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At the End of a Long Drive


Shreesh and Neena Taskar

We didn't make the decision, the decision made us. On October 20th, 2007, we left our comfortable city of San Francisco to follow a simple algorithm - go North till the road ends then turn around and then go as far South. In between those two points was the stage, the timeline, the space, where we made things happen and things happened to us.

The past is fleeting and the stories, the sights and the feelings are perishable. One sees what one wants to see, and perhaps we are not capable of more. We saw that people are kind and helpful even if they were not materially rich. Some we could understand even though we didn't speak the same language, the motivations of others were incomprehensible even though we did. In the end fragments remain - the smell of roasting chocolate, a flock of snow Ptarmigians on snow, the creaking of the rainforest, the rough feathers of penguins, and the intoxication of Curanto.


So these are our stories. Every time you visit the site you will see a random post below. Each starts with Lo que pasa es que...

Shakedown Run in the Sierras

Jul 25th, 2007 by

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On Top of the World

The first of several off road trips to test the truck and the equipment occurs.(Map this!)

The stretch of Sierras in Calaveras county is particularly beautiful. The Redwoods have a sheen a little different, a little particular, particular to this place. Past the Big Meadows there is an unsigned forest road, a poorly maintained dirt track that winds its way down valley to the shores of the Stanislaus River, down to a small campground. Here we camped next to a placid bend in the river, where the fish were biting.

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Camp by the River. Photo: Steve Dozen

Meeting people on the internet has a bad reputation. We tend to focus on the thirteen year old falling prey to a predator, the lonely survivalist nut-job with gleaming eyes, and the fringe that engages in its dark and obscure operæ. For each one of these unsavory characters there are thousands of others getting together and forming a community around a common interest. Why should we give ourselves to fear when a world of new friendships lies within our reach?

There was Steve who was our soft spoken leader, Ray, a thickly muscled Asian man, Rusty, an off-roader with bundles of energy and Cedric, a well-heeled student from France. We had all camped together and assembled at the General Store in Bear Valley for our first trail run at Corral Hollow.

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Meeting at the store. Gas is $3.99 a gallon.

2 Responses to “Shakedown Run in the Sierras”

  1. Pramod Taskar says:
    July 25, 2007 at 1:09 pm

    Gone thru the map of trails. Terrain was quite mountainous.
    How was the trial run? How many miles did you cover. Time taken on the trails?
    It must have been bone shaking.
    Did media cover your run? It would be an advertisement towards ruggedness of F.J. Cruiser. If possible, get some Toyota dealers involved. It may give little safty for both.
    Aai was very worried about two of you.

  2. Shreesh says:
    July 25, 2007 at 1:22 pm

    We went very, very slowly. Most of the the time a human walking fast would be quicker than us.

    The Corral Hollow trail took about 3 hours, Mt. Reba about two. The Slickrock trail took about three. Don’t know about the mileage, but we didn’t go very far.

    If you download the .kml file on the maps page it will have a folder called trail-runs-tracks, under which you will see the exact route we took.

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