Dictionary.com
Wednesday, December 29, 2004:
OK, so if you know what the word "wander" and the word "lust" means, then you don't even
need to read the definition above to understand what "wanderlust" means. My own personal
definition is "the passionate need to explore [the world]." It's been over half a year
since I last wrote something on our home page, and I know it's long overdue.
The fancy word above has been on my mind lately. It seems like all of my friends and relatives
are already married or are getting married. Many have already gotten married and divorced.
I'm a 30-year old guy (some say man, but I tend to think that I'm more of a boy)
and I'm not ready to lock-in just yet. My girlfriend, Teresa, is ready and, more than likely, waiting.
She's been taking me to look at houses and, while I would love to be in a nice big house rather than the
apartment that she, Erik and I share, it represents the next level of commitment.
Speaking of such things, Erik has a new girl, Jen, whom he's pretty serious with. She's
very cool and they've been looking at houses, too, and I think Erik's on the path to marriage himself.
Soon, his life will be over! (o;
I'll try to make this short (which you all know I'm not very good at doing), since it's
not supposed to be a journal. To the point: I am feeling some serious wanderlust. It's not her or even
my current situation since I work for myself and happily set my own hours, get to spend good times
with family, friends, and play video games! (o; Erik and I have discussed walking to Washington
when we're old enough to run for President and V.P. (Erik would make a great V.P., don't ya think? (o;)
but that's a few years off.
My buddy, Jeff, and I have been joking about riding motorcycles to the Southern
tip of South America, which would be fun (and amazingly dangerous considering the political clime.)
Andy is planning a very interesting trip, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to mention it yet,
so that'll be a mystery until enough people pester me enough to ask Andy if it's OK.
Where do we go next?
I'm not sure, but I know I want to go and you can bet I'll be updating a new
portion of this site, to be sure!
John's brother-in-law, Jon, falls off a house!
Monday, April 12th, 2004:
Time just flies by, doesn't it? Here we are, and it's already the middle
of April. In less than two months, it'll be the one year anniversary of our departure.
That's just nuts! Anyhow, I (John) will soon to return to San Francisco.
My sister Michelle's husband, Jon (whom we stayed with in San Fran at the end of the
trip,) ran into a problem with gravity at the site of the new home he's building, so I'm
heading out there to help finish up the house while Jon heals. I may fly, although
there has been some thought to driving out there and stopping to say hello to a few of the
awesome folks we met along last year's trip. I also hope to visit with the cool people
we met in the San Francisco area while I'm out there.
Oh yeah, and now that it's been like months and months, I've finally replaced
that idiotic picture of myself with a picture of Ian, the winner of the backpack drawing.
Sorry about the insane delay, Ian! (o; Speaking of pictures, I've also put up the
pictures
of the fine folks at the local Batavia American Cancer Society office. We're seriously
considering being involved in their next Relay for Life walk. I am also likely to participate
in the same walk, but in Nebraska. My cousin, Shelley, is a very courageous cancer survivor,
and you can read more about her experiences (both good and bad) in the bulletin board. I
want to walk in their event just for her.
We're still looking into some possibilities when it comes to movie and/or book deals
and we promise to keep you posted. I'm going to say that we're tentatively planning to do
something for the one-year anniversary (June 1, 2004) but I'm just not sure what yet. Again,
we'll keep you in the loop for that. Currently, Erik and I are involved in building robot
vehicles of the future and also working on roles for a very cool independent film (unrelated
to the walk) as well. Why talk about doing cool stuff when you can GO OUT AND DO IT!!!
Meet the ACS Staffers...
Sunday, March 28th, 2004:
OK, so for those few of you who are still paying attention, the site disappeared for a
few days this last week. I'm moving the site once again and I've now got it up on
a temporary server in our apartment before it moves to its real new home on an actual
Internet Web Site Host (but this time it's a free one!) For those of you who want to know
the technical aspects of this situation, I am moving all server stuff out of the apartment
so we don't have to worry about it. A generous friend of mine, Pat, is giving up some space
on his hosted server, which the sneaky fellow got for free for three years (at
www.1and1.com).
It's taking me a while to move to the hosted server because it requires that the pages be written
in a different language (PHP instead of ASP) so I'm actually learning this new language by
converting this entire site.
Why, you ask, are we bothering? Well, we want to keep it alive for those
who might stumble across the site and for those who might want to see if we spill out an update
here and there. In fact, I'm very much hoping to get out a six month post-trip update
in the next few days. I know, promises, promises. (o; Since it's late (2 AM) I think
I'll ramble a bit and then give up trying to type coherent sentances. Right now, Erik
is watching Radio, which Teresa and I just finished a couple of hours ago. I must recommend
the movie, because it's yet another reminder that humans are capable of some very cool things,
and not just blowing stuff up (although I have to admit that's the kind of movie we generally
prefer, hehe.) Seriously, it's an excellent feel-good movie. Did I meniton I work
for Revolution Studios now? Just kidding (sheesh, you guys will believe anything!)
Erik and I recently made a visit to the local chapter of the American Cancer
Society and met the very nice folks there. I'll tell you more about that in the next update,
which will also include some pictures from the ACS.
Oh yeah, and that picture of my lame butt holding a backpack will be changed
with the next update. Jeeze I look dumb. Good night, all.
So this is Ian, Happy Bag Winner...
Tuesday, November 18th, 2003:
Finally, you say, more than two weeks after the November 1st party, one month after
we arrived in San Francisco, California, we have the drawing for the CamelBak
back pack shown above.
The winner is Ian Bradley, who turns out to be a
relative of Erik's who was nice enough to show up for our little Chicago shindig.
You can watch the
big
or
small
video of the drawing (depending on whether your Internet connection is high-speed or
dial-up.)
Many of you want to know
what's going on with us since we returned, and, as some of you might have read on the
Bulletin Board, Erik has a job and Andy and I are
looking for ways to fatten our bank accounts as well. The book is still an idea,
although we're not quite sure how to proceed yet; I suppose we'd better finish up the
journals first, eh? (o;
Wednesday, November 5th, 2003:
Yes, the party was a blast, with friends, family and YGAS fans coming to hang out
with us. We have yet to finish the drawing for the backpack, but when we do,
we'll post the winner here (with his or her permission, of course.) You're
probably thinking, "At the rate they're putting out journals, they'll never give
that Camelbak thing away!" Hehe, we understand your frustration, but bear with us
as we try to get our little apartmentalized lives back together again! (o;
Thanks to everyone who came to the party and thank you all who've been with us by
visiting the site. As we get settled into our new/old places, we're finally
able to start stirring up enough time to do a journal here and there, along with
all kinds of photos and video, so stay tuned!
Saturday, November 1st, 2003:
Come hang out with us today at Fox and Hounds inside the Grand Victoria Casino in
Elgin, IL. There will be food and fun - enough pizza to fill John's belly
and yours. Climb inside one of our tents and enter a drawing to win a
Camelbak Rim Runner back pack and hydration system.
You might also get to meet the famous Kev and Sor and even some of the family
of Andy, Erik and John.
Yes, we are working on getting our apartment
(and Andy's nook in his parent's house) set up so we have some place to
live (and so Teresa doesn't kill us for having boxes all over her living room.)
Hopefully, a day or so after today's festivities, we'll have the time to go all-out
journal/picture/video-a-thon! As we promised, we won't leave you out in the cold,
but it might take a little while to get it all done!
Sunday, October 26th, 2003:
After a week in the San Francisco area, working our butts off on journals, checking
out the local bar scene and visiting awesome observatories, we're now on a train,
heading back to Chicago! The train ride is made possible by a very cool lady
named Deanna, from Springfield, Illinois, and wow, it is a much more comfortable way
to travel! Right now, we're relaxing a bit, but we'll likely start doing some
more journal writing very soon and we have a boat-load of images and video that we
plan to upload once we get home on Tuesday. It'll be nice to finally be home
and we very much hope to see all of you (and your friends!) at our little party
back in Chicagoland (Elgin, to be specific.)
Monday, October 19th, 2003:
We are in the middle of working our tails off doing journals as well as responding to
e-mails from our excellent fans (that'd be you!) By this evening, we'll
have some journals up for you to check out, and perhaps some pictures, too.
As we plan to be in the San Francisco area this week, we're planning a party for
Friday night, October 24th, and we'll let you know the second we've worked out the
details on exactly where and when (plus there'll be another E-Vite so you can tell
us you're coming!) Once again, thanks to all of you for virtually hanging out
with us during the last four and a half months, but don't stop visiting as there's
much more content to get up on the site (so, for those of you who need to waste
more time at work, we'll have more for your entertainment, hehe.) Not only
that, but all of our experiences regarding books or movies or any other appearances
will be in our journals as well, and, as Erik mentioned on the Bulletin Board, we
plan on keeping journals for some time after we return, about how we adjust back
to "normal life." So, again, stay tuned!
Saturday, October 18th, 2003 (Night):
We are, finally, DONE with the walk! Now, that doesn't mean we're done
with this site, and technically, we're not done with the adventure yet as we're
going to hang out in San Francisco for a while, so we'll continue to keep journals
while we're here and perhaps for a while after we get home since we haven't decided
exactly what's going to happen yet. So, stay tuned as we start getting caught
up on our journals and pictures and video as well. We'll be starting a massive
journal-a-thon Monday morning and it'll probably last for a number of days, to be
sure, not to mention all of the video and picture processing we've left to complete.
And don't worry, we won't leave you hanging! It's hard to believe it,
but we are in San Francisco! (Michelle just corrected me: technically we're in
Oakland.)
Saturday, October 18th, 2003:
Yes, we're hours away from the official END of our walk, whatever happens
after we get to Alcatraz is a big question mark, but ya know what, it's just
awesome as hell. We friggin made it, I still can't believe it, we're here!
Our schedule is going to be us hitting the bridge around 11am and then walking
down to Alcatraz to catch the 2:30 ferry. The "party" last night wasn't like
I had originally wanted it to be, but our friend Karin came out with some of
her friends and we hung out at the visitor center in front of the bathrooms for
a little while, then we moved it to a cool place. We're also going to try
and organize a party for Sunday afternoon at a cool place in San Francisco.
More on that later... And of course, we've got about 500 pictures to upload
once we get time to name them and stuff!
View All Updates (older updates
have been hidden to make the page load faster)
Check out the
Photo Gallery for photos taken
while preparing for the trip as well as some totally stupid videos! We'll
be updating this while on the trip, but the updates will be a bit delayed,
of course.
Don't worry, you can still contribute to our trip by
buying
YouGuysAreStupid.com stuff at our online store.
Get shirts, hats, undies, stickers and other stuff with our logo and/or
web site address fashionably affixed. If you want to buy something
and can't find what you like at the store, please
let us know and we'll see if we can't find or
make what you're looking for!
We've choosen the American Cancer Society as our charity o' choice.
All contributions will be applied to this charity with
a small portion of proceeds used to help fund our
trip. Check out the
Contribute
page for more details.
Hey, as amazingly unimportant as they might seem, the
Random Polls
are now finally working, so vote your behind off and
see how many other people think like you do, ya big freak!
(If you don't see a Random Poll in the side bar under the
Contribute box, just
refresh
this page a few times until one appears - they
are
random, you know.)
We've got a new
Guestbook and you can
sign it and everything. On the other hand, if you are
looking for a conversation or twenty, check out the
new
Bulletin Board.
If it doesn't work, just remember, they were both
Erik's ideas!
The Ask Kevin page has become the
Ask Kev & Sor page because
we've signed on our good friend Chris (also known simply
as "Hoser" or just "Sor" because he is originally from
Minnesota and says "aboot" and "hoos" instead
of "about" and "house") to work along-side Kevin answering
your questions and providing knowledge. Note: sometimes
Sor's knowledge will be random, but it tends to be true!
The trip start date has changed (it was originally May 11th.)
Check it out on the
Trip Info page!
The plan is to put some highlights of the trip here on a
very frequent basis, but as you might have figured out, the
trip hasn't started yet, so we don't have much in the way
of highlights! Be sure to peep down here each time
you visit the site. Don't worry, there's tons more
content coming to the site, we promise.