Convoy

CONVOY

The convoy starts moving at 1AM. Today is Saturday, July 2nd of the July 4th weekend, which we hope will be symbolic. It being a Saturday means the Tuesday–Thursday–Saturday dialysis groups will be affected first by our encampment, but all local dialysis patients outside will be affected by July 4th. Our fleet of 24 Freightliners (half electric, half diesel Cascadias) is pulling two dozen 40-foot containers. A dozen Ford 650 Box Trucks are carrying the tiny houses in collapsed form and other supplies. And a dozen Ford F450 Duallies pulled various 5th-wheelers, but predominantly Living Vehicle Pro models for their solar power. Two tanker trucks were full of mostly diesel with some gasoline mixed in. There are also a large number of Jerry Cans of diesel and gasoline within the containers, along with lots of other supplies (especially fresh water) redundantly dispersed around all two dozen. We spaced the departure of each truck by about a minute, with an escort SUV for each vehicle.

It took almost an hour to get the final of the 50 trucks on the road. The first half of the trucks had parked before the second even started, so we only needed a couple dozen escorts.

Our encampment — is the empty parking lot of the mostly vacant Peninsula Boardwalk shopping center. This used to be somewhat thriving with a Toys R’ Us and other magnet stores. But the universe killed those stores, and only a rarely patronized Sports Basement eventually took its place. The shopping center is notable in a few ways: first, it is right next to the 101 Freeway that is the major corridor up the peninsula side of the Bay Area. Billions of dollars and millions of people travel that road, many of them to Facebook/Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple. The parking lot is visible from the 101, so everyone will see our presence as of sunlight. It should be newsworthy. Second, the shopping center is right next to the canal to what was a low-cost housing area on the bay. People lived in house boats in

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the canal and marina on the Bay side of the freeway. Presumably the name ‘Boardwalk’ was meant to conjure being on the bay or ocean. But that inexpensive housing approach was recently 'transformed' into $1M+ homes at much lower density, and the house boats kicked out. Affordable housing became insanely unaffordable housing in exactly the same area of the city. Third, the parking lot is not being used even to 10% of its capacity because the car traffic to the shopping center is insignificant. All the people shopping there could easily use the nonfreeway side parking without having to compete for spaces. At worse they have to walk around or through the Kohl, like they would in any indoor mall. Fourth, the parking lot is quite large, and we can easily create a 600-foot x 150-foot (2 acres) space within it. The perimeter is established by the Cascadias and their trailers, where each is 70 feet long. Including some amount of overlap and redundancy, the perimeter is 3 + 9 + 3 + 9 = 24 rigs. Two of the rigs on each end are make-shift sliding doors. A hill to the 101 forms the North-East border, the Sports Basement forms the South-West, there is a bridge over the canal in the North-West entrance, and the main entrance is the rest of the parking lot to the South-East. Our encampment isn’t a fort, but you also couldn’t wheel up an armored battalion and just roll over us. At least without it being quite a scene to those on the 101.

The perimeter is set up — as the last rigs (which become the doors) roll in. We are working rapidly to get the containers on the ground and stowing the chassis out of the way in the remaining parking lot. If people take our chassis (or the exposed Freightliners), it will take that much longer for us to be moved.

The container access doors are all ‘inside’ and test-opened to confirm we can get to the provisions within them. A couple containers have special side entrances because both of their ends are exposed. To speed up the process, the perimeter looks more like a very-squished hexagon. The side entrances are needed at the top

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and bottom, where all the rest (except the doors) can face ‘left’ or ‘right’ as you look down on the hexagon. We lose a fair amount of internal space to the thickness/width of the containers and parked Box Trucks, but we still have a 500 x 100 foot (more than an acre) remaining space. We have about 120 live people and two dozen vampires, so our density is a bit better than the Buena Vista amusement park.

The fifth-wheelers provide facilities — like bathrooms and kitchens, and the Living Vehicles also provide a large amount of Solar power. The ones we have potentially pull over 3kW from the sun and can store more than 2kW-days. We ended up with eight of them to get 25kW and more than a kW-week. They are also our primary dialysis caves, so are the most essential. We also have caves set up in the containers in case the primaries are targeted, but getting power to them requires either wiring or a diesel generator. And washing is more complicated. We did bring a large number of 'cable speed bumps' so we can run electricity and water where ever we need them.

The other four fifth-wheelers are all Forest River Sandpipers because they have two bathrooms. In total, we have 16 bathrooms, which is quite luxurious for a group like this.

Pico Pico Houses are rectangular cubes — normally 40 inches by 80 inches by 52 inches high. These dimensions come from standard pallet sizes: a 48x40 and 32x40 are combined side-by-side. The houses come unassembled (floor, sides, ceiling, all stacked on top of each other), and are less than two feet high in that form. In an eight-foot high container or box truck, you could potentially get two per 40x48 floor space, of 10 in a 20-footer, 20 in a 40-footer. We have less than 160 people, so need 8 40-foot containers dedicated to this, or have them dispersed in the box trucks. We spread all supplies around fairly evenly in case any trucks were attacked or crippled somehow. With the perimeter setup, the Solar deployed, and the containers

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all verified, about half of the group starts assembling houses while the other half rests or patrols. Although we use power wrenches to assemble the Pico houses, there is enough freeway noise combined with distance to any housing to make us as quiet as a bat.

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