July 5th

JULY 5TH

July 5th was a different story — At 9 a.m. a Redwood City police cruiser comes to take a look. It appears he wants to circle our camp, but realizes that is not possible from the way he came in. So he left.

And then reappeared on the bridge over the canal, being rewarded with an almost identical view of overlapping freight liners. Apparently he thought the first view or tactical situation was preferable because the cruiser showed up at our parking–lot entrance a second time.

“Hello?!” The male officer yells. We choose not to respond. The trucks are locked up. The chicken and razor wire is protecting the gaps. And nothing is notable about his behavior. We have three (or more) cameras mounted on every container, so we can see and hear pretty much everything near the perimeter.

We just continue our day without worrying what he could hear of us.

A number of people — are working as if nothing was unusual. We have several cellular routers, and Covid has made remote work the norm in the Bay Area. Some companies like Apple and Google are trying to change back to in-office work, but they are not willing to risk a mass exodus.

By 9:30 — the police officer had given up and called some friends. There were now barricading us in on both sides, although you can’t really barricade a Freightliner or Tanker with standard police cruisers. They would have benefitted tactically from watching a few more Mad Max movies.

The CHP helicopter started circling at around 10 a.m.. It seemed unlikely that anything notable was visible from the air, but we started

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to take defensive activity a bit more seriously. Nothing visible to the police was changed, but the perimeter team was doubled by deploying the next shift. Now we have about 50 members manning the container walls and monitoring the cameras.

The space is so small that we could simply shout to each other… except for the vampiric problem. As part of training and preparation we developed a ‘messenger’ protocol with one person from a squad (4 containers) who would run between the squads and ‘HQ’.

I am not the HQ commander: that was a different Marc (notice the ‘c’), which caused all kinds of confusion at first. But eventually people realized that Marc & Ron were the commanders they had to talk with (depending on the shift-schedule of M&R), and ‘Mark’ (I) had a different role. What that was, was a bit unclear to much of the team, but that lack of clarity would not linger much longer.

The front door — actually had two sets of doors (pairedFreightliners). The inner Freightliners started rumbling and shifting at 11 a.m., about the same time some news helicopter began hovering along with the CHP. I assume they were in communication to avoid colliding up there. If they fell on us, that would be fairly inconvenient.

Then the two Freightliners moved back to their original position. Very anti-climactic for the people outside, I am sure. But the change would be apparent in a moment more.

The second-pair shifted, opening a 6-foot space between them. And I simply walked out as they moved back in place (concealing a defense team in the bastion ‘kill-zone’ between the doors).

“Good Morning!” I say with a smile. “What brings you to my neighborhood?”

Apparently — this was not what they were expecting to happen … or hear… because they simply stare at me for a minute or two.

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After that brief pause, a woman walks towards me. “These are your trucks?” starts the lieutenant (Lt. Cressman) that is apparently in command of the current team.

“Not mine per-se, but yes, I do know who they belong to.”

“Why are you here?”

“We are camping. You know, a lot of campgrounds are closed due to Covid, so we decided to camp a bit closer than usual. Kind of like a ‘staycation’ ”

“You are ‘camping’. With more than a dozen containers?”

“OK… more like ‘glamping’: it is pretty luxurious in there. The golf course is a bit too easy though.”

“Do you have a permit to ‘glamp’ in this parking lot?”

“Possibly… that is above my pay grade.”

“I suspect you _do not_ have a permit. The workers from Stibnite and Sports Seller think you shouldn’t be here”

“I often think that myself… but yet… here I am. The universe is a strange and beautiful thing”

“ ‘Asshole’ or ‘Idiot’ ” is probably running through her head about now, and she wanders back to her team and vehicle.

The Freightliner doors open, and I head back towards them.

“Don’t go anywhere” Lt. Cressman yells at me. I give a quick wave in the air and consider how fortunate I am that I can hear with my back turned and my gesture wasn’t perceived as profane or anything.

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