Truth Hiding Un-Funny Planet Haters

Day 10

Hello, Everybody!

There is so much to share that I don’t know where to begin, but first I’ll send out a hearty thanks to all of your for your support—YERT has received nearly infinite assistance from countless people, and I am grateful to all of you for it.

• Thank you for signing up on this e-mail list before the trip even launched.
• Thank you for the free meals, free rooms, and free stuff. Oh yes, and free hugs.
• Thank you for caring about our planet, and laughing all the while.

The YERT launch preparations spanned a dozen states and eleven months. Many stones were left unturned, but we lifted up enough rocks to finally roll on July 4, and we’re suddenly now a week into this thing and loving every moment. We hope to continue turning stones over all year long, checking out everything from coal to ethanol to compost to eco-media to local economies to green housing to environmental policy to voluntary simplicity, and everything in between.

We hope to give you a fresh perspective, sometimes heavily edited, sometimes barely edited, always a window into our reality along the way. We’ll do our best to get it right the first time, but expect some course changes along the way. Nobody owns us, and we plan to say and do whatever the heck we want. So, look out, all ye truth hiding un-funny planet haters! YERT may very well drive all over your agenda.

I’m thrilled to travel with two multi-talented companions, Ben and Julie, who keep me sane and smiling every day just by being who they are. I tend to be a plan-heavy traveler, with my head simmering on the future of YERT and all that may transpire. Ben and Julie help me enjoy the present, and relish the past.

Speaking of plans, our website plan didn’t line up quite like we hoped, so we’re cobbling things together a bit late. You’d think that eleven months would be plenty of time to perfect things, but, metaphorically speaking, the earth shifted a bit as we laid the foundation of a brand new website, and the HTML code spilled out all over the floor. What metaphor is that, do you ask? I ask you to not ask. Just know that our blog is now functional, and that we’ll be rolling out new fun web features all year long.

Ben, Julie and I will be blogging as time permits during the year. Julie has proven to be most prolific, and we love her for it, but we each have a different angle on things so keep an eye out for posts from all three of us. Please also watch for our photos on Flickr, our map/route on Google, some polls to take your pulse, and new videos posted as quickly and often as we can manage. We’ll be making every effort to stay true to the “YOUR” in Your Environmental Road Trip, so dive right in and enjoy the flow.

You really can save the world for five minutes a day by sitting on your butt and watching, reading, or simply thinking about YERT. For free. It is that easy—but only if you promise not to stop when the YERT year is complete.

Somewhere in New Jersey,

Mark

YERT Co-Founder