VFP Winter Soldier Bus Tour
The WSII promotional tour has shaped up to be an adventure already, and we have just begun. The night before departure we lost one of our drivers, making our schedule, packed with stops, extremely difficult to maintain but Gordon and I decided we would give it our best anyway, and we did.
Making Sacramento on time was tough but we managed to get there. We had a very pleasant evening repast at the Sacramento Peace and Justice Center, received their generous contributions to our trip, and then did an hour-long interview with Prof Ayad Al-Qazzaz to be run on Sacramento Public Access cable as well as posted on the internet. After a good night's sleep and a tasty morning repast at a VFP member's home (Thanks, Maggie and Chapter 87) we did a press conference in front of the magnificent California Capitol building and then we were on our way to Fresno.
Peace Fresno members turned out to greet us as we pulled into the Tower District, despite our being late and having had little time for them to prepare for us. As a past member of PF, I was most pleased to see old friends and our stop there led to an independent media article being posted and networks strengthened.
From there we steamed out on our way to Albuquerque, flush with well wishes. Despite our Fresno comrades' generosity our cash reserves were low, but our next few stops were planned to take care of that. The miles streamed by and we changed drivers a few times. We were pretty much on schedule and drawing near Kingman, AZ when suddenly Gordon came up to the front and called a stop because he smelt something burning. As soon as he said that I smelled it too and we pulled over.
The fried U joint took us a day and a bit of our travel budget to fix, parked in a TA truck stop in Kingman. During our time there we had several positive reactions to our presence and managed to spread the word of WSII to a few folks as the trucks streamed by our bus, hundreds and hundreds of eyes taking the messages in.
When the repairs were complete, it was time to recalculate our schedule and remaining resources. The time lost was evaluated as just too great to make most of our fundraising stops and still make WSII. Since we did not have enough money to get there without making the fundraising stops, it looked like we were cooked. So we decided to make the best of what we had going. This seemed to be a return home making a series of awareness-raising visits at population centers in Arizona, California, Oregon and Washington. News of this revised mission was emailed home and to those expecting us ahead.
We soon received a call from a friend in Eugene, followed by emergency fund-raising and enough financial relief to continue our DC mission.
Thus rescued, we have continued on to Albuquerque today, where we were welcomed by their impressive Peace and Justice Center, fed authentic New Mexico posole, and provided another funding contribution to send us further on our way. (Thanks Charles and Chapter 63!) Meanwhile, Gordon is developing web pages on our trip which may be visited at http://www.squadron13.com/deployed/080300WinterSoldierTour/default.htm
We are leaving shortly for an anticipated overnight in Amarillo, then continuing on to visit our compadres in St Louis and from there on to DC!
Stay tuned for new updates from Missouri!