East of Winnemucca, Nevada

In a attempt to make up for lost time, our bus driver, riding in tandem with a fully-laden box truck, had powered through the Nevada desert night with a little help from a Guayaki Yerba Mate Energy Shot. The Band’s Chest Fever is blasting through our multi-zone sound system as I sit down to collect my thoughts this morning after a well-deserved slumber at a rest stop.

We are just shy of Winnemucca, which is roughly half-way between Oakland, CA and Salt Lake City, UT. The twelve of us woke up to French-pressed Peet’s coffee and oatmeal. Toppings included hulled hemp seed meal, Flame raisins and a Gravenstein apple and Asian pear crisp which I had prepared in the middle of the night. It was better in the morning than the hot, just outta-the-oven, obligatory sample. I guess its just that way with certain dishes – cold pizza comes readily to mind.

Last evening we had stopped in Truckee for a dinner break.

En route I christened our newly-completed mobile kitchen with a simple supper of collard greens, steamed over a sauté of curried yellow onions and garlic, and served over Thai red rice, a 40 pound sack of which was donated by Alter Eco. A two-fisted splash of Sriracha hot sauce and Bragg’s Amino Acids upped the taste ante big-time. After all, we are in Nevada and as they say in poker, I am all in.

As community chef for Sustainable Living Roadshow’s  Right2Know tour, I will be preparing three vegetarian meals a day for 30 kindred spirits over the next three and half months, and 100% organic to the extent possible.

Yesterday, at 3:48 PM, after a series of proverbial production delays, Jonathon Youtt, a founding member of Sustainable Living Roadshow, got behind the wheel of Priscilla, backed out of PLACE (SLR’s home base and nerve center) and finally started heading east on CA 80. Priscilla’s namesake is none other than Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the 1994 film about a bus called Priscilla, two drag queens and a transsexual who contract to perform a drag show at a resort in the remote Australian desert. Tom Llewellyn (AKA Thomas Clever - his carny name), is driving our custom-outfitted box truck, jam-packed to the gills with most of our gear and materials. The rest is stowed within the bays of bus.

The thirteen of us, seven women and six men, will rendez-vous tonight with the crew of Julia, a second bus, whose namesake and history of usefulness is forever tied to Julia Butterfly Hill, best known for living atop a 1500 year California redwood for 738 days – drawing attention to the plight of ancient forests in the era of indiscriminate clear-cutting. Zach Carson, co- founder of SLR, led the advance party to Salt Lake City last Sunday to be part of the Annual Outdoor Retailer’s Convention. With just a limited involvement at this Salt Palace-housed event, we have garnered the respect and admiration of several magazine publishers and vendors. The buzz has already begun and we haven’t even reached critical mass.

We, the 20 of us, need to arrive in Cleveland by Wednesday, where we will meet up with The Run Bus, the only vehicle in our caravan that runs entirely on vegetable oil (Priscilla and Julia are fueled by bio-diesel, which is processed from vegetable oil.)

By then we will be 30 strong.

We have each found our calling in the Summer of 2011. The Theory of Sustainabilty 101, no longer relegated to elective status, is now an urgent part of the curriculum of life on this planet; its handbook of principles and practices required reading.

Wow, that’s deep. Before I get all heavy on you, I’ll step away from the MacBook. Besides, stomachs are grumbling and there is a lunch to prepare.