Video of the Walter crew crossing the Salton Sea in December of 2008.

Mateo, Tom, Sam.

Hello. My name is Tom, and together with my wife Sam, and our kids Mateo (4) and Harper (0) we will be traveling around the country for an indefinite period of time proudly under the guise of TRANSIT ANTENNA.

This being our first post, we don’t want to wax lyrical on everything we intend to do because a) we don’t like making promises we can’t keep and b) (perhaps most importantly) we don’t really have a plan.

Home base, El Portal, Miami.

From our base in Miami where we work on art stuff we’ve been following the group now for over a year, living vicariously through their many trials and triumphs and so while it’s a real honor to be taking the reigns, we fully understand that the life is by no means glamorous. Actually, about half the people we talk to about the project think we are crazy. Thankfully the other half are really inspired, and it’s these individuals that are giving us the strength of character necessary to venture out on this particular limb. Both a carrot and stick and a shadow, the mindset of being TRANSIT ANTENNA will likely sometimes be our incentive and other times simply underpin our activities; a means by which others can identify us and we ourselves can justify our existence, purposeful or not.

Harper, Tom.

For the next few months we’ll be keeping you up to date with the conversions (both WVO and interior living space) and sharing our various avenues of research with you. Rather than wait until we have polished, considered contributions you’ll be treated (with any luck regularly) to ideas in progress, barely crystallizing thoughts and snapshots of our formative nomadism. While the TRANSIT ANTENNA alumni will continue to contribute as ever you will probably notice some changes to the website as new sponsors are added and our pictures, trickling down through wordpress plugins via Flikr, expand the gene pool of the TRANSIT ANTENNA image library, perhaps changing it beyond recognition.

Mateo.

This is something we are mentally, if not practically, prepared for, and although its going to be at least five months before we get rolling we wanted to walk you through the process of change, get you used to our voices and hopefully inspire you to journey with us from the comfort of your personal computers as we journeyed with Bob, Dawn, Taylor, Jamie, Seth, Amy, Joe, and Kentridge.

Sam, Harper.

We imagine that living nomadically is going to be a huge learning curve. No doubt it will be hard to come to terms with living in a tight space and spending every waking minute together. Kind of surreal, kind of scary, but ultimately the most simultaneously all consuming and exciting thing we have ever done.

For the kids, especially Mateo we imagine it will be both adventurous and painful to be away from friends and family, but beyond all of this, irrespective of whether this is a good idea or not, whether we will last or not, it’s a really good exercise in having a completely over ambitious idea and following through with it.

See you around!

Mateo.

1. Charlie made some tasty sangria.
2. Sonia asked us to say a prayer for Walter. Then she laid down traction racks for her tires and tried to push the bus with her truck. She got a few feet before sinking, so next the guys tried to push the bus using man power.

3. Dawn’s camera bag somehow transported itself from her car to the bushes.
4. Builder Bill became worried that the folks seated behind the truck would get decapitated by flying traction racks. Sonia tried again, this time facing the other way.

5. All the pie was eaten.
6. Some guy said he was going “to wait 45 days and see how much [he could] get for the bus.”
7. Sonia and a few boys tried to lift another boy using only their index fingers. It didn’t really work. Then Sonia walked them through this ritualistic (arbitrary) positioning of their hands over the boy’s head. Then they tried to lift the boy again and he flew up into the air.

8. Charlie ran out of sangria.
9. Eddie showed up with his Ford F-350 and, with a little man help, successfully pushed the bus into the hole before sunset.

10. Charlie kicked almost everyone out and started playing music. It was dark but nice under the canopy that covers Charlie’s outdoor living room. Bob mistook a dog named Spider Monkey for Kentridge. They look almost exactly alike, and Spider Monkey is a really good dog, too.