A few weeks ago my dad had a business meeting in Phoenix, AZ and was planning on flying out on a Wednesday, then flying back home on a Friday. I am not too far away in San Francisco, so I suggested we meet up and go to the Grand Canyon instead of him flying home. Naturally, he jumped at the idea and we met up that Thursday night.

I flew in on Thursday afternoon and was picked up at the airport by Chris Elliott, a childhood friend I have not seen in years. We spent the car ride back to his parent’s house (also estranged but close friends of the family) catching up on what had happened in the past decade since we had seen each other and getting past that awkward “Hey, I haven’t seen you in 10 years but I guess we are still friends” thing. Turns out we still get along fine.

After a good dinner with his mother, sister, sisters girlfriend, and at the end, his roommate, we went to the fake lake in the area. It is actually really nice at night, and we just walked along talking about randomness.

My dad got done with his conference around 10pm and showed up to chat for a while. We retired for the night after Mr. Elliott helped us plan our trip to the canyon. We were not sure about getting a permit because you generally have to apply months ahead of time, but banking on good luck and with an adaptable attitude, we woke up early and headed out. Our rental car was a Dodge Charger because they didn’t have the small car we had asked for. We were concerned about gas cost, but they gave us the car for the lower rate and a free half tank of gas, which was about the difference. I was glad, because I hate renting a car and having it be a small, weak machine that protests you trying to drive it like a destruction derby contestant – which as everyone knows is what you do with rental cars.

The drive north from Phoenix was beautiful. The change from flat desert to sharp hills was anything but gradual. After an hour or so of no turns and flat land several massive mesas suddenly appeared on the horizon and we wound our way into them. Still unsure of our final plans, we stopped at the state park near Flagstaff and got some more information from the park rangers there on places to go. They recommended that we take a secondary road to the canyon as the main one was busy and not as pretty. Both of us liked that idea, so we headed out again.

Surprisingly, we ended up on Route 66 for a while. To my knowledge it was my first time on the legendary dust bowl highway and it was fun to be a part of the legend, even if only for a moment. Our path led us through alpine forests, flat prairies, dusty deserts and then up, up, up into the elevated region that houses this massive hole in the ground we wanted so badly to climb into.

Mr. Elliott had told us that sometimes people put their tickets with extra days remaining on the back of the entrance sign, but when we checked we had no such luck. We paid our $25 and entered the park. We followed the roads out to the edge of the canyon and took some photos, trying hard to crop out the massive amount of tourists that were on the observation platform. I always feel that somehow I perceive locations differently than everyone else who is there. Even though I was gawking at the canyon with a giant camera around my neck, I looked with mild disgust at everyone else who was there doing the same thing. Maybe because I knew that my involvement with the canyon would not stop at simply looking at it, rather I would soon be attempting to climb down in it and challenge it to physical battle. It would cease being a sight, and become a place I have lived in and experienced.

We left the observation platform and found our way to the backcountry office. We needed a pass to go into the canyon, and had been told by everyone we talked to that our chances were slim to none. We asked, and the ranger said, no, sorry they were out (it was 3:00pm). Right when he said this, a lady behind him spoke up and said someone just canceled five minutes ago! We were in. In order to get to the bottom before dark we needed to leave ASAP. We called a cab to take us to the top of the trail, and rapidly packed our bags.

Seven miles to go down, then ten back up. The journey had begun.

[The actual trip in and out next, followed by my weekend in Mexico]

Many of the people I have met here live lives that seemed ridiculous and impossible to me barely a year ago.

• One fantastic woman hasn’t paid rent in five years because she has built up such a reputation as a house sitter that she is booked up months in advance. She is also a radio host.
• One guy works the business side of a pornography company in a building that used to be a WWII armory. It is a giant, $15 million dollar castle, and you can do donuts in a truck inside of it.
• One lawyer lives in a warehouse with 24 other people. It is made of old redwood beams and their individual homes are like tree houses in the upper corners, or stacked on top of each other like Lincoln logs. They hold massive parties there a few times a year.
• Several people that I have met are in polyamorous relationships, an uncommon occurrence in Georgia / North Carolina.
• One guy travels the world making documentary films and living wherever he can.
• A man who is a healer and wanders around throwing large parties where he simply invites as many interesting people that he is in contact with and facilitates them getting to know each other.

Derek (in back) our chef, and his Irish helper, Benny. We have a Chef!

Just a few, and there are many more. The people I live with are an incredible mix of all of the above. We live and work long, full days, but I cannot call one day I have had in the past year “typical”.

Looking back at my past year, I would say that until I did it, I would have called it impossible. Before I graduated I saw a vision of my future laid out in front of me, and it involved working for a bank in DC until I went to law school, with a wife, two kids and a house in the suburbs. Not a bad life at all, but one that is hard to change once you are in it. (I do have to say I am very glad not to be working for a big bank right now…)

In fact, one year ago this week I sold my truck, the final “no going back now” card of my departure.

Did I have any idea what I was going to be up to now? I honestly thought I would be teaching English somewhere in Asia. I could have been if visas had worked out. But they didn’t, and I ended up traveling Asia, staying with hill tribes, meditating in Buddha’s birthplace, bungee jumping, hiking to Everest Base Camp, living in Alaska, flying around Mt. Denali, living in San Francisco, working for CouchSurfing.com and cramming more life experiences into a year than I could have thought possible.

In my free time I am currently working with Laura McNamara (www.giramonda.com) to begin establishing a sustainable cocoa farm in Honduras, (www.thecocoaproject.org) and cannot wait to see the path this leads me on. I can only imagine a small fraction of ways to this next year can go, and I am sure that one year ago from today I will look back and be blown away again.

-Ben

I joined the California Sailing Club, which gives me access to a wide variety of boats and windsurfing boards whenever I get the drive to bike to the marina. I also discovered the best rock climbing gym I have ever been in today. It is massive. I showed up and paid $10 for a day pass because the guy at the counter told me the registration fee would be discounted $50 starting in October. I bouldered around for a while, then worked out on equipment they have. They have a sauna, showers, free weights, machines, treadmills, cycles, and classes. Everything I could want from a normal gym, plus a massive amount of climbing. Perfect!

Berkeley also has a challenging disc golf course that I found today, and the whole town is bike friendly.

Berkeley Disc Golf Course

I do not need a car at all. I can go from my house to the bay in under 20 minutes, back takes longer due to hills, but it is a good workout.

Getting to San Francisco takes about half an hour on the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and puts you out wherever you want to be. The only bummer is that it closes down around midnight, making late weekends a challenge. Luckily I happen to work for an organization that knows a lot of people with spare couches to crash on!

Since I broke down before Burning Man and bought a crappy little point and shoot, I have been able to carry it around with me all the time and take random shots of whatever I want, which is a different experience for me. Not that I took pictures of the interesting things, but there was this little guy on the tree next to where I locked up my bike.

http://www.neticons.net/music_life/

-Ben

The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.

I have been interested in the Long Now Foundation for quite some time, and the Long Bets group as well. Now that I am in the area, I get to actually attend these conferences and enjoy them.

The Conference I went to last night was good because it was my first one. However, Peter Diamandis, the founder of X-Prize, essentially presented an infomercial about the program. I had looked at some X-prize information online before I went to get a feel for what might be discussed, and a lot of what I read on the website came out in the presentation.

One thing that really interested me was the survey they handed out before he spoke. It was almost an exact list of many things I studied in my Future Studies class my Senior year at Elon. We were asked to select three that we thought should be the focus of a mega x-prize. ($100 million to $1 billion)

My choices were:

• Download brain to computer with memory intact
• Brain to brain communication at 10x our current interface (vocal interaction)
• Real time collective conscious for a group of over 100

You can tell I am really hyped about the possibility of a true hive mind. The Internet is a start to this process, as we are now aware of our friends activities in a general way from the social media trickle effect. We may not know exactly what is going on, but from services like Facebook, My Space, twitter, and IM / email, we generally know the location, occupation, and major events in peoples lives that we may not have communicated with in years. 

This allows for awareness, but not advancement. A true hive mind would allow for ideas, directives, and information to flow uninhibited at speeds as fast as thought. The ability to put my brain on a computer with my memories intact is also incredible. When we eventually create a machine that can handle the brain’s information, we could have our conscious live forever.

The x-prizes in this “mega” category are funded in unique ways. One of the possibilities is a cure for aids. What could a $1 billion prize do for research in that direction? Who would put up that kind of cash? Diamandis has an excellent solution. He has tapped into the health insurance industry. If they put up $1 billion now, the cure would save them multiple billions over the course of time. And they don’t pay unless the cure is created. How can they lose?

I found the economic model behind his projects to be revolutionary. He creates an industry behind each project, and essentially started the private space flight sector. I am looking forward to seeing how the project develops in the future.

One category of x-prizes that I thought was missing was social reform. It seems Diamondis wants to change the world through massive technological breakthroughs. Eradicating hunger and poverty were two of the proposed mega prizes, but these were to be done through technology.

I think that a $1 billion prize to create a new system of government could inspire some radical change. What about you? Would this be funding terrorism?

Right. Let’s begin.

Jim (www.fliptophead.com) and I left Anchorage to start our drive, and quickly realized that this was going to take forever. Alaska is big, and Canada is bigger. We were waved through the border patrol by a bored looking guard who hardly glanced at our passports.

We passed a few cool looking glaciers on our way out, and the landscape was beautiful. A few miles into Canada, the roads started getting wavy. There were all these little bumps that were marked with red flags on the side of the road, but if you didn’t notice the little red flag you suddenly found yourself airborne with a seatbelt cutting through your stomach. It made for interesting wake ups for the person sleeping in the passenger seat.

We had the car packed about as full as we could get it. We both had our laptops, and I could just raise it above my head and push it back and it would stay, wedged between all the junk in the back seat of the truck. We took turns driving, rotating every tank of gas to start off. The first day we drove until around 3 am before pulling over and camping out on the side of the road for four hours. That day is a blur of landscapes as we made our way out of the Yukon Territory and into BC.

At one point late at night we started smelling an odd burning smell, and remembered that while we had bought oil and a filter to change before we left, we had neglected to do so. Jim also commented that his oil had not been changed in over 16,000 miles. Uh oh… So we stopped, leached some wifi while we waited for the car to settle and cool and changed the oil. About 20 min down the road the smell came back. Some searching led us to find that our DC converter which was powering our laptops and cell phones was literally melting itself. So no more power.

We stopped again that night around 3 am and camped out until about 9:30am before starting.

The only thing that had been recommended to us was some hot springs, which we stopped at for about an hour. They were great after two days of no showers, still wearing the same clothes we left Alaska in. As we left, a tour bus full of some older tourists showed up and we were very glad to be out of there.

The part of Canada we drove through was pretty bleak, but we stopped in Vancouver at a CS gathering, arriving very late and spending an hour and a half and a pitcher of beer trying to find anyone there who could host us, but the people left were all travelers and had no space. We ended up leaving Vancouver and crossing into the States around midnight. We were so sick of camping that we just got a cheap hotel right next to the boarder and crashed out until late the next morning.

We stopped in Portland to see one of Jim’s old friends and he gave us a quick tour of the area he works in. We stopped in some random stores looking for Burning Man gear, and somehow ended up in a few places that were S&M stores and fantasy shops. Not the kind of costumes we were looking for exactly.

The last night we stopped at a hotel in some random small town and went to some thrift stores the next morning. Got a good Burning Man jacket and some 70’s Oakleys for $5.00.

We rolled into San Francisco around 10:00pm and went to a CouchSurfer named John’s house to crash. We ended up staying there until we left for Burning Man, which will be a post of its own.

Read Jim’s blog for a good oil change update. (www.fliptophead.com)

Burn Barrel that was made in Atlanta

For More photos, visit the photo album

We have had no hold ups, and very little traffic. When we crossed into Canada, they didn’t stamp my passport! I didnt even think about it until after we pulled away, but I am kinda upset about it. Canada has been interesting. It looks a lot like Alaska, but the people speak just a little different. Still haven’t heard an “Eh” in its natural habitat, but I am anxiously awaiting the debut. We are going to power on through the night, alternating shifts and see if we cant make Vancouver soon.

We have been listening to comedy on the ipod, discussing the aspects of the collective, and generally mocking the great country of Canada because that is what you do when you come here. (No offense to any Canadian friends I may have – it is simply an ingrained thing I have had in me since childhood.)

That’s all for now, I am going to go change some oil in the rain.

-Ben