I am beginning to lose track of where and when I am — I woke up this morning and it took a while to puzzle out exactly why I was in this hotel room. We did have a fun time with the UC Santa Cruz Secular Student Alliance and the Secular Humanists of Santa Cruz County with a packed room and another long night of discussion. Besides, the sun has finally come out, I got to see redwoods and surfers, and it actually looks like California for a change, instead of Seattle.

Today I’m heading off to Cupertino and De Anza College, speaking in De Anza College Forum 1 at 2pm. Note the earlier time; I think we’re hoping to get the crowd just coming off their Sunday church lunch. It may also mean I can get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight, because I’m feeling the lack of sleep piling up in my head.

Last night was another lively and fun meeting, hosted by the only SANE people at Berkeley—as is typical, the questions were the most entertaining part of the event, and they just kept coming. Maybe I should be brave and just skip the whole lecture part and stand up there and let ’em keep me dancing with weird questions, for two or three hours.

Today, though, I’ll probably open my mouth some more first. I’ll be heading up to Santa Cruz, a rare place with a deep appreciation of our molluscan cousins, and will be speaking at 7pm in the Bay Tree Building, Third Floor, Cervantez and Velasquez Room. I hope it’s a big room, crowds have been on the order of 400 or so. Although it has been raining a lot, so maybe fewer Santa Cruz students will show up because they’re all out cuddling the happy, booming population of banana slugs.

I do love me a banana slug, too.

I’m holding up just fine so far, despite having to keep up with slightly younger college students who can stay up late and drink. Last night it was the students of UC Davis’s Agnostic and Atheist Student Association, and I also met the ferocious Truth Machine and the professorial Zeno. Oh, and Jonathan Eisen twittered bits of the lecture. I should probably suggest people use a #pz hashtag or something to make that easier to find.

Today I’m off to talk at Berkeley, 7:00 at 2050 Valley Life Science Building, UC Berkeley. There are rumors that I’m a firebrand, but really, I’m just a guy with poor impulse control.

We had a good crowd, lots of questions, and an interesting group of student skeptics at UCSB this evening. Next up is a little sleep, then a plane hop to Sacramento, and a talk at UC Davis at 6:30, in 194 Chemistry. I also think I’ll break up my next talk a bit more; this one bounced about over some fairly dense sciencey stuff, and a little more variety and more opportunities to discuss should be more fun.

Hey, I’m in sodden, stormy California! Just in case you hadn’t heard, I’ll be speaking at the University of California Santa Barbara tonight at 7, in Embarcadero Hall. It should work…I’m still a little bit skewed towards Midwestern time, but 7PST isn’t that bad. The fun will start afterwards when someone hands me a beer at an hour way past my usual bedtime, and I pass out in public. You don’t want to miss that!

It’s kind of like stage diving into a mosh pit, I think. I’m leaving for Santa Barbara this afternoon, beginning a week-long tour of a big chunk of California. Zeno has cruelly pointed out that my itinerary is a bit convoluted, but I say you take the tour you’ve got, not the one you wish you had.

The amazing thing is that I scarcely know what I’m doing. I show up in Santa Barbara tonight, and I’m hoping I’ll be caught by the locals (you know who you are: you should get in touch with Lyz at the SSA, who’ll give you my secret cell phone number), who’ll show me a couch or a bed or something, and then each day afterwards I’m just sort of expecting someone will show up or contact me and guide me to the next event in the schedule. Zeno is right that the tour leads me all over the place, but from my perspective, it’s all pretty much Brownian. I shall be buffeted by the impact of chaos, and I shall enjoy it, unless I get dropped and end up spending a night sleeping on a sidewalk in Fresno or something.

I’ll be back in Minneapolis on the 29th of January, where the Trophy Wife™ will meet me with a pile of clean underwear so I can repack for my trip to Ireland and the Affront to God tour, leaving on the 30th. I’m still juggling a few of the details on that one, so I’m not going to put up a map just yet…but I will note that when I sketched out the preliminary route there, Dublin to Galway to Cork to Belfast, my son snarkily pointed out that I’ll be making the sign of the cross over the island. I may have to rejigger something, since that would be blasphemous, and we can’t have that, no sir.

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A lot of people are asking about social hours after the talks. I HAVE NO PLANS. I am but a feather in the wind. However, I’m also really easy, so if anyone wants to drag me away and ease my parched throat with local brews, I’ll be amenable.

I think I’m on BlogTV right now.

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Done now! If my end was fuzzy, blame it on the fact I was trying to do it from a hotel connection at a tech conference full of people sucking down the bandwidth.

I am going against the herd here at ScienceOnline 2010 — I am not tweeting and blogging throughout the event, but am just sitting back and enjoying the talks, while all the nerds are pounding away at their keyboards. (Note sneaky implication that I am not a nerd with the rest of ’em.)

However, I did just do my interview with Reddit, so it’s all recorded and done with and merely awaiting editing and publishing. It will probably be available online on Tuesday — be patient, I’ll put up a link when it is available.

I will remind you also that tonight at 9pm EST I’ll be helping to raise money for relief in New Orleans by battling a preacher on BlogTV. This is a great sacrifice for me, since I’ll be dragging myself away from the bar and the lively group of people here at SciOnline to answer a pile of questions from a well-meaning but entirely delusional fellow. Tune in, cheer and howl, and kick in a few bucks if you can to the effort.

I’ll be back in action tomorrow.

I’m going to be doing an interview with Reddit later today, and they’ve opened a thread to collect questions for me. I’m already a-scared. Hold me, Mommy.

That amazing fact should go right on my résumé. Although I was challenged to stand outside in nothing but my light jacket for 20 minutes to get the true Winnipeg experience, and I demurred — I’ll save that for my next visit, when I’m ready for the advanced class.

Anyway, I had a grand time at a talk hosted by the Humanist Association of Manitoba. People around here asked a lot of good questions, it was a lively evening, and they even had one brave creationist ask me a question (“How do I explain molecules to morality?”^*). Then we stayed up until 1am working through some Canadian beer. If you’re living anywhere near Winnipeg, you ought to join the group for more regular opportunities for godless get-togethers.

Now, unfortunately, we have to make a long drive back home, and also be very, very polite to some American border guards. I’ll holler for lawyers, guns, and money if anything happens at the trepidatious crossing.

^*My answer was to point out that he’s demanding a bit much for a short answer. Forget the molecules part, since they don’t exhibit morality; all you need to know is that a population of apes found it advantageous to regulate their activity to promote cooperation, and voila, here we are, apes who say that rape is a bad thing.