It’s about 1 a.m. on a Thursday and I’m sitting in my dark living room staring at a cursor that’s flashing back at me from the update box of my Facebook page. I start to type, then delete, then type, then delete again. I want nothing more than to leave behind this computer and the nearly embarrassing-to-watch Jimmy Fallon mumbling on my television for the comfort of my bed, but I can’t. I need to update my Facebook status at least five more times before calling it a night, but given that I’m merely sitting on the couch with a half-empty Pabst tall can in my hand, there’s not much to update. I type the phrase “Only halfway there?” hit the “Share” button and then abruptly close my laptop.

This is when I realize that I’m probably not going to be able to update my Facebook status 100 times in 24 hours, which was the goal I began relentlessly and annoyingly pursuing at 11 a.m. that morning.

Now in bed, I reach blindly for my cell phone, flip it open and text “Sleep” to the number that Facebook ensures me will place my two-thumbed ramblings, which include things like, “Tying my shoes” and “Ordering a beer” directly onto my page. This is my 51st update in 14 hours and I’m exhausted…and disappointed in myself.

But at 11am the next morning, I make my 67th post in the past 24 hours and I’m no longer disheartened. I’m relieved. I’m done with Facebook.

“This is great! This is everybody’s dream,” said Linda Scott, first-time baked goods judge at the 2009 Deschutes County Fair.

From 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. the day before the fair kicked off this year, Linda tasted every single entry in the senior and adult categories. Linda’s parents ran Gibb’s Bakery in Redmond for 45 years, so the woman knows her way around a pie or two. In five hours she sampled nut pies and divinity, cakes and fudge, enough chocolate cookies to satiate the most vicious bout of PMS.

Sitting across the table from her, I lost count after the first dozen yeast rolls and cheese muffins, and a white-blonde confection straight from a retro Betty Crocker cookbook, gleaming under the florescence like a ‘50s pin-up queen.

 

It's 10:20 - precisely - on a Wednesday morning and I'm running at what in the post-athletic phase of my life passes for a sprint across the Target parking lot, chasing a 40-foot charter bus with the word "Classy" written in cursive on its side. For the first time in my life I am (without irony) about to miss a bus. And I should mention that this isn't just a bus, but a "Casino Fun Bus."

Then, the air brakes hiss on the behemoth and it comes to a halt, a pair of spectacled eyes peering back at me through a massive side mirror. The door opens and I sheepishly board, hurriedly saying something mostly apologetic but slightly embarrassed and take a seat with eight pairs of eyes taking a quizzical look at the out-of-breath and slightly sweaty man 40 years their junior sitting in the third row. Again, this is the Fun Bus, a free shuttle that twice a week busses Central Oregon residents up to Kah-Nee-Ta Resort and Casino on the Warm Springs reservation for about four solid hours of fun, or gambling, or both.

 

"She needs a name."

This is what Brad Lockwood says as he's standing in a driveway halfway up Awbrey Butte staring at a 1979 Ford Econoline RV. He takes a long look at the 22-and-a-half foot vehicle and lights a Lucky Strike cigarette as snow flurries land on the upturned earflaps of his hunting hat.

The RV actually has a name, written in brown cursive on the rear door: Van de Gran II. This is of course the name someone else slapped on it some 30 years ago and obviously won't do because this isn't just an old RV - it's Lockwood's home and office for the next two months.

This house on wheels will be the vessel in which Lockwood, a Brooklyn author who has in the past two years made Bend a second home, will sail across the country for the purpose of creating an Internet television show that could become a cable television show or eventually be made into a documentary. Accompanied by video editor and all around "crazy saint" Nicolas Mamula, who prefers to go by the moniker Hank Saga, the duo will be traveling some 200 miles per day creating 52 10-minute segments that will be immediately uploaded to their website, or-bust.com. The purpose? It's best to let Lockwood explain it.