Well, I’m here in Tobin’s parking lot typing this short note. Folks walk by just a few feet away, but I’m comfortably cocooned here in my bus, the top popped, sitting cross-legged on the bed.

I’m using an Apple Duo 280c, lent to me by a friend at Apple Computer. At the last minute, just as I was about to leave without a computer, Ramesh phoned and said “Oh, I just got back from vacation. Would you like to use my computer?”

The Duo is classic Apple. Light and stylish, it’s the perfect computer for this sort of thing. It has a built-in 14.4 modem, hidden just behind one of the fold-out legs. The screen is beautiful, 640 by 480 pixels of active, sharp color. I haven’t used a Mac in several years, but the OS is so intuitive that I can usually figure out how to work things.

(I had a little trouble getting PPP to work right, but my friend Bri has done this before. He stuck FreePPP on the system and now it works like a charm.)

I’ve been taking the pictures on this trip with an Apple Quicktake digital camera. Using the Duo and the Quicktake, I can examine the images, crop them, and enhance them (usually just a little tough-up to the brightness.) When I connect up to the ‘net, I just FTP the images to Chaco, and Stev0 takes it from there.

Tobin and Christa are even nicer than I imagined they would be. They’re extremely vivacious, as you’d expect. Jack Stafford arrived before I did, as did Johnny and Heidi Stutsman and their two very cute kids, Sage and Reed. Jorge and Yvette also arrived this evening, having driven 5,000 miles just to get to Vancouver. Attached to the front of the bus was a very shredded tire, their last spare. They’d blown four getting here. Jorge is going out tomorrow to get a full set of new tires.

Tomorrow will be a busy day. I need to get more film, meet John Schirano (my co-pilot), and pick up some fresh produce. Everyone else starting from Vancouver will arrive (except Bob Hoover, who is meeting us on the road North of town.) And then tomorrow night is the going-away party.

I’d better get some sleep…