Amtrekker

Hey Team,

Not that I’m not known for making bad decisions (who doesn’t love double negatives) but I’ve had better ideas than allowing the first time I’ve ever so much as sat down on a dirt bike to be the practice lap for a dirt bike race. Seriously. What was I thinking?

I can only tell you what was going through my mind after I had made my decision and I sat on the bike in a line of dozens of other riders all waiting for their turns at the track. (Everyone gets the opportunity to take a few laps before the races to get a feel for the dirt and the nuances of the track. Unfortunately for me…I got those same few laps to learn how to ride a dirt bike.)

“Well, at least this bike can’t kick me to death if I piss it off,” I thought aloud as I looked down to see if the bruise from the ostrich-racing escapade had healed yet. But as I looked down I saw the bike next to me and thought about how unforgiving that knobby-wheeled little machine must be when it runs you over after you fall on turn one like an amateur (or an amtrekker).

Then I started to think, “Wait, if that thing is going to run me over then that means I was in front! That’s a win-win. Either I’m losing and I don’t get run over or I’m winning at the expense of tread marks across my face!” (Obviously, it’s pretty easy for me to talk myself into doing stupid things.)

I kick started the bike and revved the throttle, motioning to my cousin Lisa (who would be one of only two people I would be racing against later) giving her the “going down” threat…right after pointing at myself.

Finally our turn to hit the track came and without hesitating I shot out into the dirt flat track and instantly realized how unprepared I was. I spent the next several minutes of my life getting lapped by kids I could pick up and toss over the chain link fence without much effort but could never hope to beat in a race around an oval track.

Thoroughly disappointed in myself I sought out friends and family for advice and was basically told that it takes practice, much more practice than I’ve had.

I regained a little sparkle of hope when I saw that there were only four racers, including myself, scheduled for my class. I felt better still when one of those racers (the only one I didn’t know) dropped out. It meant I would at least come away with third place in the first heat.

Barely. Yep, after a mediocre start, terrible technical skills and a crash in turn one of lap four I almost succeeded in getting fourth place out of three.

When the main event came around Lisa’s tire had come down with an irreparable flat thanks to a gaping hole in her tire roughly the width of my switchblade. Unfortunately, Kenny never left his bike unguarded and I was forced to find a more creative way to beat him. I tried blackmail and bribery but without any money to my name both were destined for failure.

With a spark of inspiration I dove into the race with more poor technical skills and another crash (this time in turn four of lap four) but even that wasn’t enough to win the day! I was forced to settle for second place.

But let me just end on this slightly depressing note. I was CRAZY frustrated with myself. I would MUCH rather get 49th place out of 50 than 2nd out of two. Man, do I ever hate losing.

Regardless, thanks so much to APF Motorcycle Salvage and the folks who put on the Caruthers Nationals for helping me find out how much more practice I’m going to need to just to move up to “sucks” on the “How good am I on a dirtbike scale?” I’ll get some pictures up when I have a chance to pull them off my video camera!

I’m done.

Brett.

Just for the record. Bookingbuddy really is a pretty rad website if you’re looking to plan a trip. It actually allows you to search most of the top travel ticketing websites from one location. Pretty handy! But more importantly…our new affiliation with bookingbuddy.com means all you have to do to help out Amtrekker is click on one of their ads and sign up for an awesome newsletter filled with travel deals! Thanks everyone!

Thanks!

Hey Team,

Between twitter making me lazy and being stuck in a hearse for a week (Who would have ever thought I’d have the opportunity to say that and mean it?) there hasn’t been much new info up here in the last few days. But SO much has happened and so much is in the process of happening that I don’t anticipate running out of things to say anytime soon (much to everyone I meet in person’s dismay).

Here’s the scoop on the hearse and tomorrow I’ll fill you folks in on yesterday’s dirt bike race!

Thanks to a ride down to Seymour, IN with my Indianapolis couch surfing host, Karla, this past Tuesday I was able to pick up the classiest Dead People Mobile I had ever seen. If dead people wanted to ride in style circa 1984 then the only real option would be this Cadillac Hearse…anything else would be uncivilized. (Not to give you the wrong impression: despite all the strange questions I got while driving not one person asked for fancy mustard.)

There was no real rush to deliver the car to San Francisco from “Team Do or Die” (the endurance racing team that paid for the gas for me to pick up their newly purchased hearse in Indiana and drive it to California) but I absolutely had to be in Caruthers, CA on September 27th for the Caruthers Nationals dirt bike race. This turned out to put a lot more pressure on the trip than I would have expected.

Day 1 brought me west to Missouri where I met up with Zack Luye of Bottles, Blends and Brews to shoot an episode of his podcast with him where we reviewed a few non-alcoholic beverages and I sat in for his regular co-host.

That night I fell asleep in a home theater and woke up to drive a hearse across the country…how rad is my life? Answer: Very.

Over the next three days I slept a grand total of about six hours. I geocached in six states in one day (often traipsing through dew covered fields and forests in the middle of the night and returning to the hearse soaked and pulling pine needles off of my shirt). I built a mountain of used energy drink containers. And I had an untold number of conversations that usually went something like this:

“Do you really have a body in that thing?”

“Well…kinda. I’ve just found it’s a lot easier to transport drugs across state lines inside of corpses.”

*blank stare*

Most importantly, not only was I able make it to California in time for an exciting dirt bike race but I’ve now officially finished all but ONE geocache and that’s the California geocache that we’ll all look for together to finish up this epic trek on October 25th in Fresno, CA when you folks come out to the giant end of Amtrekker party!

I’m done.

Brett.

Just for the record. Bookingbuddy really is a pretty rad website if you’re looking to plan a trip. It actually allows you to search most of the top website from one location. Pretty handy! But more importantly…our new affiliation with bookingbuddy.com means all you have to do to help out Amtrekker is click on one of their ads and sign up for an awesome newsletter filled with travel deals! Thanks everyone!

Thanks!

Hey Team,

Here’s the rest of the crop circle adventure.

On day two Amber and I spent a little over an hour outlining the crop circle design using stakes and 1000 ft of cheap twine I picked up at the local dollar store. After the entire thing was laid out and the string pulled tight it was clear that there was NO WAY we were going to be able to tell if we made what we were shooting for or not.

It was so big that we couldn’t see one end of the design from the other so even trying to tell if the lines were straight was impossible…much less whether or not the proportions looked right. Even after another four hours of fighting to the death “mano a Russian Knapweed” I was convinced we had just spent two days and nearly 24 man-hours making a pretty mediocre looking “crop circle.”

By the time we were finished and pulled up all of our lines darkness was creeping up again and there wasn’t going to be enough time to try to figure out how we were going to get a picture to confirm our mediocrity. Instead we got up early the next morning and hit up the local airport. It’s a small strip with only a handful of hangars all occupied by private pilots so I hoped that we could just ask someone nicely to take a look around from the air and try to get a picture.

Enter Nigel the student pilot who, although unable to fly with a passenger because of his student status, agreed to take my video camera up with him and get some shots of the field. Unfortunately he turned out not to be the sharpest light bulb in the shed when it comes to direction and ended up miles from where we put in all the effort. (Not that I didn’t appreciate his help.)

Next we tried the local glider club that takes people on rides for a fee. The gliders wouldn’t be able to make it out to the field but we were hoping that maybe the tow plane could take the camera up and get a few shots. After a few hours of social finagling and some help from Andy of Papano’s Pizza fame we finally found a window where Jens, the tow pilot for the North West Soaring Club could take me up!

And since pictures are worth hundreds of thousands of my words:

And the rest.

I’m done.

Brett.

Just for the record. Bookingbuddy really is a pretty rad website if you’re looking to plan a trip. It actually allows you to search most of the top website from one location. Pretty handy! But more importantly…our new affiliation with bookingbuddy.com means all you have to do to help out Amtrekker is click on one of their ads and sign up for an awesome newsletter filled with travel deals! Thanks everyone!

Thanks!

Hey Team,

Sorry for keeping you guys in the dark during the whole crop circle adventure. I’ve been living life without the internet all week and let me just be the first to say, “A life without the internet is no life at all.”

Now I’m in the backseat of a Subaru with two spaniels named Bo and Carl jockeying for lap position with Charley. More importantly…I have an internet connection!

Here’s the short version and I’ll give you an update with pictures later tonight or tomorrow morning:

I spent the week in Beulah, MI where I had permission to destroy 80 acres of cover crop (Russian Knapweed) in an effort to “create a crop circle.” I checked out the field in the daylight the first full day I was in town and was super pumped about the prospect of creating my own hundred foot high design in plant life. The crop was waist high and on the dying side and looked like it was going to be perfect! AND, when I walked off the field I discovered it was about 250 ft wide by 2100 ft long so there was plenty of room to do whatever I wanted.

Which was the first problem. When I was confronted with such an open ended blank page full of so many possibilities I suddenly couldn’t decide what to create. Lots of tossed out doodles and MANY suggestions via the twitter faithful later it was coming down to the wire. Darkness was upon us and all of the preparations for the circle had been made…but I still didn’t know what design to imprint on the Earth…

Rough drawings in hand, Team Amtrekker (composed of Amber, Colton and Brandon with Andy joining in later) headed out to the field under cover of night in an effort to be as genuine as possible. The rest of the team pulled out boards and rope to start making our stomping tools while I took a ruler to an extremely rough sketch in an effort to figure out the dimensions of this soon to be nightmare.

As soon as we laid out our first line and started stomping the evil commie weed we knew something wasn’t right. Despite repeated stompings the plants would slowly but surely rise back up like we had never touched them. Ignoring the problem we continued to stomp a large portion of the outline until frustration finally set in. Close to midnight we packed up and decided to reevaluate the situation in daylight.

But of course the next morning when I showed up to the field with Amber and Colton it was impossible to tell we had even been there the previous night. Armed with new tools but unsure even that would work we stared at the field for awhile listing all of the problems…including, even if we DID find a way to make it work how in the world were we going to get a picture of it?!

As a side effect to my rampant optimism, when I’m confronted with that many problems at once I tend to break things into tiny pieces until I find something I CAN do.

“Okay, let’s take the twine and stakes and lay this out.”

“But how are we going to get the plants to lay down?”

“Don’t know.”

“How are we going to get a picture of it when we’re done.”

“I don’t know. Where’s the twine?”

I’ll leave you there for now, Team. Carl seems kind of fed up with all the attention Charley is getting.

I’ll be back soon.

Brett.

Just for the record. Bookingbuddy really is a pretty rad website if you’re looking to plan a trip. It actually allows you to search most of the top website from one location. Pretty handy! But more importantly…our new affiliation with bookingbuddy.com means all you have to do to help out Amtrekker is click on one of their ads and sign up for an awesome newsletter filled with travel deals! Thanks everyone!

Thanks!

Hey Team,

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to call this post “Set Your Calendars” or “The End Is Near!” But in the grand style of ridiculous optimism befitting Amtrekker I’m hoping this will just be a new beginning for the next chapter in the life of Brett and not an “end.” Whether or not the next chapter is any better than the last (and frankly, I’m not sure how it could be) is anyone’s guess. Just the way I like it.

Bottom line: Here it is. The date we’ve all been waiting for. A final bow before we close the curtain on this all too public display of tomfoolery. More importantly, a party of epic proportions. The kind which can only be thrown by someone who suddenly finds himself with a ridiculously long list of friends and people that have touched his life over the course of SIXTEEN months of vagrancy masquerading as travel.

October 25th, 2008.

And in the spirit of over FIFTY videos in which you folks have watched me do one stupid thing after another with a never-say-die-but-screaming-like-a-little-girl-is-fair-game attitude here are the 5 W’s and the H.

Who: You guys. If you’re reading this I absolutely want you to be there. Even if you’re just an avid lurker of the site you’ve all made such a huge impact on this last year of my life and I want to be able to see you all in one place when this madness is all over.

What: This is more ambiguous right now and there’s still a lot for me to do so I’m definitely going to need some help on this end. You all know planning for myself is hard enough. But judging from the variety of people I’ve befriended in recent memory it’s going to need to be BIG and it’s going to need to allow alcohol and vegan food (amongst other things).

Where: Ouch. It’s gotten tougher and tougher to define “home” the longer I’ve been traveling but the bottom line is all my “stuff” is in Fresno, CA with various family members and a mini storage. So for the sake of this official end of days…it will be somewhere in that vicinity.

When: 102508

Why: Because I love you guys and I want to see you. Duh.

How: You’re all going to adopt a less talk more action philosophy for one weekend and make the trek out to the first place state so I can show you kids around my neck of the woods and hopefully you can leave understanding why even though I’m not sure which city I live in California will always be home.

Also, I’m doing everything in my power to drum up as much press as possible over the next month and a half and find a sponsor to offset the travel cost for some people so don’t hesitate to help out in the attention whore department (or if you happen to be friends with the CEO of Southwest that could be helpful too…).

Okay, that was WAY too much typing to say: “October 25th, 2008. Be there.”

More details to come. Buy those tickets now!

I’m done.

Brett.

Just for the record. Bookingbuddy really is a pretty rad website if you’re looking to plan a trip. It actually allows you to search most of the top website from one location. Pretty handy! But more importantly…our new affiliation with bookingbuddy.com means all you have to do to help out Amtrekker is click on one of their ads and sign up for an awesome newsletter filled with travel deals! Thanks everyone!

Thanks!

Hey Team,

It’s official, for the first time in MONTHS I’m back on a train! Man I missed these things. Lots of legroom, a little outlet right next to my seat for Charley to suck dry, and seats wider than my tiny little backside.

Style.

I wasn’t able to pull together enough cash for another rail pass but I did get enough for a one-way ticket to Michigan to make the crop circle happen! (Thanks a TON to everyone that donated this week! You guys are amazing. Seriously…one full ton of thanks.) And in a startling turn of luck (the kind that I often have to ignore else I start to think the world really does revolve around me) a team of endurance racers (www.24hoursoflemons.com) and I came to an agreement on transportation westward after the MI. I’m picking up a 1984 Cadillac hearse in Indianapolis later this week that they need to have in San Francisco around the end of the month. As a result I get a cool ride to the last couple destinations I need to hit in the Midwest with Team Do or Die buying the gas and they get their car delivered to San Francisco by a trustworthy young Amtrekker and a little extra publicity. I can’t wait!

Until then, if you need me I’ll be sitting right here in front of the little old lady that smells like Virginia Slims and complains about everything that manages to catch her eye…like my seatmate’s man-ponytail.

I’m done.

Brett.

Just for the record. Bookingbuddy really is a pretty rad website if you’re looking to plan a trip. It actually allows you to search most of the top website from one location. Pretty handy! But more importantly…our new affiliation with bookingbuddy.com means all you have to do to help out Amtrekker is click on one of their ads and sign up for an awesome newsletter filled with travel deals! Thanks everyone!

Thanks!