Deliriously Busy
I desperately need to write a blog entry today but I have about 8 items to do in the next 8 hours, most of them physical rather than at the computer, and all of them scattered and taking me ‘all over town’. I barely have time to check email and get class updates up on my site. It’s been like this for weeks now, and the to-do list for the next few days looks just as bad.
I don’t know anyone else with 150 items on their immediate to-do list. I gave up on keeping The List typed up on my computer and PDA and have de-evolved back to a dedicated notebook and a pencil.
On the other hand, I have energy to do all of that.
I’m getting ready to head out in the van for three months. I’m getting very excited about it- I’m feeling well finally, and I haven’t been out on my own like this since 2004 (short trips in-state, and trips with Tom, don’t count). Three months is a very, very long time to be in a small RV (though in ‘04 I did the trip for two months, in the front seat of a pickup truck…)
Figuring out how to cram everything into the van will be a challenge- in ‘04 I had the entire truckbed as well as the trailer, and I"m still trying to figure out where to store the extra fuel tanks and other heavy-but-messies I’ll be using.
I spent the weekend in the Sierras at a friend’s Memorial Day Weekend party, after a sobering drive that started with passing a gruesome motorcycle accident involving someone’s body parts scattered all over the road.
The cabin is offgrid and up a dirt road, an inholding in the national forest. The steep dirt driveway really separated the men from the boys among us- past a certain point it was only passable by Ford 4x4 trucks owned by other homesteaders, while all of us city people with 2WD vans and anyone with small front wheel drive cars parked way down below and had our own little mini-encampment.
The trip was partially intended for me to figure out what I"m going to need for camping in the van. In between hikes I spent a lot of time sitting in it sketching out what the layout will be and making my to-do list for what I"ll need to do before I leave for Colorado in July, and it was incredibly helpful to see just what happens when sun beats down on it and so forth (actually, not much happens even in full sun- it’s really well insulated and comfortable for a dark-colored vehicle).
The next few weeks, just like the last few weeks, will be a blur of welding, testing, attaching, fixing, installing… Im putting in a locking differential so the next dirt road won’t be as difficult, putting up roof racks and building a shade structure that can mount on it if camping, finishing my trailer, rebuilding another vehicle’s engine (yes, one of these items is not like the others!), and about 139 more items that menace me from the pages of the to-do list.
Incidentally I’ve been working with a materials scientist on a Turk Burner optimization project, but that’ll have to be described in another blog.
Oh, and I have a Pennsylvania biodiesel class scheduled now, in September, in Chambersburg and Carlisle. There’s an advanced class involved. Check it out at www.girlmark.com/tour