promptly disappointed when we found out that they actually were trashcans.
Before going to bed, Jeremy, Tomatha and Trietly depart for a short excursion in order to explore our new site. Trietly was essentially running down the street doing cart wheels while Jeremy was running after her with Tomatha. They come back to reporting that the full moon's only completion was the full forest, full of wild animals that tomatha had despretaly yearned to attack.
So every one goes to sleep in the comfort of pigpen's bed, except for Trietly who was so thrilled by the beauty and the tallness of the trees that she decided to sleep on the roof of the RV. And it was well that she did. In the middle of the night a storm had decided to kick up and without triet ly's unsolicted watch we would have all been soaked as the sky portal installed in the roof of pigpen can be rather terrible when sky decides to shed it's water. The tarp goes up and we all go to sleep looking forward to a beautiful day in the mountains.
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