Last week we announced that Desert Bus 5 will begin on November 18, 2011, and we know that many of you are already on the edge of your seats, wondering how you can get involved in the madness, like, right now. You’re in luck! For the creative, the artsy and craftsy, the make-nerdy-stuff-at-home inclined, we have a way for you to get involved right away, a full six months before the busing begins. You can participate in the Desert Bus 5 Craft-Along!

How? Allow us to demonstrate.

1) Read this ENTIRE post. Then email Tally at craftalong@desertbus.org to explain your craft idea and get her official approval.This is important so that we know what kind of items we’re expecting and can avoid too many of the same kinds of things. We also need to make sure that the idea fits within the guidelines of the Craft-Along which are (see below):

• Items should be somehow centered around the themes of Desert Bus, video games, general geekery or Loading Ready Run, so they’ll be of interest to our viewers. That’s a huge pool to draw ideas from.
• Items should be generally family friendly. They don’t all have to be appropriate for kids or anything, but no homemade Mario dildos, please.
• Items should be of the best quality you can make them. We want your work, but we want your best work, in order to bring in the best donations for the children.
• We will not be accepting portraits of the LRR crew this year. We’ve had a few of these (some very good ones, we must say) over the past years, and while we do love staring at ourselves for long hours in the mirror, we’re a little dubious that there are a ton of people out there who really really want our faces staring down at them from their living room walls. And if there are a ton of people out there who want this… we don’t really want to know about it.

2) Once you have received approval, make your item.

Probably best not to let your friends play with it, though.

3) Package your item carefully in an envelope or box, and then put it in a second envelope or box, to which you will affix the appropriate mailing information and postage. Please DO NOT SEAL the first (inner) box or envelope. We’ll do that later, after we take pictures and coo over your awesome item, and before we mail it to its new owner.

This step is so that when we get your item we don’t have to hunt around for packaging materials. We pull it out of the first box, and use the second box to mail your item to its lucky auction winner. Efficiency!

4) Email Tally again (craftalong@desertbus.org) to inform her that your item is finished and to get the appropriate mailing address. Be sure to fill out the very important Crafter’s Form that Tally will also send you at this point. Then send it back to her.

We actually prefer that you email your answers back, even though paper airplanes are wicked awesome.

An important note: Please email Tally when your item is completed even if you already have the Moonbase’s mailing address. We’d like to be able to keep track of what mail we’re expecting and what items have, in fact, been completed. Also, we’ll need to send you that form.

5) Mail your item.

6) When November 2011 rolls around, tune in to the madness of Desert Bus 5…

7) … and die of shock* when your Craft-Along item auctions for more money than you paid for your car.**

*This is the one and only step we’d actually rather you didn’t follow.
**This is actually possible. Not necessarily likely, but possible.

8 ) The deadline for us to receive Craft-Along items is OCTOBER 15, 2011. That’s the date by which they must have ARRIVED at Desert Bus headquarters. If your item isn’t here by that date, it risks being excluded from the Craft-Along. Late items are also guaranteed to cause Tally and Kathleen extra stress and possibly anger, and nobody wants that. (No, nobody does. Trust us.)

A quick recap of very important points:

• Please do not begin crafting your item until you have communicated with Tally about it and gained her approval.
• Remember to double package your item. This helps us out immeasurably.
• When mailing your item, DO NOT list its value on the customs form as any higher than $60 CDN.
• Remember to fill out the Crafter’s Form that Tally will email to you and email it back asap.
• Mail your item early enough that it will arrive by October 15, 2011.

9) Have fun and get crafting!

Onwards towards $60 000!

Post your questions in the comments for this post!

While John had little information on the mysterious EGM Desert Bus preview of 10 or so years ago, we’re interested to know more. Unfortunately, we don’t know the date or issue number . . . but if you have a copy and can somehow replicate it for us, we’d appreciate it a lot! stuff@desertbus.org

First off, as you’ve probably seen in the announcement posts, it’s going to begin at 6:00PM on Friday November 28th. It’s Thanksgiving weekend for the yankees, I know, but hopefully you can find time to fit us in between the turkey and the pumpkin pie, or somewhere in between the pie and the requisite midnight turkey sandwich. At the very least, you’ll presumably be home with your families, rather than out at work, so may I suggest you take the opportunity to introduce them to LoadingReadyRun, and get them in on the Desert Bussing action?

The second thing to know is that we’ll be running from Victoria, BC again this year, although we have a location other than Bill and Morgan’s living room. If you live in Victoria, keep an eye out, I’m sure there will be opportunities presented to meet the team or prticipate in a more direct way than simply watching the feeds.

We’ve also finalized our roster of drivers for this year! Returning to the driver’s seat are James, Bill, and Morgan. I’d have thought that they’d learned their lesson last year, but I guess I was wrong. Paul has been dropped from the lineup this year so that he can direct his focus to the technical elements – the stream, recording elements of the event, lighting, audio, the chatroom, and so on. We’re hoping to have things go a little more smoothly in the technical area this year, and we think freeing Paul up to handle it was the right move. Replacing Paul in the lineup this year is our very own Jeremy Petter. I think he’s pretty excited about taking the wheel this year, so I hope you’ll all be out in force to support him as he drives his legs of the trip. Graham and Kathleen are taking the roles of official pit crew this year, they’ll be ever present at the driver’s sides, supporting them and the audience in whatever capacity they require. And if you haven’t figured it out already, I’ll be handling the communications. I’ll be your main point of contact whenever I’m around (which should be essentially all the time). I’ll be handling the blog, updates, running the twitter feed, and moderating the IRC channel. additionally, I’ll be frequently checking e-mail, and keeping you up to date on dollar totals, and special events. You’ll be able to contact me in a wide variety of ways over the course of event, and if you have any questions, or comments, feel free to direct them to matt@loadingreadyrun.com, or contact@desertbus.org . I’ll be checking both regularly.

As you can see, Paul has just launched the new, improved Desertbus.org , so check the site periodically, and see what’s up. We have a lot of plans for this year’s drive. Some of those plans we’ve finalized, others we’re still pulling together. I’ll be filling you in with more information as it becomes available, so make sure you’re following one of our many information streams, either the twitter, the announcement thread in the forum, the blog, or here, at www.desertbus.org .

We’ll see you on the open road!

-Matt