Fellow guava runners,

I've been staring at this blinking cursor for three days trying to figure out how to write this. Turns out it's a lot harder to compose a goodbye than it is to outrun a county sheriff on a back road at 2 AM. But here goes.

Twenty-three years. That's how long I've been running this beautiful, ridiculous, completely unhinged gathering we call GuavaCon. I started it in 2003 out of the trunk of a rusted-out Civic with four crates of guava, a borrowed ham radio that only worked if you smacked it at a 37-degree angle, and a mass email sent to eleven people — three of whom I'm pretty sure were bots. I thought maybe we'd do it once, have a laugh, eat some fruit, and move on. Instead, it became the defining project of my life.

I want to talk about the people, because that's what this always was. Not the fruit, not the cars, not the radios — the people. I think about Murph, who showed up to GuavaCon III on a riding lawnmower because his license was suspended and he "wasn't going to let a technicality keep him from the convoy." He made it 94 miles before the engine caught fire. Bought us all drinks that night with the insurance money. I think about the year Dez and Phantom_404 got into an argument over the correct pronunciation of "guayaba" that escalated into a three-hour ham radio debate heard by at least two confused Coast Guard operators. They've been best friends ever since.

I think about GuavaCon VII — the year of the Great Port Wine Incident. Someone (and I have never confirmed nor denied that it was me) accidentally packed an entire case of 1974 Fonseca Vintage into the wrong car. That car belonged to a retired school principal from Boca who had no idea what GuavaCon was and spent the next three hours wondering why strangers in muscle cars kept flashing their taillights at her. She eventually pulled over, we explained the situation, and she not only gave the wine back — she followed us the rest of the way to West Palm and stayed for the party. She came back every year until she passed in 2019. Miss you, Mrs. Delacruz. Your guava empanadas were better than all of ours combined and we all knew it.

Then there was the night R0gu3wave figured out you could bounce a ham signal off a municipal water tower to extend the range of Code Guava by forty miles. We spent the entire drive from Cocoa Beach singing sea shanties on an encrypted frequency while a very confused FCC field agent tried to triangulate our position. He gave up somewhere around Fort Pierce. We sent him a guava pastry the next day. Anonymously, of course.

I'll never forget the year we had seventy-three vehicles in the convoy. Seventy-three. A river of headlights stretching down A1A like some kind of beautiful, illegal migration. A news helicopter picked us up near Jupiter and the anchor described it as "an unidentified procession of unknown purpose." Unknown purpose. Brother, we had more purpose in one trunk of guava than most people find in a lifetime.

Some of my favorite memories are the small ones. Hex and Jailbreak teaching a group of teenagers how to solder at the 2014 after-party while "Radar Love" played on a loop from someone's busted speaker. The time NullByte accidentally broadcast his grocery list over Code Guava and we spent twenty minutes debating whether he really needed that much cream cheese (he did — he was making guava cheesecake, and it was transcendent). The year a black bear wandered into our staging area in Melbourne and just... sat there, watching us load crates, like he was quality control. We named him El Oso. He has not returned, but we remain hopeful.

People ask me why I kept doing this for over two decades. The honest answer is that every single year, without fail, something happened on that drive that reminded me why the hacker spirit matters. Not the movie version with hoodies and green text — the real thing. The curiosity. The refusal to accept "because that's how it is" as an answer. The willingness to drive 200 miles through the Florida night with a trunk full of fruit just to prove that the people who say it can't be done are always, always wrong.

That's the rebel spirit of the guava runners. It was never about breaking rules for the sake of it. It was about looking at a broken system and saying, "Nah, we can do better." And then doing it. Loudly. At high speed. With excellent snacks.

Which brings me to the hard part. After 23 years, I'm hanging up the keys. My knees creak, my hearing's half gone from years of V8 exhaust and ham radio static, and my doctor says my blood is "at least 15% guava paste by volume" — which I choose to take as a compliment. It's time for someone else to lead the convoy.

I am proud and grateful to pass the reins to KSB and C0ldbru. These two have been in the trenches since damn near the beginning. KSB was the one who figured out the backroad through Yeehaw Junction that shaved 40 minutes off the '09 run. C0ldbru once fixed a blown radiator with duct tape, a prayer, and a can of guava nectar — and that car made it another 116 miles. They know this community. They love this community. They ARE this community. GuavaCon's next chapter is in the best possible hands.

To every single person who has ever loaded a crate, flashed a taillight, keyed a mic on Code Guava, or simply shown up with a bottle of port and a willingness to ride — thank you. You gave me more than a conference. You gave me a family.

Keep the engines running. Keep the guava flowing. I'll be listening on the frequency.

— Kevin (aka light_cosine) GuavaCon Founder, 2003–2026