Diary of a Mad Scientist

Another System Tricks class will be held on August 4 or 5:
www.girlmark.com/tour

… I seem to be all set to go.

A month ago I thought I was such a wreck when it came to my leaving-for-tour schedule.

But now…

The trailer system is in pieces but ready to re-assemble onto the trailer.

I’m nearly moved out of my house. Tom walked into my room today and said ‘you could be all moved out in two hours’.

My shop is organized for the times when I come back a week at a time . Of course, ‘organized’ means I just put a lot of stuff onto a ‘deal with in 6 months’ rack, way up high.

I made good friends with Craigslist and virtually all of my furniture and excess ‘big stuff’ flew out the door at the same prices I’d paid for it two years ago. The good Craigslist giveth, and the good Craigslist taketh away. That means I essentially had ‘free’ furniture (and bicycles, kitchen equipment, etc) for two years, and now I don’t have to store it for the next few months.

My auto tools are in order, I’ve figured out what else I need, and no major automotive crises seem to be on the horizon for the van (the car’s another story but that might just become Tom’s local driver- no out-of-town trips- till I get back).

Somewhere in the midst of this I had that major Lyme-or-mercury-toxicity-symptoms problem, spent a lot of time vegetating on the couch at the shop. In the midst of all of that I also had to haul Tom to the emergency room when we thought he’d broken his leg helping me last week, which screwed up our collective progress on our moves/move-ins/projects for a few days.

One of my fun Lyme-or-mercury symptoms last week was spending a few nights in total anxiety, not getting enough sleep, feeling horribly incompetent all day trying to get over the lack of sleep. I hadn’t been insomniac in months, and before that, my Lyme sleep pattern was that of isomnia at night coupled with very deep sleep and inability to wake up once I finally went under. Last couple of months and especially once I’d had my latest Lyme relapse it became weird and different- I’m easily woken up now and I actually started dreading sleeping at my house because my loud roommate keeps odd and loud hours, with habits like using power tools at 1:30 am followed immediately by early morning bellowing into the phone just inches from my historic-architecture, paper-thin door. I started freaking out about my inability to control my sleep patterns (I don’t normally ‘freak out’ about things much, this new anxiety is a bad development). Last week in the midst of my Lyme-induced insomnia and light sleep, I woke up to him arguing with and yelling insults at some guy (who I think was his client!) at 7:30 in the morning directly outside my non-soundproof paper-thin door.

Anyway, the upshot is that now that I have late-night insomnia AND early-morning insomnia, I found myself in the absurd position of laying awake at night BECAUSE I’m worrying about whether I’ll get woken up by something in the morning.

I finally got over the insomnia one night and drifted into good sleep- only to be woken up by a damn EARTHQUAKE that rattled the house at 4 oclock in the morning.

Somehow I’ve managed to be functional enough to keep making progress on The To-do List.

And before then I’d spent several weeks helping Tom move out of his place, build his new place, screw up royally in the process of the move-out, and so on.

I can barely believe it that I’m nearly ready to go, and I still have lots of time left here.

Of course I managed all of this by not turning on my computer AT ALL for a week. Today was a no-fun day of catching up. Hence the procrastinating (I mean blogging)

I’ve been going nuts for the past two months trying to figure out my trailer situation. I have an 8 x 5 trailer (8 x 5 being the deck, not including the wheels), and about three weeks ago I became resigned to the fact that I really have exactly 6 x 10 worth of tanks and tools to fit on it.

Adding to the frustration, I need a trailer configuration that doesn’t exist- a flatbed on the back over the axle for the system, and an enclosed ‘tool room’ on the front that I can throw class supplies into. I spent the 2004 tour fighting rain that constantly flooded my plastic class supplies bins. I hated having to tie down/untie tarps, worried about losing things (in fact some Biodiesel Homebrew Guide loose pages- back when I hand-collated all of the copies- went flying like confetti across an Iowa cornfield just three miles from the BECON ISU energy demonstration plant when a plastic bin lost it’s bungees and therefore it’s lid… The ridiculousness of the situation had me laughing at that one as I chased after the forty copies of Page 83-84 blowing across the highway in a record windstorm)

For about 5 weeks I went through some heartache trying to get Jeremy, a neighbor at NIMBY, to sell me his 6 x 10 Big Tex 35-SA that sits at the end of our street, unmoving, taunting me with it’s 6 x 10 vastness. I can fit three tanks across on a 6 x 10, and only 2 tanks across on a 5 x 8, and I REALLY want three tanks across. I really want my three tanks across near the axle, not lined up one side. I also need to spend some time welding a new superstructure onto the trailer so I can fit the system and all of it’s plumbing onto it.

Once I finally tracked the neighbor down, there was a big game of financial Tetris involved, which took my hopes up and down a rollercoaster ride of yes-no-yes-no’s. Jeremy needed a bigger trailer and I knew of a bigger trailer being sold by Don, but Don had promised it for loan to the Kinetic Steamworks folks, and it took forever to figure out if these things could all be rearranged without someone looking like an asshole and whether Jeremy could even afford Don’s trailer in the first place. I needed a Jeremy-sized trailer and he was willing to sell it for the great price of $600 but had-to-figure-out-if-he-could-afford-the-bigger-trailer and I was negotiating with Don, the seller of the bigger trailer for him. Summer’s the bad time to try to get a cheap trailer in the Bay Area- they’re all going to Burning Man for one last hurrah before sale in September. In August of 2004, when I also left for tour right before the artists left for Burning Man, I had to really fight someone for the rights to keep the 8 x 5 I’d finagled out of him earlier.

Annoyingly, I only figured out that I DEFINITELY need a larger trailer about three weeks ago, when I took a ‘test flight’ trip to the North Coast and realized that I can’t handle the tools without a bigger tool room.

Last week Jeremy gave up and realized that he can’t come up with money for a Bigger Trailer at this time, dashing my Big Tex 35-SA hopes for good.

I took my dejected self to stare at the 8 x 5, and decided to just expand the 8 x 5 to 10′ long- it won’t solve the ‘three tanks across’ problem as elegantly as a 6′ wide would, but I’ll just have to live with it. After the System Tricks class I’ll weld up the tool room. For the tool room, I need to find a Wells Cargo style raintight side door (I don’t want to fabricate my own door- I think the smartest thing is to splice in a side door from a well-made enclosed trailer)- do they sell them as spare parts? Can I find a crashed enclosed trailer at a junkyard? Anyone got a good solution for this for me?

answers or trailers may be emailed to Alovert@b100.org

The most exciting thing I did this weekend was attend the community meeting that Biofuel Oasis put on about their move. Basically, there’s a semi-controversy being stirred up over the fact that their new landlord seems to be evicting a prior business to make room for Oasis. It’s not exactly true, but there’s now an email war flying around the area with well meaning people thinking that Oasis is buying a building and evicting a poor tenant (they’re doing neither).

More info shortly.

I was supposed to get on a red-eye flight to Denver in a few hours to head to the Colorado co-ops conference. Unfortunately, I’m sick again. My Lyme symptoms came back after my bout with the mercury amalgam removal procedure a couple of weeks ago.

The problems are actually pretty mild compared to earlier in the year- each relapse is easier to deal with than the previous. I actually managed to do a ‘test flight’ road trip last weekend that required a half-day drive each way, and it was no problem doing the driving even though I was sick- so there’s no chance that this will impact my upcoming tour.

But last night after a day of brainfog and fighting the exhaustion, I decided that it was really smarter to stay home and take meds rather than do another weekend of travel right before I’m supposed to have my act together for my Big Trip in August. (I’d dropped out of the conference organizing when I was sick in April and fell off the face of the biodiesel planet, so this isn’t a big tragedy other than that I’m personally bummed to miss it).

I just took my first Lyme antibiotics in 8 months tonight. I’d been symptom-free for the past two months just on herbs alone, but I have an unchangeable date with the road in three weeks, and a trailer system to finish, and an RV van to outfit, and I’m not taking any chances.