Here we are. It’s mid November, and Deser Bus 2 is just on the horizon. I’d like to appologize for leaving the announcement so late this year. We encountered a number of complications over the last couple of months, and we weren’t able to finalize the details until last night. We’re scrambling a bit to pull things together, but rest assured, Desert bus is happening, and it’s going to be even better than last year.

First off, as you’ve probably seen in the announcement posts, it’s going to begin at 6:00PM on Friday November 28th. It’s Thanksgiving weekend for the yankees, I know, but hopefully you can find time to fit us in between the turkey and the pumpkin pie, or somewhere in between the pie and the requisite midnight turkey sandwich. At the very least, you’ll presumably be home with your families, rather than out at work, so may I suggest you take the opportunity to introduce them to LoadingReadyRun, and get them in on the Desert Bussing action?

The second thing to know is that we’ll be running from Victoria, BC again this year, although we have a location other than Bill and Morgan’s living room. If you live in Victoria, keep an eye out, I’m sure there will be opportunities presented to meet the team or prticipate in a more direct way than simply watching the feeds.

We’ve also finalized our roster of drivers for this year! Returning to the driver’s seat are James, Bill, and Morgan. I’d have thought that they’d learned their lesson last year, but I guess I was wrong. Paul has been dropped from the lineup this year so that he can direct his focus to the technical elements – the stream, recording elements of the event, lighting, audio, the chatroom, and so on. We’re hoping to have things go a little more smoothly in the technical area this year, and we think freeing Paul up to handle it was the right move. Replacing Paul in the lineup this year is our very own Jeremy Petter. I think he’s pretty excited about taking the wheel this year, so I hope you’ll all be out in force to support him as he drives his legs of the trip. Graham and Kathleen are taking the roles of official pit crew this year, they’ll be ever present at the driver’s sides, supporting them and the audience in whatever capacity they require. And if you haven’t figured it out already, I’ll be handling the communications. I’ll be your main point of contact whenever I’m around (which should be essentially all the time). I’ll be handling the blog, updates, running the twitter feed, and moderating the IRC channel. additionally, I’ll be frequently checking e-mail, and keeping you up to date on dollar totals, and special events. You’ll be able to contact me in a wide variety of ways over the course of event, and if you have any questions, or comments, feel free to direct them to [email protected], or [email protected] . I’ll be checking both regularly.

Paul will be launching the new, improved Desertbus.org in the next few days, so check the site periodically, and see if it’s up. We have a lot of plans for this year’s drive. Some of those plans we’ve finalized, others we’re still pulling together. I’ll be filling you in with more information as it becomes available, so make sure you’re following one of our many information streams, either the twitter, the announcement thread in the forum, the blog, or www.desertbus.org .

We’ll see you on the open road!

-Matt