Breaking news: Ralph Johnson and Bob the Dog have come out of retirement.

Fantasy Books and Games front - The sign needs a brighter light!

I wrote most of this back in September, and forgot to post until December after I had made up a whole page on Fantasy Books and Games. So [...]]]> Breaking news: Ralph Johnson and Bob the Dog have come out of retirement.

Fantasy Books and Games front - The sign needs a brighter light!

I wrote most of this back in September, and forgot to post until December after I had made up a whole page on Fantasy Books and Games. So they are a little redundant, but the page has lots of pictures of the vast array of products for sale.

Bob the Human (I haven’t asked permission to use his last name) owns this amazingly well-stocked comics, toys, and games store in  Livermore. He’s been working alone for 363 days a year – for a long time. I’ve encouraged him to hire someone for years, and there are many legitimate concerns that go along with that, so I understand his reluctance. But he’s got things to do every once in a while, so Bob (the dog) and I are filling in a couple of days a week for the foreseeable future.

Livermore is on I-580 about 45 miles east of San Francisco, and the home of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Between Pleasanton (Oracle), Dublin (Sybase), and Livermore, there are probably 50,000 tech industry, or tech-dependent jobs, so it’s a small version of Silicon Valley. AND there are 42 members of the Livermore Valley Winegrowers Association within about 10 miles. Fantasy Books and Games is surrounded by wine bars, restaurants, fountains, and little parks. The city has tried to spruce up the downtown neighborhood, and they’ve actually done an amazing job. (If the BART extension ever gets done, there will be a lot of people taking DUI-free wine wine excursions from San Francisco to Livermore!)

Statues and comics and t-shirts! And that's not all...

FBG has been at the same location since the early 80′s. He has an enormous stock of graphic novels from Marvel, DC, and the rest of the superhero publishers. He has a respectable stock of “alternative” comics and books, although, with no major college in the neighborhood, sales of many of the black and whites and other alternatives are fairly slow, so his stock in this department does not compare with Dr. Comics or other, more “urban” stores. But, when it comes to Magic the Gathering, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh collectible card games, there are over a million cards in stock! (Perhaps I exaggerate, but I don’t think so. It FEELS like a billion!) This is not my strong suit, in the working knowledge department, but then again, I’ve been out of the new comic business for 8 years, so I’m asking the customers about what is going on between the covers of the new comics, which are still released Wednesday (unless a Monday holiday delays them). There are also hundreds of Star Wars and superhero action figures, comic character statues, inexpensive back issues, sports cards (mostly packs, not singles), D&D and other role-playing games, Mage Knight, Halo, and the Marvel and DC HeroClix figures.

So for all you people in the Tri-Valley (I don’t like that term, but Dubliners, Pleasantonnites (I made that up) may not like “Livermore Valley” like the winemakers and I do), if you want to meet Bob the Dog come in on Tuesdays for the foreseeable future. If you want to ask hard questions or have items to sell, come in on other days and talk to Bob the Human. Tell him he should be collecting your email address. And get a cell phone. (I’ll work it from my end!)

Fantasy Books and Games

2247 1st St

Livermore, CA 94550

925-449-5233         Wed-Sat 11-7 -  Sun-Tue  11-6

Something smells goooooood. I think it might be FUN!

One of our regulars, Bill Johnson, revealed himself to be in the advertising business. He wanted to use Comic College as the advertiser for a campaign he was already thinking of creating and entering into some sort of competition. It would be [...]]]>

One of Bill Johnson's ads for Comic College

One of our regulars, Bill Johnson, revealed himself to be in the advertising business. He wanted to use Comic College as the advertiser for a campaign he was already thinking of creating and entering into some sort of competition. It would be legit as long as I placed the ads and paid for them myself. He did get me a freebie with a HUGE poster in a bus stop, which I  got to keep when it was done, but the main campaign had to be in print. So we place 5 ads in the Minnesota Daily (University of Minnesota) and then made 2 different sized posters of each one for displaying at conventions, in the store and the one bus stop giant.

Bill Johnson's 2nd ad for Comic College.

I cannot locate any of the posters as of this writing, but I found 3 issues of the Daily and scanned them in all their faded glory. If you watch our banner slide show, you  can see the line of text along the bottom of each ad up close. Enjoy.

This is the one that was made into a Bus Stop poster.

I quit my job at Extranomical Tours and have gotten serious about selling Bob the Human’s warehouse, and what remains of the stock I moved from Minnesota. I’ve gotten serious about eBay and done pretty well for a few months, [...]]]>

Has this ever happened to you? Not if you ordered from Comic College!

I quit my job at Extranomical Tours and have gotten serious about selling Bob the Human’s warehouse, and what remains of the stock I moved from Minnesota. I’ve gotten serious about eBay and done pretty well for a few months, but it’s time to get Serious about the Fun, and get the products up here at my own online store at Comicopolis.com

For those of you who are thinking about eBay as a career, think on these things: 1) eBay is a huge marketplace so it’s easy to get “lost” and there are probably MANY people trying to sell things similar to yours,  2) eBay is the only game in town for SOME sellers to sell SOME products, and to aggravate both of the above 3) eBay is very protective of their profits. Therefore, it’s best to think of them as the big giant, and yourself like little Jack scurrying around on the floor of the giant’s house, living off the crumbs and the occasional morsel, and being very, very careful! I’m sure there are several, maybe even hundreds, of sellers on eBay that are making a a good living, or even tons of money, ON the eBay site, and if you want to liquidate your collection of Beanie Babies, but not make it a career, it’s a great place on the InternetS. But for someone who WANTS to make it a career, or just work at home, and by that I don’t mean a box in the park, I think most of us have to use it as only ONE outlet, but not THE ONLY outlet. You need to figure out how to sell some “where” else, use email marketing, and use eBay strategically to find customers and draw them into your own site or bricks and mortar shop or follow you to trade shows or whatever. The cut eBay takes out of your margin is big, when you count the cost of NOT selling one thing against the profit you make on SELLING the other thing, along with Paypal (which to be fair, charges in the same neighborhood of most credit card services). So that’s what I’m doing. The next few posts will therefore be about some of my best sellers on eBay, so search engines will find them here on this here blog. So there. Here’s my Jack and the BS view of eBay….

• Fees – They got you comin’ and they got you goin’. When you comin’, they charge you to list. There is a sliding scale for your basic auction, based on what you decide is your starting price. There is a Buy-It-Now option, which must be at least 10% higher than your minimum, which I use a lot because I tend to list items I can list again, and why wait for the cycle to run it’s course when I can sell one today and maybe another one tomorrow? And it costs extra. You can sell multiple copies of the same item at a Fixed Price which will lower your overall listing fees a little. It’s like selling through on online store, like Amazon, or your own store, but I’ve found, through much experience and only quasi-scientific “research” that there is something about the auction (of a single item) that generates more interest and therefore actual sales. You can make your title that shows up on eBay’s search engine BOLD, and it costs extra. You can add a subtitle that will hopefully get them to click on your item, and it costs extra. You can make sure yours gets to the top of the search results, and it costs extra. You can set a reserve that will make sure your gem doesn’t go for peanuts when you happened to pick a time when ANYONE in the world that might be interested is busy watching the World Cup, or news of the latest war, or whatever, and it costs EXTRA extra. If it doesn’t sell, sucks for you (but if you have a reserve, at least it didn’t sell for 99 cents).  I’ve gotten pretty good at picking my items carefully, pricing them to sell (but well above peanuts), and getting a fairly decent rate of sale somewhere near one-third, maybe 30%. So for every item I sell, there are two that don’t, and I paid eBay fees for those two to NOT sell. Now, there are sellers out there who start every auction at 1 penny, with Handling fees structured to make sure they gross SOME profit even at the minimum, or they’re selling things with a lot of potential customers viewing them and bidding them up, and they average out the “winners” and the “losers”. In one way or another, almost every seller out there is doing it one way or the other, either selling at a loss on some, at a profit on others, or pricing the items so they have significant no-sales to be paid for by the sales. I choose the latter.
• Fie (expletive – an expression of disgust) – More fees – When you goin’, they charge you when it sells. At the low end, it’s around 9% for an item near zero, and I mean into the 50 dollar range. And it probably costs about .50 and up to list, so an item that sells for, let’s say $10, costs you about 15% to sell, and another 3% to get paid, leaving you a little over $8 to pay any other costs sunk in that item, PLUS your time and effort typing the description and taking and editing photos on the front end AND packing and mailing on the back end. If your item sells for $5, then you have $4 to cover all that. In the comics categories, there are often one to two million items. I just looked, and out of 400,000 completed items, 3 out of the first 50 sold, for a total of $14, and 47 went unsold, which means eBay made 15% of $14, about $2, plus 47 times about 50 cents, or about $25 total (quiz question, how much did eBay make off the category if the same ratio holds over all 400,000?), and the 3 comics that sold gave the sellers about $12 to work with. At today’s new comic prices, that’s about 4 comics worth of cover price, so IF all the sellers were comic book retailers, they netted about $5 of gross “profit” for the 3 sales. Not counting the cost of NOT selling the other 47 comics, the listing fees.  Fie, this is disgusting. Since I started skulking around eBay back when I had the Comic College store, I’ve contended that over 90% of the comics sold on eBay are sold at a loss to the seller, IF you count the cost of NOT selling everything else against the actual sold items. I see no reason to change that opinion. Most of what I sell these days is NOT comic books per se, although much of it is related in some way. I’ll admit I’m being self-serving when I say, if you are thinking about eBay for your collection, think again, before you leap in and dilute the soup with another pile that makes eBay happy, but makes you just tired and disappointed. I’m not exactly saying DON’T , I’m just sayin’ – be careful, and do your homework. Run the numbers.
• Foes – Your Foes? Every other desperate, hungry, penniless collector in the ENTIRE WORLD that has what you have. And for most of the million comics on eBay at any given moment, there are several to choose from. And they are starting at .01 and getting bid all the way up to .99 and there’s another one waiting in line when that one sells. If you happen to have anything “hot”, you’ll get people trying to get you to end the auction early with an offer that sounds great on Day One. But they may “know the market” better than you and “know” where the bidding will end up, and if you agree, you risk pissing off the dozen bidders who have “skin in the game” and get into an eBay “shouting” match because they were willing to pay a lot more than you settled for and they’re going to make it a point to bad-mouth you to whoever will listen! Does it sound like I’m speaking from experience much? Hmmm, maybe. And, like I said, be careful. Trying to turn an eBay customer into a non-eBay customer is “against eBay’s policy” of making ALL the profit in the entire e-commerce universe. There are ways to do it, but you have to be careful, or not. At any given moment, I’m sure there are hundreds, if not 1000′s of sellers violating eBay’s voluminous Rules to Maintain the Monopoly, but I have never been very good at it, maybe because I’m not “too big to be in violation”, or I haven’t bribed the right person, or their enforcement is so random and infrequent that everyone gets caught once in a while, and then goes for a while without getting caught. Now, they want us to open an eBay “store”, at $15.95 a month, or our fees are going up!
• Funds – Let’s face it, if you put your scuba gear store in the Mojave Desert, you may have a tough time. So you go where the scuba divers are, the beach, a metaphor for eBay. If you are selling Beanie Babies, go where the mothers and Grandmas are, again, eBay. If you are selling, well, nowadays, almost anything, you go where the eyeballs are, and that’s eBay. Follow the money on the internet, and it leads to eBay. Then figure out a way to capitalize on those eyeballs, and lure them over to your site, where you have a monopoly on You, whatever you have to sell, plus something that eBay doesn’t have, like humor, fun, the Next Big Thing, above-and-beyond service, and maybe a great attitude.

Conclusion:  don’t just dump 10,000 comics on eBay at a penny starting bid. You might only sell a few books at 10 or 50 cents, and pay $100 to eBay and Paypal, and more to the PO and you’ll do all that work for a negative $90. Start small and see what happens. A lesson learned at the College of Comic Book Knowledge!

We’ve been in California a little more than a month, with only the possessions that would fit in my car, but it’s time to finish the job. There is still a 10 by 30 foot storage unit filled to the door and ceiling with [...]]]>

Bob lands back in the Land of 10,000 Lakes

We’ve been in California a little more than a month, with only the possessions that would fit in my car, but it’s time to finish the job. There is still a 10 by 30 foot storage unit filled to the door and ceiling with comics, furniture, a life’s worth of accumulated crap, all waiting for me OR the auctioneer if I stop paying the rent, and one more Minnesota Comic Book Convention to sell at. So I’ve been looking into whether I should take Bob with me on the plane to ride back across the country again in the giant rental truck? I’ll be gone almost 2 weeks, so my new roomies are only slightly more familiar with him than random strangers. I think he wants to come! He can help! He’s a super dog, after all.

I would never put him in cargo, so I had to find an airline that would allow him in the cabin with me. He had to get certified by the vet that he’s disease free and healthy, so we visited our new local vet, the Grove Way Vet just a few blocks from home, near the 7-Eleven and Trader Joe’s. They also gave me a gentle sedative for the flight, and suggested I could give him only half a pill, since he is not typically a hyperactive, nervous, barky dog. I agree. Nice people, and a good place.

In a fit of independence and frugality, I decided we could take the BART train all the way to SFO. No one else was home, and I left with plenty of time to walk about a mile to the Castro Valley BART station. Bob has to be in a soft-sided “kennel” to go UNDER the SEAT on the plane, so I have that strapped over one shoulder. Once we get to the airport, he’ll be in the bag for about 10 hours, so I’m giving him as much freedom as possible before that starts. Then my computer was in a rolling bag over the other shoulder. I had Bob on a leash, and I was pulling my rolling suitcase behind me, first on the pot-hole ridden streets and then on the even bumpier, cracked sidewalks. You do NOT walk a 20 minute mile under those circumstances! My shoulders hurt, it was hot and I was dripping with sweat, and Bob had to stop and pee or sniff at least 10 times. It started to look like an hour and I began to worry that I had about missing the flight. Next time, I’m at least hitch-hiking!  At the train station, I had to put him in the bag and carry him, too!  On perfectly smooth floors with lots of room, I could perch Bob in his bag on the suitcase if I went slowly and didn’t turn. But any bump or torque would send the bag off its perch, swinging down toward the floor and causing the suitcase to veer off course. We negotiated the escalator up to the track level and began an hour long stretch of quiet time on the train, with a whole bench to our selves. I waited until near the end of the trip to give Bob his pill.

Bob checking his luggage at the Northwest counter

The new BART station at SFO is pretty cool, and there is the Airport “mini-BART” one flight up, so getting from BART to the terminal was fairly painless, but if the crowds were much thicker, it might have been difficult. We checked in at the gate and Bob was a hit with the agent. Once we checked the suitcase, I had to carry him all the time and the gate, of course, was another mile away. Oddly, they don’t want to x-ray dogs, so after partially disrobing, and putting my computer in a tray, I had to hold him as I walked through the body scanner. That must have looked cute, or stupid, for the random people who happened to see it while they were waiting in line behind us.

Years ago, I moved a cat from Minnesota to California on a flight, and there were plenty of empty seats, and she sat next to me the whole time. Not today. We were fairly late in boarding, and when I reached our row, I set the Bob-bag on the empty seat while I began to stuff my computer bag up above. An officious flight attendant came by and barked “Put the dog under the seat.” like I didn’t already know, or like I had time to do it yet. Okay, I get it. So as I write this, Bob is curled up under the seat in front of me, and therefore, my legs are pretty much going straight down, without much room to stretch. If I slip out of my shoes, I can gently squeeze my feet in around the bag, but that’s not so great, either. The pill has done it’s work and Bob has slept quietly for hours. I hope his little bladder can hold it for another few hours!

I’ve been selling on eBay for quite a while now. Bob (the Human) has this large warehouse that has been dormant since the late 90′s. He started with 1 store in the early 80′s when I met him, and opened or bought 4 more into [...]]]>

Bob the human at Fantasy Books and Games

I’ve been selling on eBay for quite a while now. Bob (the Human) has this large warehouse that has been dormant since the late 90′s. He started with 1 store in the early 80′s when I met him, and opened or bought 4 more into the early 90′s. He opened the warehouse in an Oakland suburb to house large quantities of merchandise for future distribution to his stores, and the rest of the country through mail orders. When the “collapse” of 94-95 happened, the market ended up with only one real distributor, Diamond Comic Distribution. Through a complex series of negotiations and conversations, his warehouse became the landing point for large air and truck shipments from Diamond to the entire region and Bob’s competitors became his customers as they met at his warehouse to pick up their weekly “fix” of new comics and everything else Diamond sold.  They would pick up the new stuff and shop around this huge room of shelves stacked up to the ceiling with older stuff.

Then, Diamond Distribution decreed that every store in America would be serviced by UPS, which ended the weekly conclave at the warehouse, and one day a few months later, the workers left, the fork lift was turned off, the doors closed, and time stopped. And the dust slowly started to settle. What used to be a bustling, thriving business began to be slowly covered up by dust and accumulated debris of a collapsing empire. Until I show up 5 years later.

Brick and board shelving with "short comic boxes" - each with up to 150 comics

Bob brought in truckloads of unsold merchandise and fixtures from each store as it closed, and filled in all the empty space on the shelves and pallet racks, and then the truck bays until they were almost impassable As the years went by, a layer of dust settled over everything. He did have  one very part time laborer that would come in to work in solitude, listening to country music for a few hours a week, rearranging a few things, breaking open a few boxes and filing the books or comics on the shelves, and filling backstock orders for the store, and keeping a critical system of narrow pathways open to certain areas deemed necessary. He made a valiant effort, but some areas became closed in and “written off” by the flotsam. Without him, any hope of finding anything but what you could see and reach from the parking lot would have been futile, which was still almost true in many sectors. But he was completely overwhelmed by weekly van loads that Bob would bring in, or occasional tsunamis of large purchases that Bob would often make at bargain basement discounts.

My new job is to find valuable things amongst the rubble, like an archaeologist, and turn them into gold, like a modern day alchemist using eBay and my website. There are about 3500 square feet of floor space, one large rectangle with 24-foot ceilings (8 meters), 2 rollup truck doors, two bathrooms in one corner, and  a two story “office” over in the other corner, with a window on the second floor. This place is amazing. There are heavy steel pallet racks with 3/4 inch plywood shelves full of 1000-pound pallets of, uh, something, stacked three high, so the top shelf is at 15 feet. If I want to inspect them to look for the gems, I have to use extension ladders and climb up and walk around up there like a construction worker. There are rows and rows of shelves built with 12-inch square cinder blocks and 8- and 12-foot 1×12 inch boards, six stories tall, full of thousands of little white boxes made to hold about 150 comics each in a vertical position so one can paw through them and see the titles and numbers. Then the seventh (top) shelf of each row is filled with unopened shipping cartons, stacked 3 high, of comics that won’t be needed or wanted for years until the ones in the little white boxes are gone. There are 2 rows of nicely constructed 8-foot tall, 3-sided “cubicles” of sturdy magazine shelves for full-cover display of magazines and books from back in the day that this place had regular customers and presentation mattered. Now each of the 6 cubicles is full of shoulder-high piles of stuff and crap that make it difficult to see and reach the books and magazines, now with a layer of dust on them. Oh, and the fork lift is parked in the aisle, surrounded by the cubicles and the piles and piles of junk that make it impossible to move without investing hours of man-hours clearing a path to the outside world. Plus it’s lost a lot of oil in a puddle on the floor.

This is the ordered, accessible part of the warehouse!

Bob has some ideas about what would sell at a price that would make it worth the effort, and an incredible knowledge of the 3-D space inside the warehouse. He knows in his mind where almost everything is, even if it would be impossible for him to reach some of it. That’s where my small size, nimble frame, and fearless attitude come in. Moebius Graphic novels are in cases of 50 pounds each on a pallet 15 feet in the air, near the back of the warehouse room 1, and it’s my job to get some down, photographed, and on sale. The Star Trek books are in cubicle 5, but I have to squeeze down a narrow aisle, climb THROUGH the forklift, and somehow move 400 pounds of stuff to get at them. And the shipping boxes are on top of the bathrooms, so I climb a permanent ladder made of 2×4′s and I have to tightrope-walk across unfloored ceiling joists to reach them, because they were put up there over on that side before the forklift was closed in by clutter. That’s basically where I was when the above picture was taken.

See the Photo gallery for a lot more photos of this trip.

Gee, Bobby, looky at all them trees!

Morning in Winnemucca. I had been introduced to another cat at check-in and it was waiting to meet the rest of our party in the [...]]]> Saturday, August 30, 2003. 425 miles in 9 hours

See the Photo gallery for a lot more photos of this trip.

Gee, Bobby, looky at all them trees!

Morning in Winnemucca. I had been introduced to another cat at check-in and it was waiting to meet the rest of our party in the morning. We had an uneventful packing anyway, and made our way across Nevada and up the Sierras. As is my habit, I  succumbed to the temptation to take a several hour detour around Lake Tahoe. After the white knuckle descent towards the Lake, and a few miles along the shore, we were in California at last – the land of more and bigger trees than even Bob can handle, and where the majestic mountain lion still roams, though in ever decreasing numbers, as civilization makes its relentless land grab. The land of our future life full of opportunity and fun!

Bob immediately moves in behind the counter to start working!

And who is the Prime Purveyor of that fun? Bob, the Human! Bob, meet Bob. Bob, Bob. Bob Borden owns Fantasy Books and Games, and without him being here, we probably wouldn’t be here now, at least at this time. I’ve known him for 20 years and it was our phone conversations over the last year that led to this big move.

Bob is happy to meet the old guard. And vice versa. Bob the Human has a Bijon named Scary, who comes to work every day. This is like the Bizarro Episode of Seinfeld. Another comic store, another busy corner, another dog, another set of customers. Maybe it’s the road fatigue, but it IS starting to feel a little creepy. Let’s get to wherever we’re staying tonight and get some sleep!

So another 40 minutes of driving, and we arrive at our new home in Castro Valley, a “suburb” of Oakland. We are moving in with Eric and Phillip, and I have a “suite” with a private bathroom, which should work better for having a catbox that doesn’t offend anyone else. There is a little shed in the back, for my bike and miscellaneous storage. I brought a futon matress in the back seat and plan on buying a frame and I’ll be setting up shop in Bob the Human’s warehouse soon. The first of two cross-country moves is a success!

Okay, now what?

See the Photo gallery for a lot more photos of this trip.

"Dan's Petrified Critters" - the Horror!

Up and on the move in Rock Springs, Wyoming, at the crack of 11. It takes a while to get this crew out of a [...]]]> Friday, August 29, 2003. 535 miles in 10.5 hours

See the Photo gallery for a lot more photos of this trip.

"Dan's Petrified Critters" - the Horror!

Up and on the move in Rock Springs, Wyoming, at the crack of 11. It takes a while to get this crew out of a motel! Practically down the block from our motel – now, this is a rude awakening. Sam is wondering what is so interesting about a run down building, but he is just beginning to grasp the meaning, and Bob can only stare in horror. “Why are you slowing down?!? Get us out of here!”

Anyone notice a stylistic trend on the part of the photographer yet? I call it the “back of Bob’s head motif”, or BOBHM, for short, and I warn you that there is more coming.

Using the timer, I posed for a rare "duet" photo.

Another favorite on this trip is the lookout over the Red Rock canyon east of Salt Lake City, where the Mormons tried to hold off the Federal Army. When there, you can see how they lasted so long from those high cliffs. And it gets hot!! It was well over 90 degrees this day, and we still had the flats to cross.

The desert and salt flats west of Salt Lake City is a very strange place. Just down off the shoulder is a miles-long stretch of “graphitti” in stones, made by people with too much time on their hands. We stopped to see a strange roadside attraction (see photo gallery), and some of the graphitti, but they didn’t translate to digital film in that light. Plus we could see a storm brewing, and I would prefer to avoid yet another desert storm, if I could.

We stopped for gas at the last stop in Utah, and continued west into the sparse mountains of Nevada. After missing the effects of the storms all around us, our luck finally ran out. It started raining and I noticed the the bike bouncing around in the mirrors, so I stopped at a nearly deserted town to check it out. The wind nearly ripped the door off when I opened it, and it felt like winter in my shorts and T-shirt. With us going 70, and the wind coming at us at about 50 – well, you do the math. I got back in and drove around the boarded up station to find some wind shelter, tested the ropes and cables, and moved on. But, I was a little sleepy and pulled over in a rest stop at the top of a long hill and napped a bit. Thankfully, the rain stopped soon and I called ahead for a motel in Winnemucca and pressed on.

Continue on to Day 4 …

See the Photo gallery for a lot more photos of this trip.

What a waste of 400 highway billboards!

The great Wall of South Dakota, which is not that great, and to be honest, not very many walls. But here we are, and [...]]]> Thursday, August 28, 2003. 535 miles in 12 hours

See the Photo gallery for a lot more photos of this trip.

What a waste of 400 highway billboards!

The great Wall of South Dakota, which is not that great, and to be honest, not very many walls. But here we are, and Bob seems unimpressed. We look down the long, covered sidewalk and wait for something to happen – anything.

Nothing does.

A few hours later , the 3 of us had a little taste of Freedom in the shadow of the 4-Fathers, and a lot of clouds at Mt. Rushmore. We paid our National Park fee and parked in the gigantic parking ramp, but were told that all pets were restricted to the grassy area at the far end. It was about 20 by 40 feet, and not very grassy. Bob did not feel, shall we say, inspired.

It was hard to get Sam to learn how to use a camera. Cats just don't care.

Bob is convinced that he, too, could be president one day. You don’t want to discourage them and spoil their dreams, but you don’t want them chasing impossible ones either. And who can say? I mean, – and the current OOPS (Current Oval Office Pretender Succubus).

On the road again for the first time, Muddy Gap behind his left ear.

But for now, Bob is content to be a wanderer, and a vagabond, singing his way across the Great American West, in the footsteps of a Guthrie (a Woodie), a Seeger (no, not Bob), a Dylan (yes, Bob, another Bob, the first of many).

One of the highlights of this route is called Muddy Gap, and there it is,  just to the right of Bob’s ear. It’s an odd little feature, but comforting – going west, you know you are almost halfway there; going east, over half. We’ve called ahead for reservations in Rock Springs. ‘Night!

Continue on to Day 3 …

Check out the photo gallery page for more pictures of the MN to CA road trip.

On our way, stopped for camera batteries!

After spending a couple of days of frenzied packing and goodbyes, and with the invaluable assistance of my bestest and oldest [...]]]> Wednesday, August 27, 2003. 515 miles in 11 hours

Check out the photo gallery page for more pictures of the MN to CA road trip.

On our way, stopped for camera batteries!

After spending a couple of days of frenzied packing and goodbyes, and with the invaluable assistance of my bestest and oldest friend Mike Ziegahn on the last morning, we are ready to go at 2:30 pm. I strapped that bike on there like we would be driving through a hurricane, and had my cable lock involved to force someone to cut all the straps to remove the bike and rack as one unit. I have three guitars in there somewhere, all my audio gear, and a trunk full of clothes and immediately useful household items for our new home in California.

Close quarters for 4 days, but he is near the food, so that's a plus!

I have the cooler, music, car voltage to AC converter to power the CD player and cell phone charger all available to my right hand. Bob will jump into any car, any time, and yet, he’s frequently a little nervous. But he settled right in to his tiny little space in the passenger seat. Being next to the cooler does have its advantages, as he is always close to the next string cheese or turkey sandwich. I was worried about Sam. I have described him as a danger to all passengers in in the car in previous outings, and have scars to prove it. I gave up on him in cars 10 years ago. We had this giant kennel which really didn’t fit well.

What happened to the Tasmanian Devil who once required a crowbar to pry off of my head?

I have a large, flat cardboard poster box covered with a sheet as the top layer across the back seat and Sam has about 10 inches below the ceiling. I was terrified of  his free-range as far as the nearest PetSmart, where I intended to buy a much smaller kennel. I have no explanation for Sam’s relatively mild reaction to this enterprise. It was a miracle! After a few miles to the mall, he acted like he was sleeping on the couch. In total disbelief and cautious faith, I bought camera discs, and we hit the open road, kennel-less. So we finally headed southwest through the suburbs towards Mankato just beating the rush hour.

I’ve made this trip to the Bay Area or back many times, back as far as the late 70′s, when I would stop in Mankato to see Mom and Dad, and it has been my preferred route ever since. This would perhaps be our only opportunity for Bob and Sam to visit my old homestead, and so we took a short, but very efficient, detour through Mankato, stopping at the house at 238 Lincoln where we found an unfamiliar driveway with 2 unfamiliar dogs. I was cat-wrangling on the little traffic triangle, when the 2 residents appeared. I had to stop and adjust my plans, when Bob ventured alone to meet the usurpers, and he wasted no time in visiting “my roots”, those planted by some rogue squirrel circa 1970. I’ve always considered it “my tree”, but in reality all I did was NOT mow it down, which I guess is as strong a claim as any. I called him back and the tree’s current owners were left to ponder the aroma and possible significance of this strange visitor.

Original plans to drive to Sioux Falls were scrapped as I decided I needed to make up the lost day (see original itinerary). Around dusk, I called my own personal navigator, Cindy, to look on the website www.petswelcome.com, and give me a list of phone numbers in Rapid City, and Wall, an hour closer. I called the Plains Motel in Wall, and asked for a very late check-in of 1:30. Keys were waiting for us in an envelope tied to the office door. Here’s what Bob looked like after 515 miles and 11 hours of hard driving.

Continue on to Day 2 …

This sort of summarizes a lot of posts that I actually wrote back in May, but this one is a LOT shorter! And Better. I just started “blogging” back in May during the eclipse, thinking I would just, y’know, write stuff. Right now I’m going through [...]]]>

Bob with my "oldest" friend Mike Z.

This sort of summarizes a lot of posts that I actually wrote back in May, but this one is a LOT shorter! And Better. I just started “blogging” back in May during the eclipse, thinking I would just, y’know, write stuff. Right now I’m going through a major transition, moving to California, leaving friends and family behind because I think I will enjoy the physical, social, and economic environment out there more while I figure out how I will spend the rest of my life. So that’s what’s happened lately, and so that’s what I have to write about!

It’s about 14 years of trying to run uphill.

“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some (my emphasis) reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.” Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942

Then again, he also wrote this…”The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Camus will turn over in his grave when he reads this,but, if you can find a better explanation for existentialism in less words than those two quotes, I would love to hear it.

Why, you ask? I thought of this myth and Camus ‘treatment’ of it often during those 14 years, as regarded my life. That’s why. His optimism – faced with the absurdity and pointlessness of existence, he still carries on the struggle – may not come through in this great little animated short on You Tube: Sisyphus (1974) by Jankovics Marcell [2:05] It’s an incredible use of India ink and brush as a medium for animation. There are dozens of spectacular and marvelously creative drawings of the the human form in sharp contrast, heavily shadowed silhouette. I happened to catch a PBS Program back in 1978 called Academy Leaders – all Oscar-winning shorts – hosted by Norman Corwin, and I’ve been wanting to see it again for 30 years.

So I’m going to California, AGAIN. Again, I’m going to California on a whim, although the first time the decision was made in hours, this one has taken months to decide, plan, and realize. Sold the house late ’99. Divorce final, early ’00. Money from house gone. Broke. Alone. Again. Somehow, (see Sisyphus above) the store is still open 3 years later. But it’s different now. In Sisyphean terms, I’m about to escape the old curse, the old struggle, and begin a newer, fresher one. Here’s how…

While I was still married, I paid a business broker to analyze my store and price it. $57k, I think, back in 1998. I shopped the store around town to the 3 people who might have the means and who might talk to me, but the market was so grim for most of us that no one was nibbling, even for much less. My friend Bob from California and I have kept in occasional communication over the years, with him checking in on my eBay sales (moderate success) and online store sales (a big failure). He has a big, dark, dormant, dusty warehouse full of distributor-sized investments in various products, some of which I am trying to sell myself. Well, I don’t know who said it first, but we talked about me (as a business) moving into the warehouse and going virtual. One thing led to another and I started thinking seriously about giving up the corner, the cornerstone of my life for 23 years, and got serious about untangling my alliances with Uptown, Minneapolis, and Minnesota.

I figure the price has been dropping about 10% a year, so by April, I’m thinking maybe half of that, with a 10k discount for quick cash. I’ve been talking with Tim, a convention dealer friend who was buying new stuff through my account and a weekly customer, and he was the first who didn’t say “NO” so it was basically a done deal! He didn’t want everything, just what the customers saw everyday, and the ongoing traffic, not the mountains of overstock in my house and storage locker. I got about $5000. And I let him use the name!

So I have to figure out how to clear out a 10×30 foot storage space, the house I moved back into with stuff that has never left since 1987, even when we bought a different house and moved out! I flew to Cali twice this summer to talk to Bob and find a place to live – paying rent already. Last week, I went to the Chicago Comicon, and stayed with my sister Kathy to save money. To make this story a little shorter, they offered me a deal I couldn’t refuse, their old Buick! I’ve been wondering if my van would ever make it out there, or last very long once there. So I have to get down there to drive it back and pack, sell the van, drive to California, fly back in October and rent a big truck to go to the “big” Minnesota Comic Convention and SELL EVERYTHING, and pack the truck and leave the next day! There are a million loose ends to tie up. So to me it looks like a big, complicated rock that has to be pushed up the hill – ONE MORE TIME.

I’m  throwing myself a going away party August 15th (who else would do it?) and I’m going to surprise my guests with  ”Final Yard/Garage/Moving sale” items on display. Asking for money so I can move away from them – classy, eh? Then two days of the neighborhood yard sale and it’s off with two animals, and my bike in a Buick.

So I have 2 weeks for the final-except-for-the-convention-truck-leg in October push. Gotta go, I’ll tell you about the trip in Day 1…