Further to Bob’s entry the other day and before the Insiders/Out girls introduce themselves we thought we’d make a quick post chronicling the move from our beloved home onto the bus and our departure from the searing heat of the Miami summer to the temperate bliss of our European tour.

The last week in the house was different for us all. While Sam reminisced over our time whilst packing I was making the final touches to the bus, trying desperately to get all the toxic stuff out of the way at least a few days before our little lungs crawled aboard – actually, in the last week, during an impromptu trip to Home Depot, Harper began walking! Aside from this massive development, Harper, unable to fully comprehend what was happening and why her world – that prior to our packing was expanding daily – was beginning to shrink, started to feed off our stresses and became increasingly agitated. Mateo on the other hand became increasingly excited. In the end we had two kids who couldn’t sleep for different reasons, and as Sam and I rushed around trying to get things in order our family and our house kind of imploded simultaneously as each of us added tangentially to the others situation.

When we started packing we decided to limit ourselves only to what we could fit on our bookshelves (not including sheets and clothes), but despite sticking to this almost until the last day and taking the triumphant photograph above, we buckled under the strain, convinced ourselves it would be better to actually SEE the clutter on the bus before we really stripped down, and so ferried and loaded truck load after truck load of crap into an already tight and rapidly diminishing space.

On our last night in the house after delivering the final pieces of furniture to our friend’s place on the beach and selling a bunch of art that we couldn’t take with us we sat in the dark in front of our fire place and ceremoniously burned all of our old bills, check books, letters, invoices, pay slips, contacts – everything that symbolized an organized, steady existence.

The next morning saw us drenched in sweat and cleaning products. When we woke up, we stripped our foam king sized bed and cut it down to queen size with a dangerously sharp kitchen knife that Richard sharpened for us. With the left over foam we made cushions for the couch and a mini mattress for Mateo. The weather had turned overnight and was now raining, forcing us to dash our final few truck loads when the rain abated, a circumstance which accentuated our fleeting status. On the final run, after saying goodbye to the one cat we could find (a neighbor is watching them while we are away), we drove from the house, Sam fighting back the tears. It was surreal. Happily the moment we set foot on the bus, a welcoming, steady aura enveloped us. The rain stopped and Harper, who hadn’t been sleeping miraculously passed right out on the bed despite a lack of curtains and me installing a clothes rail with a power drill less than six feet away.

It was hot. During the day, during the night, there seemed no escape. Even laying ontop of the sheets with fans blasting right on us and the window open we found it hard to sleep the first night. The next morning I made a fire and cooked our chicken’s eggs. I spend the day tying up loose ends at work, organizing the disastrous interior of the bus and making plans to trade in the car.

We arrived at the airport in good time. Our morning trip to Car Max wasn’t a success. They didn’t offer us enough so we will continue payments until we get back and try to find a buyer. This was Harper’s first flight. Mateo, a seasoned traveler took it all in his stride, vegetated to in-flight movies and even hung together well in the face of jet lag. I managed to cajole 3 extra meals out of the flight attendant and spent the flight crouched at Sam’s feet – we didn’t get to sit together.

For the next 2 months we will be in and around the UK. After a a short trip to London and Paris at the end of this month we will hire cars and travel to the Outer Hebrides to spend a few weeks in a cottage surrounded by nothing but moss, low lying grass and the dramatic swells of the North Atlantic sea. Sitting here now in my parents house after 4 formative years in Miami it feels like forever since I was here, almost long enough to forget much about life in the UK. By comparison 2 months does not feel long enough to reacquaint myself with the life I once had, but that’s really not the point. If anything this is a chance for my family to meet Harper and for Harper to get a taste of her roots. But by the looks of it, she is already well connected.

Harper aping her contientious guardians by sucking the condensation from an ice cold can of Stella courtesy of Virgin Atlantic (the can was not open)

Mateo, Harper, Sam, and Tom in their almost finished TA bus.

With their Bus nearly complete, the new Transit Antenna crew is now on sabbatical in the UK until September to escape the Florida heat, and while they will certainly be providing us with a few updates from Tom’s home country, we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to host some guests on Transit Antenna dot com. So for this month, we are featuring the project Insiders/Out, a group of three young artists (Elvia, Elana, and Alisa) hitting the road on a three week whirlwind tour of the United States via folk art meccas.

Though their trip will only give them a quick taste of road life, their divergent interests in outsider art, field recording, printmaking, and self-publishing should make for an exciting experience (for both you and them) as they produce various ephemera while moving through places like Pasaquan, The Ave Maria Grotto, and The Unclaimed Baggage Center. We have invited the group to utilize the Transit Antenna website as a place to synthesize all of their ideas, stories, and projects because at its core Insiders/Out embodies the artistic spirit of Transit Antenna. You will be able to track their progress on our map as well as in our new guest section where their posts will be archived. I hope you are as excited as I am to see where Insiders/Out will take us.

an image from our future move.

Man it’s been awhile. I started writing this post with the same amount of anxiety and guilt I have when I pick up the phone to call my mom for the first time in a month, except that it’s been almost 8 months! During that time I’ve been insanely busy. In fact while Tom, Sam, Mateo, and Harper have been preparing to take Transit Antenna in their own direction, the former crew has done everything but sit on their hands, dispersing across the globe with all finding some semblance of normalcy (or at least something other than life on a bus).

Steven-O at his best during a recent wedding (not his own).

The person I think I’m most jealous of is our former hitchhiker Steven-O. Since we dropped him off in Portland, OR in August of 2008, he says that he got “a little chunkier” (haven’t we all!) when he spent some time with his Italian mother who “loves to feed you,” landed steady work and a girlfriend for a while (from our last correspondence I couldn’t discern if he still had either), and eventually ended up in Australia, of all places. I’m not simply envious of the fact that he got to spend New Years Eve in Tasmania, (though I’ve always wanted to live with marsupials), but I’m more green eyed over his ability to glide through life like a rock skipping across a crystal lake. Eventually he will stop skipping and sink into daily life, but for the moment I really enjoy watching and postulating how far across the lake he will get.

Wheat's new floating love

The other Transit Antenna hitchhiker, Wheat, found love in his home town of Orlando. When we deposited him in Jacksonville early last year, the plan was for him to spend a few weeks in Orlando and then head back to Brooklyn, NY.

wheat und kim

Now it’s been more than a year and half since we dropped him off, and he has remained, for the most part, in Orlando doing a lot of gardening, fleamarketing, and photography with his girlfriend Kim. The lure of the road is starting to get under his skin once again and they are contemplating an extended road adventure of their own. Maybe Transit Antenna 3.0?

Seth workin' on the Clover Mural, finally

As of late, Seth and Jamie have spent the majority of their time living and working in Seth’s hometown of Clover, SC – population 4916. Jamie started freelance writing for the local county paper and just this month landed a full time gig as staff writer for the Rockhill Herald. (see some of her stuff here)

what Seth's mural will look like in the end, sort of.

All the while, Seth has been navigating the Bureaucracy of his home town in an effort to paint a mural. Finally after many months of wrangling, a wall and funding was secured, and he was able to break ground earlier this month.

the Kristofoletti fam in Geneva

There’s several big news items when it comes to Joe and Amy. First they had a baby. Crazy right? We were really unsure why they got off the road early last summer, and then they broke the news over the phone a couple months later.  On February 9th, 2010 Daniel Falcon Kristofoletti was born.

I told Joe that the baby's name sounded like a super hero secret identity. He responded with this photo.

The next big thing for them came after Joe painted a mural at Redux Art Center based on the Cern Particle Collider. Soon after he was invited to Geneva to paint murals on the buildings surrounding the Collider itself! As I write, the whole fam is living it up in Switzerland.

The first section of the Cern mural project. It attempts to depict the small blackholes created by the collider.

When they’re not Europeans, they spend their time in the great city of Austin, TX. They’ve tried many times to talk the rest of us into moving to the City of the Violet Crown. The only catch is its surrounded by the rest of Texas.

Taylor assisting with our movin' film.

Dawn , Taylor, Kentridge, and I have wrestled with where we want to set up permanent camp. For the moment we are held up in Charleston, SC by default simply because it’s where we have family we can lean on. But it’s not our dream city, and after much deliberation we have set our sights on New Orleans. While many would find the crescent city to be less than ideal, not only because of the glacial pace of rebuilding after Katrina but also because of the impending damage that the gulf oil spill will bring, it still remains close to our hearts and our top choice for a relocation. Dawn’s been working hard as manager of a local bakery, Taylor enrolled in public school, Kentridge has fallen in love again with the marshy backyard of home, and I’ve been busy with several projects including The Is Not Broke Recession Proof Wallet Co. And despite my internet silence, I’ve been heavily involved behind the scenes with Transit Antenna helping Tom and Sam get their still-unnamed bus rolling and running on Waste Vegetable Oil (both in person for several extended trips to Miami and virtually with drawings like the one below). I’ve also been behind the scenes of the website here working on some exciting new features. Next month we will have some special guests reporting live from the road. Stay tuned for more!

Despite living with my inlaws and not paying rent, it’s been hard to save any money mainly because of my lack of steady work. Dawn’s been really humping it for the both of us, but something always comes up that sucks the money out of our bank account. However come hell or high water (which are both very likely in our soon-to-be-adopted hometown), we are hitting the road in August to make our way to the Big Easy.

at a friends wedding where I officiated and dawn made the cake. POWER COUPLE

Oh geez, I almost forgot to give a much needed update on Walter, the bus. He has become a mainstay at East Jesus, where Container Charlie says visitors fight to stay in his comfy beds and enjoy his amenities.

The tire mammoth erected earlier this month on the grounds of East Jesus

Since our exodus in November, East Jesus has seen a fury of activity with many new art projects making their way to the Slabs.   Walter has received a battery and solar panel upgrade, a new water tank and inverter waiting to be installed, and drought-tolerant cactus’ which utilize a gray water recycling system we installed before we left. The pedal power generator / co-pilot seat will soon find a new home powering the East Jesus Tower lighting system. The interior has remained largely unchanged besides the addition of some cutlery and corkscrew in the kitchen.

A recent image of Walter taken from the East Jesus Tower

Charlie is in search of an ambitious artist that is willing to stay for an extended time in the belly of Walter and do some of the “round tuits” he hasn’t had time for, though with triple digit temperatures day and night at the moment, that seems unlikely in the coming months. With that said, there is an open invite for friends and fans of Transit Antenna to stay in the bus, with the stipulation that you bring Charlie a case of Natie Light and that you follow all of the rules of East Jesus. If a stay in the low desert sparks your interested you can email us at info@transitantenna.com for more info.

A very cool recent addition to East Jesus by Hollywood styrofoam and fiberglass sculptor Michael Rabbitt.