Tire Empire

* ...new format =k *

Captain's log. (day 158)

Monday, January... no, February 6^th. 

Arrival. I was apprehensive. Quemado is a tiny town. Nay, not even a town, a collection of buildings and some streets with people doing business or not. We followed Andy back to their house (actually, at first I wasn't even quite sure it was Andy, I just assumed because kids got into this truck that had farming- and organic-related bumper stickers. I didn't quite remember how old their kids were. It further checked out when we stopped at a school and another kid got in the truck). We met Shannyn briefly, but it was their youngest son, Emerson's, first birthday, so we just kept to ourselves and stayed in the WWOOFer dome [correction: their dome - they lived in it during summers mostly at the beginning, 5 or so years ago]. We cooked some pasta and heated up boxed tomato soup. I think we had some snacks, maybe, not quite sure about that. 

Lunch in Albuquerque, near a park

Andy's shop in Quemado

Fence/gate looking west toward some more of their property (40 acres total)

The dome!

Entering the dome!

The shitter! out behind their house

Tuesday, J-- February 7^th (day 159)

Charlotte's departure. 

We woke up in the middle of the night (3:30) from cold – before bed I put way too much wood in the stove and it had already been hot but by the early morning it was just cold. I got up to put some more wood in. Then we slept a few more hours. Eventually Charlotte continued packing (the propane lantern ran out of juice and though I had my luminoodle (thanks kickstarter), Charlotte didn't feel like packing any more at night). We took a tour around 8:45, Charlotte fed the chickens, I fed the rabbits, we viewed the pigs from afar, and also saw the horses and donkey. In all, there are.. a bunch of chickens, maybe six bunnies (four albino two brown), four pigs (two sows or whatever, two boars), three horses, and one donkey. Also, there are approximately four dogs and two cats.

I learned about feeding today. I fed them by myself in the evening, hopefully properly. Actually, I forgot to.. no wait Andy will give the two horses that are in the corral more water. I remember now how dirty my fingers are as I type this, sorry laptop. Feeding seems to have taken two hours. Maybe just one. Maybe not even one. Also, I split wood earlier. That apparently went on for at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half. I split enough for a wheelbarrowful for me and then at least two more, so their kids don't have to split tonight nor hopefully tomorrow. Before that I ate cup noodles. Before that I roamed around kind of tidying up, including rebuilding a section of the tire wall, at the front gate, and just looking at stuff they have – this week, maybe tomorrow, Shannyn and I will work on building another pig house. She will be subdividing the pig pen into three and yes this is getting quite long but it's a goddamn captain's log so fucking deal with it. Pictures will follow. Anyway, the mama pigs gotta get mama'd up soon, so there. Pigs will be their big money maker, and just about the extent of their commercialization or whatever. Bunnies aren't cutting it. I have a pimple between my eyes, in the midst of my unibrow, but it itches.

As I wait for some water to boil with the power of wood burning, I feel too warm. I shall place the thermometer next to me to ascertain the extent of the heat pouring over me. I plan to eat some elbow noodles and probably other things later. Perhaps I'll watch a movie before going to sleep, maybe whittle a little. Ha. Hahah. A little whittle.

Ah yes, the thermo currently reads 70 and is steadily increasing. What hellish heat I have bestowed upon my person... It is now at 72. At least I have electricity, thanks to a pulley-based device called a generyank. It is noisy and I pray that the entire host family doth not desire to forcibly remove my spine through my rectal cavity.

73 degrees, 37% humidity and dropping.

Good heavens, 75 and 35%! [yeah that's nothing, it eventually got down to 16% humidity] [also here's where shit's gonna get weird, I just realized that the text will be before pictures, but won't necessarily encompass the story the pictures tell. That'll be explained by the next blog of text, I think, usually... anyway it'll be an adventure to read! It was three weeks anyway so whatever. You'll get it, just look at the pictures and then read the shit afterward? Idk man]

Charlotte drives away in Valerie's Rav4 (I thought to take a picture when she was out of sight...)

I quite enjoy splitting wood. I may or may not have split that whole pile, don't remember.

Brought that shit in to the dome, where there isn't exactly a place to put wood.

Evening feeding

Electricity! That extension cord connects to the generator outside.

Yum yum eat em up

Tex the horse and Nelson the donkey, also Shannyn's parents' cabin back in the corner of the property

Here are... the other horses! In the corral!

Mothafuckin pigs.

Strawberries planting!

Check it out, I put stuff on fire like every day.

The mulch still exists, the strawberries are protected!

Shannyn gave me beans whose name I forgot! They'll be the first thing I plant in the nevads.

Blargh

Sunset on Wednesday I suppose, after feeding (around 5).

Thursday I worked at the shop cause Andy needed help with a backlog of cars from his first sick day Tuesday.

Yup, they had a bathroom with running water and electricity and everything.

Another day, another sunset.

Uh.. Friday. 

(day 162?) 

Getting pretty behind. Well, I fed animals and then planted strawberries on Wednesday. I also stapled some rubber shit to the door of the dome to seal it better.

Then... Thursday I went with Andy to the shop, helped them work on cars and finally got my first experience working as a mechanic. I was nervous, I have never really worked on any car though I always wanted to, just too afraid probably. I helped put a transmission into a big pickup truck. Tons of ranches out here and all. That thing was pretty fucking heavy, weighed probably like two people, and we used a jack while lying on the ground under the truck which was up on jack stands. Later on I learned how to replace brakes (calipers, rotors, and all) and saw Andy replace wheel bearings. Friday I went back again and did more brakes, saw U joints being replaced, and generally just helping out. Thatcher, someone who actually WWOOFed with his wife, Nicole and son, Adi, at Andy and Shannyn's three years ago, works there with Andy and his son came by as he does sometimes after school except today he got his permit (also they only have school Monday through Thursday cause you know rural area, people got farms and need help with shit, especially animals). He and I ended up sweeping some of the garage and driveway leading right up to it. I ended up shoveling a bunch of dirt off the ground actually, made it quite different. The dirt hump is no longer there.

So yeah anyway, also yesterday we followed Thatcher and his wife, Nicole (along with Adi obviously) to the property they will potentially be buying around here [unfortunately that fell through...], a nice spot a few miles down a dirt road, on a hill. There are eight acres and a bunch of trees. There are structures already built, but they are so bare that they get to do whatever they want. There are shells of a house and room and shed on the property and Nicole is apparently planning on building a pizza oven eventually.

Also this morning we went to Springerville, Arizona (closest city, albeit small (it's no New York thankfully)) to pick up some parts.

I've been watching Iron Mans instead of doing this. Also I didn't feel like it the other day.

Another day, another bunch of trucks to fix.

Andy's rules (perks of having your own business, as Charlotte said)

Remember that picture showing this thing hanging on wood to dry? Well, some of it melted. Now we've got a pumice stone bit.

Bath time!

Sunset time!

Sue, who we might come back for (~8 month old Rottweiler mutt they took in)

Finally started on this, a piece of wood from the old battlefield in West Virginia.

The curves started to suggest themselves.

Saturday; Thatcher, Nicole, and Adi came over! (Andy said it shows how much of a redneck I'm not that I never heard of people putting beer cans up the chickens' asses to hold them upright for cooking...)

Chimney replaced! It was so windy that Andy came over to help me deal with the pipes

These two pipes were flopping around, so Andy brought the long one to replace them on top (now the chimney is two long pipes going out of the furnace)

So... the dome still leaks right over the bed apparently. Luckily, heat!

One of my favorites now. Finally getting kinda fancy with them.

Started snowing one night...

I'm a dirty feets boy.

It really snowed. Luckily this only lasted like two days (then it rained)

Sue (or Maya as I started calling her) hung out with me (but the next few days she peed in the dome twice so out she went again)

Drying wood

Cooking on the stove (who needs lids when you have other pans)

Fuckin perfect grilled cheese (cheddar)

Current projects

Posts they had around, I dragged them over and organized them by size.

We were running low on wood (cause of the shitty weather Sunday (their normal wood-gathering day) we didn't go out for firewood so instead I split and stacked up what was left)

Stumps and skulls. Well, it's only one skull, but I wanted it to rhyme.

Grew right around that rock! Shannyn's gonna use this near the pond I think.

Count 'em up, one two three.

Tools, beginning to build/plan the new pig house!

The sides are now framed.

Planning the back (this is a view of the underside basically)

I mulched the walkways a little bit! (unfortunately the wind would blow this all away in a week)

Some of their land from afar - the dome and their house is to the right.

Walipini will go here!

I split wood most days.

This was when I stopped - a branch flew up and hit me in the face (can't quite see the blood/bruise here)

Testing the newest (most retarded) utensil

Transplanted some comfrey!

Inside the greenhouse (where mice are a problem)

Ah, the big pig project - finally separated them with electric fencing (you can see a PVC post on the right by Miss Piggy (unless that's Charlotte)) {I thought Karol was calling me a pig for a second}

Making more stakes

Finally some eggs!

Dem pigs gots a new house.

Woo I did it! Shannyn clearly had a better plan for the back of the house.

Now to get the boars over to this side (split the first partition in half again with more electric fence to bring the house in for assembly)

Inside the dome! I got some water, I got some seating, some shelter. Mugwort. A hat.

Yep.

One of the three times we put the boars over to their side (the smallest one would end up crawling under/through the electric fence to get back to his biddies).

Bathing ritual complete

The garden area! Not much going on quite yet. The water catch on the left doesn't work (never got to it) those posts are to be an outdoor cooking/hanging out area (walls blew away in the wind once)

The greenhouse, with the chickens on the right and the pigs to the right of that, horses outside of that. Rabbits are behind the greenhouse.

Planning a firewood box.

Getting some more done here.

Dat sky doe. That car on the left is the car they arrived in, from North Carolina. On the right is the Excursion, Tiny.

Another butter knife!

CHRISTMAS! Weekly shopping trip found me a lantern that doesn't run on propane which it leaks furiously (that lantern had been dropped! Also, got chocolate cause they insisted I get myself some kind of treat. Also nuts, cheese, oranges, carrots...

Metal, brah.

Mostly complete, weird like salad mixer/whatever you wanna try to use it for (passable for pasta only because it grabbed a piece of pasta the first time I tried using the tines, but then it failed miserably thrice subsequently).

Solus (unless it's Solas), like 7 week old cat, my new pooping buddy.

Wood gathering Sunday!

One of the trees Andy chainsawed a dead limb from.

The other tree.

I ate a lot of raisins while I was there.

A lot.

Finally began this ladle, wood from Virginia (thanks Henry!)

At the shooting range!

Shot I think four guns that day, twice as many as I've ever shot (thanks Darrell!)

One day, almost the entire family came out to help add MORE fencing, for the third or fourth time, to keep the boars separated from the sows.

Firewood box complete, with a removable back (in case you need the extra space or want to turn it upside down to use it as a bench or something.

I made a trough! That's a cornmeal paste Shannyn made to help fill the cracks.

There they go! Yeah, it leaked a bunch the first time I used it...

Yeah, you stay separated!

Check it out, there's most of the wood we had gathered, I think!

Wood box in action.

Cooking some shit (I have no idea what that is, eggs?) Also, photobomb by the Spearoon!

Mmmm colby jack from this week, cheddar from last week, and chips from before getting there

Well, I kept working on it and then I realized there was a crack so I stopped. Utensil complete!

Ah the arena, for horse competitions and training and stuff. I went over to get a break from working on pig stuff to stack tires.

Plenty of tires, some blown off, some knocked over by dogs or horses maybe.

The other side of the entrance, their inhabited property over to the right.

Now stacked four high; they'll want to do one more layer.

Those tires all had water in them.. then my gloves were soaked and my socks had even gotten wet, as well as my pants and shirt. All dirty clothes.

There were also some big semi tires that I rolled out but those are out of frame to the right.

Tyler will love this, it's just a bunch of holes in the ground.

Past her mom's cabin, over in state land, there's a nice hill overlooking a lot of land. I took a walk there.

It was a nice view, I hung out here for a bit.

Way over there (I think) is a power plant.

Weird rocks and fuzzy shit growing on them.

I built a cairn! ...which I realize now blends in with the other rocks, maybe I should've picked a different picture to post... Oh well!

What a landscape. I was heading to the right of this picture, toward another big hill.

Purple cactus flowers or whatever!

And yellow!

A road in the desert!

That's Bessy's Hill, named for the cow I saw before I turned back (cause distances really are deceiving in the desert). Also Harly accompanied me on my walk!

This is me getting sunburned (but only a little)

That orange was so out of place I had to take a picture of it.

Uh, Batschach?

The algae or whatever that grows on the rocks has some really cool colors. This was like a blaze.

I collected some rocks! ...but no real arrowheads.

Yeeeaaahh clouds!

Rosemary butter rice! 

I guess Andy lit their trashpit on fire, so I had a little light show outside the dome that night.

Mmmmm cooking. Yeah, I just eat onions now, whatever. Gained a bigger appreciation for food and just flavors while I was at the farm for sure.

Omg food yes. I threw in the rosemary rice there, along with eggs obviously.

Yeah, I asked for butter and potatoes the second week.

Don't forget about the cheese I also had!

I don't sure. Vaguely droopy mustache.

Transplanted some currant!

There are more plants in this picture! Oh, that's the comfrey I transplanted earlier.

Hello

The aftermath of a good burn.

One of the various projects is to make a new cover for this rain barrel (old cover blew off) so I brought the wood over at least (quite windy this day)

Uh.. covered some of the asparagus bed? I don't remember what this picture is about.

Strawberries are growing! Planted 24 of them.

Hooray the pigs are still separated!

Dis guy.

Cleared around the greenhouse, left this table-turned-cabinet cause it's heavy as shit.

All the stuff that was around the greenhouse (luckily nothing blew away!)

Stuff in that cabinet thing, all gotta get taken out.

This rain catch doesn't work; I brought over some wood but didn't get to do more with it (it was too windy to look at another sheet of metal to replace this one)

These barrels all still blew away, rolling into fencing here and there, except the small one (it had some water in it)

Brought over a pallet to continue the pallet fence, moved the cap stones I found while we were gathering wood over to the pond (rocks on the right, no water or anything yet)

The pallet fence will follow those logs to that fence.

Fixed the back of the rabbit hutches cause some of the carpet had blown aside

Brought over a bucket with empty feed sacks to begin the earth bag project, a new outhouse for near the dome (out of frame on the right). I picked a spot I thought would be good to start, would've started shoveling rocky dirt out of the root cellar hole if it wasn't so windy.

Dem dawgs, stayin' out of the wind.

Check it out, the firewood box is still in one piece! This is me showcasing a way to stack wood in the box.

Mmmhmmm. I threw the eggs in with the pasta while it was cooking to cook the eggs (thanks for showing me that, Henry)

Mmmothafuckin lard and salt. Also like you know actual food.

Stardate 170223 

(day 175)

Black Betty bit the dust [I even had a video of the pigs eating her, but thanks Panera, for your shitty internet]. Now they are down to nine chickens, but the boars are feasting. The fury of the wind kept me awake, between the sensation that the doam (lol what the fuck is that spelling) will fly away and the extra heat from the wood stove. Was that sentence terrible? Yeah, the wind blew into the dome and the furnace and made the fire roar despite the closed door (vent more specifically, but it wrymed). At least nothing blew away, apparently, even that bucket of bags and baling twine for the earth bag project. The bags almost made me get outside in the middle of the night, but I was afraid I would literally blow away. Or at least have to crawl or something. That was apparently just a regular wind storm event. Fakdet. The pig house is still up, the newest (fourth?) addition to the fence separating the boars and the sows is still up, their containers for water still exist. The barn is still standing and of course, well I assume, the arena is still up (huge area walled in by tires – I stacked a layer and a third-ish and fixed a bunch of it, where they will train horses and have competitions). Wood needed splitting so I did some of that in the wind (not a difficult activity, surprisingly) before coming inside to finally have breakfast.

Oh right! Hello!

I have a few days left here, being the Thursday before the Sunday/Monday that we leave. Last week was a little rough, I had a big uh transformation or something that involved/started with or because of a complete loss of confidence in my abilities as a human (coupled with my inability, partially because of physics and philosophy, to know anything for certain, ended up meaning that I didn't think anyone cared about me anymore). That was a couple days of working full ~8 hour days, splitting and stacking wood most days, and anxiety-filled evenings/nights and sometimes afternoons. Hadn't felt like that in years and of course it made me realize I probably didn't really get rid of depression or whatever, if anything I might have been correct in thinking that I "overcame" it, I just didn't realize that that was a temporary word. I realized a while ago that what I did (which I considered ironic then) was to beef up mental/emotional security. Of course, now I know that basically meant I locked up a different set up things, including certain emotions. Well, fuck. I guess I had to be reminded that the drawing board never goes away or something, but I did learn a lot about myself and things. I thought a lot because that's what I do, sometimes too much I guess but I can't (won't..? more can't than won't) help it. I reconsidered most of my life – at least some of the big parts. I definitely want to work at the Gigafactory and ultimately for Tesla and maybe one day SpaceX depending on.. everything. I realized, though, that I was hiding behind that plan. I didn't quite notice it before cause I did it differently than I used to (I am way less depressed after all and just have much better thought patterns to rely on), but yeah I'm definitely too reliant on external phenomena. So I'm dealing with that.

I considered telling Shannyn because she had asked how I was doing and everything but decided against it because it was clearly not affecting my work ethic or whatever (which was somewhat ironic), and I am sure that some of it was culture shock but I was a little too embarrassed to admit it. I also feel like it might have been insulting or something if I said, snobbishly, that I wouldn't want to live quite like this. I think that was mostly a reaction (externalization) to my lapse in confidence anyway. I was like "well apparently I can't handle this because I'm not happy and vaguely worried about things, I guess I just can't handle it and I guess I wouldn't be able to handle Antarctica and obviously not Mars, so I guess I actually just can't handle anything. Wow, better rethink my life goals then, since I'm not even sure what I actually want. I thought I went through this already..." Whatever. Like I said, while I was working I was really just experiencing the work and not really thinking about much else. I actually really enjoyed working those days, hence the long hours. I think it was around then that I started building the second pig house maybe and just tackling the pig projects (one project turned into like 8). It definitely started before that, a couple days after I stopped writing last. I could easily find out dates but I've decided against that, pictures will be chronological anyway. I'm not sure I'm going to caption the pictures. Might as well, probably, but shit man fuck.

Anyway, I built a pig house and then put up more electric fencing to create two smaller pens to contain pigs in separately, while still having most of the entire pig pen open. Then I built a trough for the boars – we at least found a temporary thing at first after I broke a drill bit trying to work on the trough late one day (took a few days before that ended up put together, and I still haven't made the one for the girls) which ended up staying as their water container. I think actually I did the trough the beginning of this week...

So on Saturday we (Andy, Shannyn, and the boys, Matt and Brendan) went out to gather firewood. Maybe it was Sunday, I don't know [most likely Sunday cause that's their wood gathering day]. In any event, Shannyn's mom, sister (also eventually her husband), and nieces/nephew were over this weekend. (I don't exactly remember what happened last weekend but those pictures were first so you saw them anyway.) Right so Saturday I got some mothafuckin groceries again! Still have some potatoes, got a couple of oranges, got two different cheeses, cheddar and colby jack, some butter, bread, rice, broccoli, pasta... and some fuckin chocolate with nuts in it cause that's my treat (Shannyn insisted I get something like that for myself – I was already getting a thing of mixed nuts that I was pretty happy about but hey chocolate). Also, they bought a sweet ass battery-powered LED lantern cause the propane lantern was broken and clearly leaking a lot of gas out of the canisters (I even unscrewed it from the fuel when I wasn't using it, but it still blew through the last canister in like two or three days). So that was like Christmas. And then after that happened, at some point we went and got firewood. I also found three cap stones for Shannyn's pond – progress there is pretty much halted, waited for more cap rocks. I got some pretty nice pictures of the trees Andy was cutting dead limbs from [as I'm sure you've seen since those pictures came before this wall of text]. That was a great weekend; hanging out with the families reminded me of being with my cousins, especially when we were all younger. It was really nice and the food was delicious (Andy made fantastic bean dip, like ten pounds of it, and then Sunday I think Shannyn or other people made enchiladas that were amazing). Sunday before eating we (the guys) went out to the shooting range! That's right! I shot twice as many guns as I've ever held in my life, that was pretty cool. I only picked up one bullet casing though, would've been cool to have one from each gun (since I still have the first two) but whatever. Definitely want to get a gun eventually.

So the beginning of this week I guess is when the pig stuff was finished – I do remember Monday was when the kids had off from school and everyone was out there helping or hanging out and I rode one of the pigs and we got some more-semi-permanent temporary fencing up. It was frustrating seeing that one small pig, I think Kevin (Bacon), just slip right under the fence. We put up a picket fence on the girls' side, Shannyn was laughing and saying we should paint it white for them. That was a nice day, wasn't fuckin windy as shit like this. Goddamn can't even really go outside. At least the sun is shining though, and that fuckin solar battery bank/bluetooth speaker thing is chargin up. It takes days to get from 3/5 to full, but what the fuck the solar panel actually really works (I thought it might have been just like a gimmick or whatever, to maybe keep it topped off, but if you can wait a few days and have full sunlight you'll have electricity. It'll charge your shit and play your fuckin music, stylish as fuck. Shdamn.

So yeah, overall I'm really glad I've stayed here. I'm glad Charlotte didn't let me not go just to stay with her when she decided she didn't want to WWOOF anymore (she needed a break from my ass anyway) because I really did learn a lot. For example, my feelings are definitely too loud. That's probably why I just muted some of them. I also remember about art and creating - of course, how could I forget... Well, because I haven't really had an outlet for things like that, part of why I went WWOOFing, but now it's why I'm ready to settle in the nevads (as the locals say) for a while. Being here made me realize how excited I am to have my own place, how much I just want to have space to build shit and grow plants and do whatever. Shitfuck. That's part of why this stay has been bittersweet – it's great to be building stuff, but I might just never see it again. The experience never leaves and will make future projects easier and quicker to accomplish (took me just three days after gathering materials to complete the firewood box, as opposed to the like 9 months it took me to finally put together the shoe shack in new jersey), but I still wish I could work through problems on my own land. My own country.

I definitely don't want to own a country. Too much land, too much to do all the time. Probably don't want livestock, at least not for a while. A couple of chickens maybe, but damn the stuff you gotta do. I still want land; Charlotte and I have been talking about that for a while, but I don't exactly know where I want it. I also redecided to make sure whatever I do in my life, I do things I thoroughly enjoy. All the time. I'm not fucking around doing shit I don't care about or that I don't enjoy. What a waste of life that is, there's other shit to do. I just gotta figure out exactly what I want to do. I knew I didn't know, but damn I really don't know. I'm thinking about getting a motorcycle as my next vehicle, especially since I plan on getting to work (or trying) without needing a car, especially after hearing from Valerie that Tesla provides incentive to use public transportation and stuff to get to work. I don't know, we'll see what job I can even get. And whether we'll be able to get an apartment.

Oh shit, I wrote a lot.

Also, turned my computer back on for this, part of what I experienced was climate shock. Culture shock maybe, but climate shock. Huh, huh? Funny? YES? AAHAHAHAHAHA THAT MUST BE WHAT ALL THESE GLOBAL WARMING LUNATICS ARE EXPERIENCING, CLIMATE SHOCK

I made a shelf! I copied the design of the one already there, but here it is!

Yay it works and hopefully won't collapse under the weight of some plants!

I thought it was a house with a picket fence... so I drew most of that in. I was so excited, I thought I randomly picked a piece of wood that one of the kids had drawn on. Then I became the kid that drew on it.

I saw myself in passing and couldn't believe that's what I look like now, all beardy.

There's my shelf along with the one I copied on the left. Also, I hung that sign the one day ("Go Old School. Live Organically" or something like that).

CHARLOTTE CAME AND BROUGHT ME FUCKING PIZZA HAT IT WAS SO GOOD except for how fake it was.

Then I cooked a bunch of shit together with eggs in the middle, as I have tended to do.

Who knows, maybe this video will work... I had others that I couldn't upload to youtube cause panera internet sucks I guess.

Charlotte wanted to practice splitting wood.

So she fucking went at it.

Cleared most of the wood pile that Saturday. I just stacked the wood, she split it.

Dinner with the Gumps... so fucking good, four different types of pizza, of course the only one I took a picture of ended up being my favorite - taco pizza. 

Well... I accidentally made it really hot that night.

Lunch! Parbaked potatoes (left on the stove for about an hour) and onions,

To which we added carrots, broccoli, and an egg - the rest of the vegetables.

So fucking delicious, perfect timing (Brendan came and said we were going to go get firewood soon).

Just one load, but the tree must have been hundreds of years old to be so huge and with so many limbs.

As before, Andy cut the dead limbs off.

We had a throw-and-carry assembly line, this week uphill instead of down.

What a tree, shagbark juniper. I took a piece to eventually make into a bowl.

Sunset that night, the last night.

Yeah I didn't feel like deciding between the two - this picture doesn't have the eyesore of vehicles at least.

Stardate 170227

(day 179)

StarBUCKS is where I am right now. We went to fucking outback steakhouse woo cause it was my guilt-free choice of where to eat, said Charlotte, cause I had been cooped up for three weeks and we were celebrating. So that happened. Now we're both super full, barely really here just cause wifi and bills and whatever. I just really want to sleep. The last week was good, now I'm gonna go by pictures instead of memory... probably maybe for most of it at least? (I picked out pictures, quickly/haphazardly and I got 207 as of right now, though that includes videos that might not get uploaded) uh anyway the 23^rd.. no wait the 22^nd overnight was windy as fuck, I may have talked about that (THE CAPTAIN DOES NOT LOOK BACK IN HIS LOG TO DETERMINE WHAT WAS SAID ALREADY, YOU PLEBS). Well yeah it was windy. Pigs had a feast.. yeah I think I remember talking about that. I did a bunch of different things cause there wasn't any particularly large project at the top of the priority list since I built the pig house and separated those fucks. Shannyn had given me a list of like 12 different things that needed attention, just smaller projects that had to get done. Maybe later I'll get out my notebook and list the projects fo ya asses.

SO ANYWAY I SAW ONE OF THE PICTURES I HAD CHOSEN, CHARLOTTE CAME AND BROUGHT ME FUCKING PIZZA HAT WHEN SHE CAME OMG

That was really nice, I still can't believe she actually brought me mothafuckin pizza. So I ate that and immediately was just farting cause after three weeks I put literal garbage in my body. Although I guess there were also cup noodles... Almost gave Shannyn a heart attack when I asked for those. So I showed Charlotte around the whole shit, showing her some of the things I had worked on. Unfortunately, when she got there it was the coldest it had been the whole time, and fuckin windy. Not as windy as the night Specialetta died (the oldest of their chickens, which are all normally named Henrietta, was named Special-etta cause she was old and would just kinda fall over and stay there for a bit), but still pretty windy. So we puttered around, I finished building a shelf and was talking to Shannyn when Charlotte arrived, so of course I showed her that. That ended up being the last real project I completed at the farm. It took hours but it was nice to work on it, I really enjoy building if I haven't said that already, and really enjoyed working by myself actually. It was pretty relaxing, and way less stressful than having to like follow someone's active instructions on whatever deadline and so on. I had instructions, but I put it together WITHOUT adult supervision, and it ended up great! Shannyn likes the shelf so that's nice.

Uh... Saturday we... didn't do much? Fed the animals... walked around a little... well there are pictures. Or a lack of them. I don't care, I'M THE FUCKING CAPTAIN HERE!

I got sidetracked with emails and my cover letter and whatever who gives a shit.

Sunday we went and got a load of wood from the land (no, it's not a forest, the trees are too sparse but maybe it is a desert forest..) nearby, that was fun. I also took a chunk of the tree (shagbark juniper) to make into a bowl eventually. It smells so fucking good too, it's ridiculous. I don't think I took a picture of the pre-bowl, but whatever, maybe one day when I have the proper tools and shit for it, you'll all see a picture of the finished product. Or by then I will have finally given up on blogger cause it's stupid for navigating unless I decide to learn HTML and CSS and recode it all myself which probably won't happen cause fuck websites... maybe instead we'll have switched to a new blogging host. Most likely, though, we won't be blogging anymore unless I decide to give occasional updates (Charlotte's been done with blogging for months now) just cause. AAAAAAAnnnnnyway, we left Monday morning... and now this doesn't feel like a captain's log anymore.

We went to get the boatmobile a coolant flush and new oil. Thanks Andy! And here's another multitude of pictures that may or may not have captions.

Charlotte considers trying to ride the pigs, Monday morning before we leave.

They nibble on her and she is put off. Meanwhile Kevin looks on, perplexed.

This is what I wrote in the WWOOFer book, too lazy to rotate it or whatever, I don't really know how many of you are even gonna stop to try to read it anyway, it'll just be a memory for me to look back on.

And awaaaay we go!

Man, it's so barren. Also, I am still mildly surprised that this is desert - desert to me always meant just sand everywhere...

At Andy's! Bathroom still has a mirror and running water and electricity!

We stopped in Malpais to have a tiny lunch of a hard boiled egg and some chips.

Just a field of like black rock shit.

So weird, volcanic rock. Idk which of these mountains were ever volcanoes...

heh. Charlotte said I was to decide the first place we ate, guilt-free, and on the way to a chinese buffet we passed Outback, so...

It was so good my face is now permanently deformed.

So... I'm getting a tattoo in Albuquerque (where those pictures were taken and where we are now) before we head off on our western national park tour. We'll end up in Seattle in about a month to stay with Karen and Tom, and hopefully by then I'll have heard back from the Gigafactory... if not then we'll just be moseying down through California even slower than we would have. I will probably apply before we leave Albuquerque cause, you know, internet and stuff.

What a life.

Definitely ready to have a place to live and work, I'm most excited for the freedom to cook whatever we want again. Also to build stuff for myself and keep it (until we move to California and decide to get rid of it or whatever). I'm really excited for the next month, we're so free and open now. We know we'll be going to national parks, and we have a route planned out, but obviously that can go out the window at any moment and we might just fuckin do anything else cause whatever man.

Idk, I thought I'd have more closing thoughts. New Mexico was a little rough at first but really worth it for what I learned (especially about myself) and the experiences I gained. I know more about what kind of life I want, thanks to this entire journey, where I wouldn't want to live, that I wouldn't really want to have livestock or a lot of land... that I like having conveniences (like running water and electricity) and access to a variety of stores and even restaurants - god I love food. I am more relaxed about things in general and try not to really worry about shit, though I clearly still am quite negative (and I don't even realize it half the time). I have a lot more to grow and have at least seen through some of the latest batch of wool I pulled over my eyes, thanks to my stay in New Mexico, over 7000 feet above sea level. Thanks for hosting me, Shannyn and Andy!

I'm still really excited to start working for Tesla. Kinda worried about not getting a job at the Gigafactory just cause that would suck, I was really hoping that'd be my in to the company. If not, there's always solar panel installing for Solar City and whatever else, especially since they're now part of Tesla. I'm not really worried about getting a job, just about having a job that I enjoy and that doesn't stress me out too much or ruin my life in some other way.

Yeah. Here's to the future.