The other day I built a parabolic reflector out of cardboard and some foil tape I had lying about. I was researching various homemade antenna designs I want to tinker with and stumbled on one that I actually had all the parts for on hand. As we are so close to the edge of EVDO reception here that moving down the hill a few feet would kill the signal, it seemed like it would be worth a shot. After all, it cost maybe fifty cents for the foil tape I used and the cardboard was free.

Now, this is hardly a good mobile solution as it’s fairly directional, but after spending twenty minutes or so on the roof pointing the reflector and testing bandwidth, I got pretty good results. The SNR increase doesn’t even register on the cradlepoint’s web interface, which is fairly lackluster, so I had to result to ping flooding our upstream router to detect a better signal. No, I didn’t DoS it, I kept the packet count to 100 at a time while aligning and 1000 packets for bandwidth testing.

I didn’t record all the numbers, but to give you an idea of the improvement: without the reflector, we were seeing 10-30% packet loss and average roundtrip times that ranged from 5 seconds to 9.5 seconds. Even at that, the connection was usable. Once the reflector was aligned, packet loss dropped to 0-1% and average roundtrip times stayed about 2.5 seconds. This equates to a 100-300% increase in bandwidth plus the bandwidth recovered from dropped packets.

The connection is hardly blazing fast, but it’s quite a bit more usable than previously. For our normal usage patterns, it’s actually quite acceptable. Bear in mind that our average roundtrip times are similar to 380ms. The previously stated times are for icmp packets being sent out as fast as possible and saturating the connection.

With that sort of improvement, I’m much more determined to build a waveguide antenna for times when we’re having trouble hitting a tower. Bonus points if I can fit both the wifi and 3g spectrums into the same antenna and use it for a wifi repeater as well.

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Rain enjoying a cool ice ball on a hot day.

So, making her Internet debut, we present Rain. Her parents are both working dogs that have worked cattle, sheep and goats in all sorts of weather ranging from snow and ice to hotter than hell southern Texas. Casey, her mother, is a blue heeler and her father is Slick, a border collie. Odds are pretty good that she’s too smart for either one of us, but with a little luck and a lot of treats, maybe she’ll tell us what we’re doing wrong.

The first few days, there was a lot of tension between her and the cats, but they are slowly getting used to her and only hissing when she gets seriously into their personal space. I’d rather not talk about my scars when she met Hunter the first time, though. Rain seems to be adjusting to a nomadic lifestyle much better than she liked the first couple of weeks while we were still working. Rather than spending so much time locked up to stay safe from the cats, she gets to go where we go and do what we do. In less than a week since we left the cave, she is already a different dog, and apparently, much happier!

Oh, if you were wondering, she’s currently 8 1/2 weeks old and her birthday is 5/25 if you want to send her presents.

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We had a few problems early on, but they seemed like just small issues. About a year ago, we were at the factory in Oregon and asked them to fix a ground bolt that had sheared off. The service tech pulled the water heater, replaced it and sealed it. He, however, neglected to actually replace the ground bolt. While there, we asked about the reason our camper is not actually square side to side and received the above quote as a response.

Two days ago, our fresh water tank fell through the bottom of the camper. Can you guess what I’m thinking about their overall design and build quality? I called them just to vent, not expecting more than the ‘we know that will break, so we put it in the owner’s manual’. That’s exactly what I got.

While pulling off the bottom of the camper, I found broken welds in every support throughout the camper. In fact, there was a broken weld directly under… wait for it… nothing. Most of the supports had more than one broken weld… every one of them had at least one weld broken on the passenger side… where the slide is. The average number of broken welds per brace was roughly three.

Most of the broken welds were just broken beads. I only recall seeing a couple where metal had actually sheared. Speaking of the metal, I had to bend a few pieces to get the wiring out of it while working on replacements. I managed to SNAP a piece of the aluminum with nothing but my hands and feet.

So, I have lots of little bruises from lying in gravel, but all six broken and completely under-spec’d braces have been replaced with two by fours. Tomorrow, Jenn gets to help support some shower board material to replace the luan that had to be broken in order to come out and we’ll have an enclosed camper again. Hopefully, nothing moves into our sub-floor in the meantime.

So, if you’re thinking of buying from Northwood, ask them to send you an owner’s manual so you can read their escape clauses first… and ask them just how many days a year the camper is designed to be used. Sadly, I forgot to ask.

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After a lackluster winter at Amazon’s Fernley facility, Jenn and I decided we’d be better off looking for a job we enjoyed than one that promised big bucks and may or may not deliver. As one of our interests is caving, we decided to try and get jobs at a cave for the summer, even if it meant working the gift shop and cleaning restrooms. It turns out that we lucked into one of the most amazing jobs we could hope for.

Our first choice of positions came through and we got workcamping positions at Caverns of Sonora. For those of you that have never heard of it, Caverns of Sonora is one of the most decorated caves on the planet. While there hasn’t been a study that I’m aware of, I believe it could very well be the most decorated cave in the world based on formations per square inch. We are lucky enough to be spending a fair portion of every day guiding tours in this cave.

The tour is a very up close and personal experience. We are literally inches away from formations throughout much of the tour. On top of that, we are working for some of the best people you could hope to be around. The cave is owned by a family that has owned the land surrounding it for five generations and the general manager has been a true caver for forty-six years. I can’t imagine a better work experience.

Words cannot begin to describe this beautiful cave. But to give you a general idea, we spent a week training with two to three tours a day that are close to two hours long and on our first day off, we took two tours through the cave just to enjoy it and take photos. I snapped five hundred and forty some odd pictures in three and a half hours. Almost eighty have been uploaded to the gallery. The pictures do not do the experience justice, but they are far better than words could ever be. I only wish I had half the photographic skill of the professionals who have done the off-trail photos.

The pictures for this post are chosen more or less at random as I would be very hard pressed to pick favorites from the photos we’ve taken so far. At twenty bucks a person, the tour pushes the limits of our budget, but it really makes me stop and think what beautiful things we may have missed over the past two years by being thrifty. I hope none of them were nearly as beautiful as this, but I will definitely think twice the next time we pass a ‘tourist trap’ by because we don’t want to throw our money away. Some of those traps are probably every bit as worthwhile as this one. Please take a look at the gallery. I’ve yet to see someone come out of a tour disappointed; in fact, the most frequent comment is ‘this is the prettiest cave I’ve ever seen.’

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Well, I threatened to make torches and knives once I got a cascade down with clubs. So far, I haven’t made any knives because I’m still too busy working on torches. I’ve now made 3 sets of torches. The first set was based on the green club construction and worked out pretty well. Eventually though, they started coming apart as the handle detached from the torch. Not good!

The next set I made wooden handles with the intention of swapping club/knife/torch heads out and using the same handles. There were a lot of issues with this version wanting to fall apart. On top of that, they were a pain in the butt to make, took some specialized tools and hardware to do correctly, a little painful to catch, and were just too darn heavy

Yesterday, I salvaged the handle wraps from my first torch set and made some fairly light weight torches. I skipped the aluminum tubing that protected the dowel rod in the previous design and just wrapped it in tinfoil tape. The handles are a little different as they widen up considerably more than the green club handles towards the top.

I did finally find a source for furniture tips, but they are just too light to counterbalance the torch heads even in this ultra light model. So… I’m still using drilled out golf balls for knobs. Will I ever find a better solution?!

I also made a few rings to juggle from clear vinyl tubing. It flexes a bit too much to juggle in the heat of the day without putting a layer of tape around the rings. However, if you wait for the evening and stick a handful of glowsticks from the dollar store inside, they don’t look half bad. The biggest problem with the glow rings as props is convincing the kids to let me have enough to juggle.

They’re pretty nifty little night time toys that are incredibly fast to make for very little cost. Kids love ‘em and I don’t have to keep refueling every 2-3 minutes if I want to juggle at night!

If you make a set of rings, I suggest getting a dowel rod with a diameter close to the inside diameter of your tubing and using a one inch sized piece to connect the tubing together. A couple of inches of electrical tape will secure it enough to stand up to a fair bit of abuse without coming apart.

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I guess it shook the whole SW. I received an email from liveworkdream.com stating that they felt it all the way over by Tuscon. Wow!

Above are maps from USGS showing the earthquake activity in this area (we are near Niland, CA) over the last week and the shake map for the 7.2 that hit yesterday. There are a lot more maps and information on their website.

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I’ve been juggling off and on since I was fourteen, but I never learned much more than a three ball cascade or two balls in one hand. Sure, I could juggle that way indefinitely, but it was kind of boring. This summer in Alaska, I had the good fortune to pick up a juggling book behind a second hand book store free of charge. Suddenly, there were lots of new things to try and a few tricks I had even forgotten about! Combine with lots of free time and stir well.

These days, I’m up to four balls in a fairly solid pattern. But my three ball juggling has gotten a lot more interesting… at least for me. I learned a handful of new patterns and techniques and then started mixing and matching them, which lead to a few things invented on the spot. I drop things a lot more, but at least I’m not bored!

The other day, we were in Wal-Mart and found a really nice, big super bouncy, brightly colored ball. It was a little bit light, but I thought, “Wow, this would look great!” A little hint, any time you’re looking for small, round, bouncy things and there’s only one on display… check under the shelves. Jenn grabbed a wiffle ball bat and rounded up another ten or twelve balls in a few minutes.

They’re a little bit light and a little big, but they are highly visible and have an incredible bounce. It took a few days, but now, they’re pretty comfortable to juggle.

Ok, so I can juggle four balls and make 3 look fairly pretty… but what about torches and knives?! Fear not, I’m working on those next. The thing about torches and knives is, they’re balanced like juggling clubs. So, first I have to learn to juggle clubs before I go around setting myself on fire and sticking pointy bits in my head.

Professional quality juggling equipment is actually rather expensive. I just couldn’t see spending $60-120 on a set of clubs only to find out I couldn’t get the hang of it. Or for that matter, to learn at the cost of abusing some fairly expensive (for me) equipment. Luckily, I ran across the Green Club Project, which was designed to make a very cheap juggling club from primarily recycled materials. To top it off, they also juggle better than some commercial clubs.

It took a few days of scavenging out here at the Slabs, but the cost to build a set of clubs was pretty minimal! I spent $5 on dowel rods and I had a couple of spare tennis balls that I had not yet turned into Russian balls. I wasn’t able to find any furniture tips that were the right size, but my neighbor suggested golf balls, which have worked out pretty well other than a few bruises.

I spent an afternoon putting these clubs together and I think they’re working out pretty well. I’ve spent a few days now abusing them and am starting to get the hang of three clubs. I think it’ll be at least a year before I feel ‘good’ with them, but Jenn already likes them more than balls since they’re even flashier. Once these are abused to death, I may even make a new set rather than buy commercial equipment. They really do juggle pretty well and it’s nice to be able to pick up ‘garbage’ and turn it into something functional.

Yes… I have plans for homemade torches. I think it’ll be a while before I’m feeling comfortable enough with the clubs to move up though.

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Place: Slab City, USA. Corner of East Beal and County road.

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Quartzsite is just not our scene. Two days would have been more than enough even if the weather had been great.  It was pretty crazy to pull into the BLM area the first night and see rigs lined up awning to awning just like a commercial campground. We had to go about a quarter mile deep into the area before we found a spot where we could get a mere hundred feet from a couple of neighbors. The next morning, we found out why the area was so ’sparsely’ populated as the kids in the converted school bus had breakfast and blasted the MTV version of the Grateful Dead over the world’s crappiest PA system. Ah, well… at least it wasn’t polka.

This morning, we got up ‘early’ to try and make it back to Slab City by dark. Apparently, I was still on California time and not really adhering to Jenn’s schedule. Still, we got out at a reasonable time and then sat in mid-morning traffic at Quartzsite while the rain started splattering. The wind had not stopped in at least 24 hours.

The crosswinds battered us all the way to Blythe, CA, where we stopped to do some shopping and laundry. We got an amazing deal on London broil at Albertson’s and had the butcher chop up a bit and grind a bit until we ended up with twenty-something pound of beef to squeeze into the freezer. By the time we made it the laundromat, the storm was starting to get feisty. Jenn volunteered to do laundry if I would make us some burgers.

You don’t have to ask me to cook a burger twice! Jenn says I made the burger Eddie Murphy’s mom used to make. They were somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of a pounds w/ sauteed mushrooms and onions stuffed inside along with barbecue sauce and mozzarella cheese on homemade bread. We finished eating just in time to get seasick!

No chunks were spewed, but I was sitting in the camper in my long johns waiting on clean pants when a nasty front hit Blythe.  We had 70 mph winds and a torrential rainfall that dumped 4 or 5 inches in something like 10 minutes. The camper was rolling back and forth like we were on the road and the rain drops were so big it sounded like hail on the roof. Jenn’s cat jumped up in the bed with me and whined the whole time.

As soon as it slacked off, Jenn brought a load of laundry with my pants in it and said ‘By the way, there’s a tornado 5 miles from here. Might want to put your pants on and come inside.’ Ten minutes later, the front had passed and we were ready to hit the road. Somehow we’d made it well into mid-afternoon and were still only twenty-ish miles from Quartzsite! The crosswinds were nasty for another twenty miles or so and we passed two over turned semis that were in the same area the tornado passed through.

The weather finally settled down a bit, but the wind is still fairly stiff and there are a few more fronts rolling in. We decided to call it a day at the dry camping area behind the General Patton museum in Chiriaco Summit. Jenn, who is an amateur meteorologist amongst her other talents, says the weather should be fairly tame here compared to what we’ve seen so far. Let’s hope she’s right!

Campsites mentioned in this post:
Chiriaco Summit
Quartzsite
Slab City

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Not to be outdone, Jenn has been working on freecampsites.net quite a bit. I’ve tried to help some, but my PHP is very rusty and the codebase is quite large. I think she may have gotten a small taste of my frustration last night. Since she has expressed at least a passing interest in my game, I talked her through adding a couple of features to the codebase while we were driving to Quartzsite!

I was impressed. As a C neophyte, she was still able to extend my existing functions as well as find and patch a bug while listening to my disconnected ramblings of where the problem was most likely to be. All of that, and my program still compiles and runs this morning! I’m only sorry that I couldn’t talk her into finding a bug in the display code I spent a few hours trying to find yesterday. But, that code is probably overly complex and due for some cleanup. Hell, I get annoyed looking at it and I wrote it within the last week!

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Parts! Lets see, cardboard boxes – check, aluminum foil -  check, stuffing for insulation – check, pane of glass – no dice! It was a good excuse for a few minutes and then I went outside. There I was reminded that we are camping in, for lack of a better word, a junkyard. Bleh. No more excuses! The only thing to do was wander around the desert for hours searching for a piece of intact glass until Johnny got worried about me, came to look for me, and said that he didn’t want me out doing that again. Brilliant. Another new excuse. Unfortunately, either I gave up too soon , Johnny thinks I am superwoman, or  just doesn’t mull over all of the possible things that could happen to me while I am out. I am going with superwoman.

After that defeat, I decided to formulate a new plan to guide me on my quest for a pane of glass.

Step 1>  Sit around and drink with the neighbors.
Step 2>  ….
Step 3>  Pane ‘o glass 4 me!!!!!

After much contemplation, it really did seem like the best course of action, and it turned out way better than I thought it would. Not only did a pane of glass appear (intact, amazingly enough)  within a few days, but it had a solar oven attached to it. Check this beauty out.

OK. So it’s seen better days, and I think those days were a couple of years ago, but it does have potential. After I cleaned the mud that had caked on the reflectors, knocked the things that looked like rats nets off and (mostly) cleaned up the glass, I decided it was probably a self cleaning oven an tossed it out in the sun. Well to my dismay it didn’t clean itself up, but it did get to 200F degrees. That was yesterday. I gave the self cleaning thing another shot today. It got up to a cozy 250F. Not too shabby. I think with a little love I might be able to coax it into making us dinner.

Another thing that I thought for sure I would do on the road is master the banjo. Ya um… that didn’t happen. At least not yet (see, I am still optimistic!). I was supposed to have so much time to practice. Once again, nada. I don’t think that I have taken the darn thing out more than 3 times in the last two years. I can make plenty of excuses though… “It’s in the outside storage compartment buried behind 30 other things and the camper is on the truck which puts the compartment about 6′ in the air.”, “Oh darn.. we have neighbors here. Well, I sure don’t want to disturb them with my failing frailing.” Oh ya, I have a million more. Excuses I am good at. Banjo…. eh,  not so much.

I am getting better, though! One of the local musicians who graces the stage of The Range (the local nightclub/stage) is giving me music lessons. He is mainly teaching me about the mind boggling fascinating world of music theory. He says that once I have that down, I will be able to play any instrument and will have a well trained ear. I hope he is right. Right now I am struggling with just one instrument. And, my ear? Well, I think it might be broken….along with my rhythm bone and my timing muscle.

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Unlike last year, we had two bikes and didn’t need to get the scooter out right away. At least, we had two bikes for a couple of hours until Jenn’s pedal came off because it had been put on the wrong side. Back to one bike and two riders, it was time to get the scooter running again.

Just like last year, it had another fuel leak. This time, however, nearly the entire fuel line was dry rotted and I wasn’t able to clip enough from somewhere else to fix the problem. But, like Leonard Knight says, ‘If you go eight miles out in the desert, you can find anything you need.’

By way of introducing myself to our neighbors, I wandered over, dodging a vicious puppy, and said, ‘Hey, you know where I can find a piece of fuel line?’ Now, if you’ve ever been looking for some random part in the middle of nowhere, you realize I didn’t really expect anything from this except, just maybe, directions to the nearest auto parts store. Instead, I got directions to the Slab City mechanic.

Sure enough, when I found him, he was able to scrounge up a bit of vacuum line that was the right size to replace the fuel line on our moped. Sure, it probably won’t last too long, but neither did the cheap rubber on our Chinese moped. The vacuum line, had already survived a car fire, which is more than I can say for the original fuel line.

We have a few other scavenger hunt projects going on. I hope they all work out half as well as the moped. But either way, it’s an interesting way to meet folks when you get tired of scrounging around the desert and decide to ask directions.

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I think we got lucky with a weather window and it seemed like a good time to get the heck out of frozen Fernley. Jenn’s alternate route was going to keep us in mountains for quite a ways, which would have been cold! Also, apparently there were numerous closed roads connecting to that route, which didn’t seem auspicious.

Hopefully, we’ll be finding a longish term spot in the desert tonight. Last night next to the highway and the train got old early.

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Well, Frosty here isn’t really made from Christmas snow. I built him a couple of weeks ago when Jenn went in for extra overtime and I stayed home doing laundry and stuff. I don’t think any of the neighbors noticed me building a snow man at 2 AM, but if they did, they probably decided I was the kind of person it’s best to avoid.

Sadly, he is a bit worse for wear after two weeks. His face fell off as soon as the sun came out the following day and his back side gets most of the afternoon sun, so he’s acquired a definite lean. Meanwhile, someone’s dog decided to mark him, so he appears to have peed himself a bit. Anyway, Merry Christmas!

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Image from www.toothpastefordinner.com

Integrity treats their people like crap and the only way I would work for them again is if I was COMPLETELY desperate or they were the only means to a job I really, really wanted. One example of their total disregard for people: Last night they let 100s of people come in and then laid them off before they even got 5 minutes on the clock. Most of those people had just driven 30-40miles to come in. It sucks being laid off when you want the job. It really sucks when you waste hours and dollars only to be told you no longer needed.

Integrity played so many unnecessary head games. They would write people up for things that were completely out of their control. Almost everyone who started the night I did got wrote up for not making their week four numbers (270) during week one. In orientation, they handed out a piece of paper that said what our expected UPH (Units Per Hour) was. In your first week, you were supposed to make 120 (I don’t have the sheet with me so that’s from memory). Each week it would ramp up. I think it was 180  in week 2 and 230 in week three. At the end of week 4, you are required to be at the same as the full time employees 270.

By the time my week 4 rolled around, there were too many people on the floor for anyone to get the UPH. Still, they kept writing people up for not getting their numbers. They didn’t write everyone up either. Just the majority. It was painful watching friends who really needed/wanted the job get picked on.

But, I will not miss the Integrity head games. Amazon seems like a decent company to work for. After what I experienced tonight, they do take good care of their employees and most of them are happy with their jobs. It was a completely different environment tonight after the temps had cleared out. Everyone was joking around and having a good time. And, even though there wasn’t any work, they found ways to keep us busy and paid. It didn’t seem like such a bad place after all.

This will probably be my last post about Amazon.com.

We discovered a pipe in our camper that had busted due to ice tonight. It is still frozen. I guess I know what we are going to be doing tomorrow .

We hope everyone is enjoying their holidays.

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A light snowfall. I know. Its not a big deal. There isn’t much snow out there at all. Its about as much snow as I expect when there is snow forecast and usually its gone by the next afternoon. However, this was no ordinary snow day for us.

An hour or so later, the snow had really started accumulating. The ground was completely covered. I was pretty grateful that the diesel had come equipped with a block heater which appeared to be working well.  In the next picture, you can see the “glacier” that had formed on the hood calving thanks to the block heater.

I worry about the diesel in cold weather, and I was pretty happy that it was plugged in. Thankfully, we have only had one cold weather related problem with it. That’s when we discovered the block heater and after a half hour of trying to locate the plug (that was in an hole too small for even my hands), we plugged it in and were good to go in a few minutes.

Because of our good fortune, I figured that the couple minutes of excitement we got watching the snow fall off the hood was going to be it for the day. I was wrong.

We went about our normal “morning” routine. When we headed of to work, we had some difficulties going up the steep slope we always use. No problem. We just took the other route. At that moment, we decided it might be best to put the truck in 4×4 and also avoid the interstate.

Other than watching a few vehicles lose traction, the rest of the trip to work was uneventful.

Work was work. 6pm-5:30am. The only difference is that we were recovering from a bug we picked up and were feeling mildly sick. There were also rumors that the interstate was shut down because of the weather. They seemed to be true. We can see the interstate from the job site and there wasn’t any traffic on it.

The real fun began after work. Johnny had offered some guys a ride home. He was going to wait inside for them, and I was going to go get the truck warmed up. Too bad the truck had other plans.

The truck didn’t want to start. It sounded like the batteries, but I figured that the diesel had gelled. I initiated the glow plugs a couple of times to warm it up. Johnny showed up at the truck a few minutes later, by himself. The guys were staying to get in more overtime and had found another ride. I bet they don’t know how lucky they were.

So again, my first thoughts were that the engine just needed to be warmed up but the glow plugs weren’t doing the job. No problem. We had the generator with us. We would just push aside the 5″ deep snow to make a spot on the ground and plug the truck into it. Unfortunately, we neglected to put a drop cord in the truck. Duh!

Johnny was convinced it was the battery, and I was convinced that the block needed to be warmed. Either way we needed supplies. Johnny being the super awesome guy that he is, trampled through the snow and ice (in a sweater, sneakers, and light nylon pant cargo pants) to Walmart where he picked up a quick charger and a drop cord. I waited in the truck like the “cold shy” person that I am.

Johnny returned with the cord and the charger. He freed the hood that had frozen shut, hooked everything up, started the generator, and we hunkered down (a phrase we normally reserve for hurricanes) in the truck anticipating another successful self rescue.

After a while, we started getting impatient. Johnny kept looking at the charger’s digital readout to see how much the batteries had charged. They hadn’t. He then walked over to our job site to see if someone would give us a jump. The only traffic that we had seen were compact cars that couldn’t possibly jump the F350. Johnny came back with a battery pack that the security desk gave him. It didn’t help in the slightest.

While Johnny was returning the battery pack, I decided to give my insurance provided roadside assistance a call. We had neglected to call them previously because we assumed it would be hours before they got to us since there were snow related car accidents everywhere. We were wrong. While I was on the phone, Johnny had returned with a truck that was willing to give us a jump. They tried for about 5 minutes and then Johnny sent them on because roadside was on the way, and he didn’t want to hold the nice people up.

My insurance company told me that they would have someone there in 40 minutes. It seemed like a good time to abandon the truck. We went into work for some warmth and coffee. Did I mention the temperature outside was probably in the single digits?

A few minutes later, I get a call from the tow truck driver. He said that he had been waiting on us for 5 minutes. Johnny headed straight there. The guy told Johnny that he had been hooked up to our battery for 10 minutes (I think the guy had some real concept of time issues). Anyway, the truck didn’t start and he said he was giving up on us. Johnny hinted at how nice it would be to get a ride to Walmart so we could purchase two new batteries. The driver offered to tow us the 1/4 mile to walmart for $150 and then left. I can’t say that I blame him, really. There was real money to be made elsewhere with a tow truck that day.

The clock was now rounding 10:00am, and we decided to do what we should have done all along: bite the bullet and replace the batteries that were in the truck when I got it with some new ones. So we hiked over to Walmart and purchased two new batteries (my big ass truck requires two). After a sandwich (mmmm.. I had forgot how much I like pastrami) and a warming up period, we snagged a cart to ferry the batteries and proceed back to the truck. I can tell you that pushing a shopping cart a 1/4 mile through 5″+ deep snow isn’t the most fun we have had so far, but we thought that it had to be a lot better than slipping on some ice and falling down while carrying two heavy duty truck batteries.

We made it back to the truck and installed the batteries. The truck cranked right up. Johnny tossed the old batteries and the shopping cart into the back of the truck. We went to Walmart to get our money for the battery cores and (of course) return the shopping cart.

On the ride home, we watched some more people who had forgotten how to drive in the snow slide all over the road. Perhaps they never knew.

We made it home safe, albeit late. Too late do to anything but sleep.  After the night we had, all we wanted to do was sit back, relax and have a drink. Unfortunately, the reclining chair was already occupied… with a lot of snow!

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This poor guy got all beat up by the machinery and had to be replaced before I could send it off to its loving new home. I threw the mangled one in to the “damaged tote” in the center of an aisle I share with 8 or so others. It was pretty amusing watching people notice it there, pick it up, and either cringe or crack up. The Avenging Narwhal Playset (with 4 magical horns and 3 adorable animals to impale)

The Avenging Narwahal wasn’t packed alone. He had the following to keep him company and give him tasty treats:

I really should have been in bed two hours ago, so I will only include one more. Another action figure by the same company: The Marie Antoinette Action Figure (with removable head, wig and gown)

Apparently these are part of a much larger set that include Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure (comes with 6 cats!), the Deluxe Librarian Action Figure (with realistic “shushing action”), and many more. Collect them all!

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The first thing to do, is go to an Asian food store and pickup red curry paste. Yes, I know you can occasionally find curry paste in your chain supermarkets, but you can actually get a large enough container to make several dozen meals for the same price as the tiny one meal container you might find in a chain supermarket.  In fact, the last curry paste I bought was in the neighborhood of $6 for a 35 ounce container. I don’t recall off the top of my head what the tiny containers you might find in supermarkets are, but I’d guess they’re under 2 ounces for a similar price. We hit an absolute dearth of Asian food stores in Alaska and thankfully couldn’t find the tiny containers either or I’m not sure I’d be able to live with myself.

Okay, that’s the big secret. I don’t have an actual curry paste recipe as that’s way more advanced than I want to be in the kitchen. Once you’ve got the obscure shopping out of the way, it’s one of the easiest meals you can make and still look fancy. As long as you’re in the Asian food store anyway, you might as well grab some coconut milk and whatever you like in your stir fry. Often the prices there are better than chain supermarkets anyway.

You can make stir fry, right? If so, curry is a breeze. Just make stir fry anyway you like it (but without soy or teriyaki sauce!). Depending on what we have on hand, I will use chicken or pork, broccoli, carrots, green pepper, onion, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, baby corn and bean sprouts. I recommend adding things like baby corn, mushrooms, bean sprouts and bamboo shoots last in order to keep from overcooking them. Once you’re done with the stir fry, set it aside and start on the curry sauce.

My personal method is to add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to the pan over low heat and squirt out some curry paste into the oil. How much is up to you. I tend to like it fairly spicy so add perhaps 2-3 teaspoons. Next, add in coconut milk. Anywhere from half a can to a whole can for two people will work – depending on how hungry you are and how ’soupy’ you like your curry. Getting the right amount of curry paste and coconut milk may take a little trial and error, but you can always add more paste if it’s not spicy enough and more coconut milk if it’s too spicy.

The next bits are optional, but I’ll just tell you the way I do things. If you want a more panang style curry, you can stop right here.  For a sweeter curry, add about a tablespoon of sugar and stir it in. For an even more diverse mix of flavors, I usually add some small pineapple chunks along with pineapple juice. Depending on what you’ve added to your stir fry, you may or may not need to add a little salt. Bean sprouts definitely negate the need for extra salt. Just let this simmer and cook to your own taste. Remember that the flavor will be a bit diluted by your stir fry and rice.

Once you’re happy with the curry sauce, toss your stir fry in and let it simmer for a few minutes. That’s pretty much all there is to it. Serve over rice. We just use white rice, but get as fancy as you want.

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Back then, we were in soul sucking, yet somewhat prestigious jobs and running the middle class treadmill. Well, I guess that by then we were only walking on it. We had already purchased the truck and camper. We had gotten rid of most everything we owned. We had had the camper for a couple of days and were moving what little of our stuff that remained into it. We were still working but only because we wanted to earn some additional money. At the very least, I wanted to make sure that I made the difference between what my Xterra sold for and what my truck cost back before we left.

The place we used to work. Our desks and the building.

We also wanted to see if we could actually spend every waking hour together in a confined space. We had already been working together, in the same department, for years. Of course that means that we rode into work together, too. But, there was always that reprise of a big* house. While we would naturally come home and sit a few feet apart from each other in one of the computer rooms, there were lots of rooms and doors, and we could go get some solitude if/when needed. In the camper, there are only two rooms and two doors. One of those doors lead to the 3×3 bathroom, the other exits the camper. Spending those 4 months working our old jobs and living out of our camper was a million times easier than I had expected. The only problem that I think I had was the fact that I couldn’t really spend a lot of time doing my hair anymore as there just wasn’t enough space in the bathroom for all the stuff that is involved. Oh and the fact that black dress suits and two cats in a confined space = spending a lot of time with a roll of tape trying to remove tons of fur.

Our rig in 2007 and now in 2009

So, here we are two years later and happier than two peas in a pod. Seriously. Has it all been marshmallows and rainbows? No. But, its been real close. So far we have been very lucky. Part of that might be that my outlook has really changed. In times of adversity, I find pleasure. And, while we haven’t worked a lot on the road, the jobs that we have had have been pretty strenuous. So far, I have really enjoyed challenge and diversity of the work we have done.

I hope that the year ahead is as enjoyable as the previous two have been. I hope to work more during it. After we leave Amazon we are going to head south and then make our way back east. I will probably try to get a short term gig as we make our way through Quartzsite. It would be great to land one in Carlsbad, New Mexico too, but I don’t think that is going to happen. When we are not working, we will be attending a plethora of caving conventions. We missed almost all of them this year as the majority are on the east coast.

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