So, there I am, setting foot on American soil for the first time in my life. At Chicago O’Hara airport. Well fed, i step out of the plane for the long walk to customs. That’s mostly a bunch of guys and gals with guns, who spend their day stamping forms. For our own security. I feel so much more secure knowing that my forms have been properly stamped! Explaining a 6-week hackerspace tour to the nice lady behind the counter (who will take my fingerprints later) without mentioning the word hacker proves to be a challenge. How do you explain that you’re staying with people you’ve really never met, but that the hackerspace community is such that it will be allright. She actually thinks i’m crazy, doing the tour in 6 weeks and all.

Luckily, my documentation checks out, and I can collect my checked luggage. Yet another round of questions, less thorough this time, and one more form returned to yet another customs official. The pile they put the collected forms on makes me wonder if they are actually archived or just thrown away when the guys’ shift ends. Anyway, on to a funny little railway to take me to the gate where a domestic flight will take me to Seattle. Oddly enough, security is much more strict on this flight. I duly go through the motions, taking of my shoes, forgetting the cellphone in my pocket and all that. Frankly, i’m done with planes for a bit now.

Seattle promises to be wet and windy, so I’ll feel right at home! When I arrive at the Columbia city stop of Seattle’s lightrail, Flyko is waiting for me with his bio-diesel converted red VW Rabbit, which takes us to his appartment. We’re off for a quick bite in Georgetown, a lovely little community within an industrial complex. Right next to the Boeing factory. Trains, planes and Calamity Jane’s. We enter to order a bite, only to find a lesbian in a clockwork orange costume force us into playing bingo. It’s hard checking out the menu while keeping up with the bingo balls.

After that I am quite tired. We do have a lot of catching-up to do though, and a busy tuesday ahead. We start off the day with a visit to the Museum of Communications, where Flyko volunteers between travels. It is a great place, truly unique in the world. After a cup of coffee, Troubleman Bob takes me through an extensive tour of the 3rd floor (we don’t even get to the 2nd floor), where I get to see innovation in telephony switching technology starting in 1915, using an elevator system to select prefixes and subscriber numbers through literally thousands of contacts. They also have a number 5 crossbar telephone switch. At least a dozen racks of roughly 70 feet full of electromechanical equipment; relais, wiring, stepper units. And it is all interconnected, so one can make calls from one switch to the other. If you are ever around Seattle, this is a must-visit!

After a quick lunch, we set out for town. Pick up the car, do some shopping (get new shoes!) and get myself a sim with a local number and internet on it. In the evening we head out to The Black Lodge. This hackerspace recently got evicted from their location, because the land owner sold the piece of propery the hackerspace was on. Luckily they have a new space, and are moving in next week. We met them at their old space, where they were just packing their last belongings. There’s a lot going on in the space normally, with regular programming nights and the occassional party.

On wednesday, we head out for our first short ride out to Portland, where we find Brain Silo. In an old abandoned industrial building, with large silo’s running all the four floors of the building, this hackerspace occupies part of the first floor. To my surprise I find a pinball game there. When asked ‘do you know how to fix pinball machines?’ I don’t hesitate: I dive right in. After a few initial checks and standard quick fixes the game starts to work. I leave the rest for them, giving them a link to the marvin3m pinball repair pages. I also talk with one of the developers of the Damn Vulnerable Web App, recording an interview for signal next thursday.

After that, we find a cozy place to sleep in the space to prepare for the next day, where we will do a long 11-hour lap to San Francisco. More on that later!

I’m not particularly fond of flying. I do like being 10km above the surface of the planet, looking down on the clouds and the miniature landscape below. It is just the whole logistics surrounding the experience that puts me off. Okay, checking in can be done on-line nowadays, fortunately. But you still have to drop off your luggage. Then wait some to get through customs. Then wait some more to get through security (I always feel like a criminal when they pat me down). Then some more waiting before boarding. And once you’re in the plane, there is even more waiting until the jet engines kick into full throttle and the actual flying commences.

And these planes aren’t particularly smooth now are they. To quote my uncle, it’s like sitting in the back of an old urban bus ride. The road is a bit bumpy, and the roar of the engine drowns out any conversation. Luckily it also drowns out most of the screaming kids. Oh, and there’s less leg room.

The take-off was nice, following the Dutch coast for a bit before turning and letting the sun push us westwards. I did not get a glimpse of my hometown, Den Haag, as it was obscured by a sudden cluster of dense clouds, but I did get a lovely view of the river delta’s. As I see the little plane on the screen inch its way toward Chicago pixel by pixel, the sun is slowly overtaking us. By the time I arrive in Seattle the yellow ball will already be on its descend into the pacific.

But we aren’t there yet. With a bit of Boards of Canada on the headphones I snooze into a light sleep. It’s 6 in the morning at my destination, better catch up to that rhythm a bit.

For hours, there is only water and clouds. But eventually, dry land again. At first some hesitant protuberances that break out from the vast ocean. This must be north-east Canada. Pixel by pixel, we move further inland. More land, less water. The white from the clouds offset against the white from what I can only surmise is snow.

Slowly but steadily land wins over water, as the ratio changes in favor of the former. Barren however. No sight of human settlement, but for a scarce regularity that suggests human intervention. I marvel at earth’s beauty. There must be at least hundreds, if not thousands of lakes and interconnecting rivers.

America does not seem to be intend on revealing itself to me though, as for the next hours a plane of clouds obscure my view. Only 30 minutes before landing, i catch my first glimpse of the US of A. The shore of a lake. Despite the delay, it looks like i am going to catch the subsequent flight that will bring me into Seattle. With even a bit of time to spare to see if there is any wifi. I guess it is about time I ssh home to retrieve my vpn credentials.

The title of a really cheesy movie? It must be. Afterall, why would gmc want to visit the United States of America?? Guess again, hell has frozen over and gmc is going to the USA. And not just for a day or two, I will be gone for 6 weeks. Touring the country by car, visiting hackerspaces, pinball walhalla’s and other geekly attractions. While doing so, i’ll be of course blogging about it, but also making a weekly show for Signal, the hackerspace radio.

Rough overview of the route

People who know me will be surprised, I normally don’t have anything good to say about the USA and their policy on foreign affairs. But neither do all of the Americans. I met a bunch of them over the past years, and discovered that they are mostly good folk. So it can’t be all that bad. Time to set aside all my preconceptions and go see for myself!

Still, the USA is not a very welcoming country at first. Not having ventured outside of Europe, I first needed a passport. My ID card won’t cut it for the transcontinental trip. Getting a new passport meant getting my fingerprints taken. So those are now safe and sound in some vulnerable government database! Next up, applying for the visa waiver program (paying the US$14 admission fee) and reading into entering the country. The first was a breeze, since I am not a nazi, terrorist, psychopath nor dope dealer. Yes, they ask you if you are any of those on the web form, and based on that put you up for further scrutiny if you fall into one of those categories. It is good that they take security seriously. The literature written by the border patrol is, well, not at all inviting. If you read between the lines, they threaten you with anal visitations and thorough investigations.

In contrast, the people from the various hackerspaces have been more than welcoming! It is hearth warming to see that the openness and enthusiasm I know from European hackerspaces is also very much present in the American hackerspace culture. The people in general are excited by my emails announcing my visits. I’m getting wonderful emails with suggestions of things to visit, and in general finding couches to crash on during the night has not proven to be difficult so far.

To give you a general idea of the places I will be visiting, let us go through the itinerary briefly. The trip starts in Seattle, in the North-West of the country. Here I will pick up my travel companion Flyko, the rental car and some general supplies. Of course, a visit to local hackerspaces is also planned, most notable something called ‘the black lodge‘. From Seattle it is down to San Francisco for a visit to the famous Noisebridge, HackerDojo and hopefully a chat with the crew from BioCurious. Then we go further south to LA, where we find 23B, Crash Space and more.

Then we start off the diagonal leg of the trip in Las Vegas, not without visiting the Pinball Hall of Fame of course. Then it’s off to Denver and Chicago, for a visit to PS:ONE and a search for the historic locations of pinball. Hopefully, if the US border patrol allows it, that will be followed by a short trip to Toronto, Canade where we find hacklab.to. Then a little bit sidewards again, to Boston. The last leg will take us from NYC to Washington, DC and finally to Miami.

I’m excited about the things that will be on our path. The focus of all the hackerspaces along the route varies wildly. There are those that specialize mostly in software and networking. But there are several spaces that are more into ‘manly’ knowledge and skills such as welding and casting metal. And then there are the one or two spaces/collectives doing bio-hacking. I can’t wait to meet all these people and hear about their passions.

I will be keeping you up to date of my adventures on this blog. I have already updated the design a bit (just a little bit) to adapt it to the current standards. To be in style with American policy, I have signed away my privacy and added a widget in the sidebar so you can track my whereabouts almost real-time. And of course, there will be the weekly radio show on Signal. I hope to bring interviews with the people behind the places we visit, as well as some general reflection on the whole experience.

So, not a cheesy movie afterall. GMC is going to do America. It’s scary somehow, but exciting as well. Stay tuned for updates!