Hmmm, I'll have to try taking a picture of the van in the sunset/rise sometime to bring out the pink. You can't really tell it's pink in this picture.
Here's a sample of it.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Pink Van
Hmmm, I'll have to try taking a picture of the van in the sunset/rise sometime to bring out the pink. You can't really tell it's pink in this picture.
Here's a sample of it.
Pictures from this weekend
It's been pouring all week. Today it stopped, so we built another plastic tent to spray my van in. (The plastic is to contain overspray, it's not good enough to keep the van bone dry in a downpour.)
.The ever helpful Puka helps to tape the van
Taping off areas I don't want paint.
Random signage. For those who just can't make up their minds...
Monday, May 21, 2007
What I did this weekend
I drove the van over to a friend's house, where we finished prepping it and built a plastic tent.
I buffed and wiped the sanding dust off my van with their dog...
Fancy spray gun!
We were out spraying until 9pm last night. The van is now a nice, shiny pink. We'll give it another coat sometime this week, in between rain showers. More pictures to come soon! And then...interior work.
There's a fabric store going out of business around the corner from me, so I bought 7 yards of really pretty fabric to redo my tattered seat and bed covers. Should be fun!
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Transportation
For the past two weeks, I've been driving my van instead of bicycling to work. I have to be at work at 5:30am most mornings...so it's been a nice change of pace to roll out of bed and be at work only a few minutes later. One evening I even slept in the parking lot, really cutting down on my commuting time.
Now that I have this van, gas prices actually mean something to me after 1 1/2 years. Holy cow! I'm not sure what sort of gas milage I get, as my odometer is broken. I think I've been getting about 18/gal.
I'm slowly sanding and priming away....I even picked out the final color yesterday. I'm planning on painting it on Saturday. Anybody know of a good empty lot or a field with lots of trees around it, with suitable room for spraying with a hvlp system? I can't spray in my neighborhood because the overspray travels and will stick to anything within 100 feet or so.
Now that I have this van, gas prices actually mean something to me after 1 1/2 years. Holy cow! I'm not sure what sort of gas milage I get, as my odometer is broken. I think I've been getting about 18/gal.
I'm slowly sanding and priming away....I even picked out the final color yesterday. I'm planning on painting it on Saturday. Anybody know of a good empty lot or a field with lots of trees around it, with suitable room for spraying with a hvlp system? I can't spray in my neighborhood because the overspray travels and will stick to anything within 100 feet or so.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Friday, May 11, 2007
Working on the van
I started out sanding just the rusty spots, intending to smooth outward from said spots and blend into the rest of the existing paint....
But I decided it was taking too long, and bought some industrial strength airplane paint stripper. Hasta la vista, existing paint job!
I quickly primed all of the bare metal to protect it from supposed upcoming rain that hasn't happened yet.
I need to figure out what color to paint this van. I'm leaning towards a light pink or green. Maybe a combo of the two? Hmmm....
Friday, May 04, 2007
Thursday, May 03, 2007
New pictures
I bought a new van! It's a 1985 VW Vanagon with the super duper pop up top. I just got it registered and insured two days ago, so last night I decided to take it on a camping trip.I drove out west to Pedernales Falls SP and camped in the parking lot of their primitive sites. I had the entire place to myself.... just me, the trees, and the thunderous lightning storm that dumped 3 and 3/4 inches that night. I kept the top down and slept on the foldout bed instead. It was cool to lay on my back and look up through the skylight at the flashing lightning above.
Earlier that day, I had gone hiking around the park. It went from not raining and this light out...
... to this, in less than a minute.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Me again
Hmmm, I got sidetracked. One of these days I'll get back into blogging with regularity.
Today was spent working, then lounging in the backyard with an armload of books.
A new picture of my new backyard. It's very spacious, with a high fence to keep me in and the neighbors out.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Condensed What I've Been Up To Post
I think I'll revive my blog. It's been a long hiatus, eh?
I realized I missed posting. It was a great way for me to get words and pictures down and in a safe place. I'm notorious for trying to keep a paper journal of my life, then burning it because I don't want someone to read what I've written. When I read what I've written on the online blog though, it jogs my memory of what I did on those days but didn't write down. Mmmmmm.....
So anyway - it's been almost a year. What have I been up to?
Two weeks before I was to go on my PCT trip, I met someone fabulous. He was tall, dark, and handsome. We had everything in common. We spent those two weeks practically glued to each other. We went to Enchanted rock, Krause Springs, and hiked along the Greenbelt. We ate spicy asian food, pigged out on real Texas barbeque, and generally had a blast. Then I left him in Texas and caught a bus to San Diego, CA. (He drove me to the bus station at 3am)
I went to the Pacific Crest Trail Annual Day Zero Kickoff Party, and just met the most incredible people, saw several kickass slideshows, went to fun presentations, and even ran into Radar! (Nice hiker we met on the AT in 2003 when I was hiking from Key West to Virginia).
I started hiking from the Mexico border. Shortly into the trip I had misgivings. The PCT was something I had always wanted to do, ever since I was little. Heck, when I was 14 and ran away from home in Vermont, I ended up hitchhiking/taking a bus there and backpacking for 6 weeks while all of Vermont was in a frantic search for me/my dead body.
Well anyhoo, I started to regret leaving this fabulous Mr. X in Austin. I had never met anyone I had shared so much in common with, somebody I could just BE with, whether tubing down the San Marcos river or reading the paper with over breakfast tacos.
So I decided to hell with the PCT, I wanted to see what would happen with this guy. The PCT wasn't going anywhere. (Well, it does...with reroutes and everything, but it's still basically the same thing :-) I hitchiked from more-or-less San Diego, back to his doorstep in Austin, TX. It took me 4 rides and 30 hours. At a CA rest stop, I even ran into one of the people I had run into out there when I had passed through earlier that year on my FL to CA bicycle trip. How cool is THAT?
So, back in Texas. I ended up moving to a really wicked cool trailer park, but only lived there for <2 months before Mr. X and I decided to move to Utah for nifty jobs. We loaded up his car with my bicycle on top, and moved out there. We lived in Loa and Moab. It was a land of many Mormons and no breakfast tacos.
The jobs sucked. The compay made promises it didn't keep. And we both missed Austin....so we took a deep breath and moved back. Sort of. He had to go to a job-related conference way up north, so I waved goodbye as he drove off into the sunset with the car, and I headed south with my bicycle fully loaded, intending to move back to TX via bicycling through the 4 corners area, onward.
I made it a couple hundred miles before the snow got to me. Stupid snow...So I did what I do best-made some on the fly decision making involving Greyhound bus lines. I dropped by the station at 7am, and was told the only bus leaving left at 10:30. The only bike shop was a couple miles away, and opened at 10. To go on the bus, my bicycle needed to be safely disasembled and ensconced in a bike box, a box that could only be obtained at the bike store.
I trekked down to the store and pressed my nose to the glass, waiting for the store to open. Got the box (for free!) bought a pedal wrench to dissasemble my bike, and tried to hurridly ride back to the station while holding on to the box. HAH! No such luck. Impossible to ride and hold a big box into the wind while fighting traffic. So I politely pounced on a man with a truck who pulled into the parking lot and asked sweetly if he could give me a ride to the station. I got there with 10 minutes to go. I zipped into the office, gave the guy my credit card and started the ticket buying process while I quickly broke down my bike, stuffed it and some of my pannier contents in the box, duct taped the whole works, and had it ready to slide in the cargo compartment with 3 minutes to spare.
Then 3 days of driving across the boring expanse of middle America. I made a slight detour, blowing by Texas and going to FL to visit my mom. The Orlando station had me doing the process in reverse - dragging my bike box through the terminal, unwrapping my present, and assembling my bicycle to the amusement of onlookers. I then hopped on and rode it out to the parking lot, where my mother was waiting. Zeke the dog and Aleka the cat seemed unfazed...Zeke is used to picking me up alongside the road in strange places anyway from all my hiking trips, and Aleka is just a ditz. "OH, Heather? I didn't even notice you were gone. Say, do you have any Grey poupon? Or perhaps some high grade catnip?"
Mom and I went to Disney World to use up the last week remaining on our annual parks passes. We talked. We Ate. We bonded. We had Thanksgiving dinner. And the next day Mom and the pets dropped me off alongside the road for another adventure.
I rode my bicycle to Texas, again.
It involved a lot of coastal Florida bicycling. I (illegally) slept on a highrise boardwalk along the Atlantic ocean, watching both the sunset and rise. That night I peed in my Jetboil stove pot for lack of a better toilet facility. (It was either decend the many, many, many steps down to the beach, or walk 3/4 of a mile back to the parking lot to a "real" bathroom". Screw it, I was tired.
I also found some great campsites in newly seeded forest land, behind churches, and even in the same spot I had slept in the first time across the country. I even remembered the great radio stations I had listened to in several locales on my way across, and was able to tune in again.
I did laundry clad in only my rainsuit, while reading old copies of Watchtower. I ate roadside barbeque. I continued my quest to find the best piece of Pecan pie. I took an ocean-going ferry, and caught a wave full on in the face. I petted a multitude of random dogs.
I took a month or so, and did 1000 miles or so. I found a house. I live in it now. I work in a bakery. And that's all you get to know, until I feel like posting again. Pictures, sometime!
I realized I missed posting. It was a great way for me to get words and pictures down and in a safe place. I'm notorious for trying to keep a paper journal of my life, then burning it because I don't want someone to read what I've written. When I read what I've written on the online blog though, it jogs my memory of what I did on those days but didn't write down. Mmmmmm.....
So anyway - it's been almost a year. What have I been up to?
Two weeks before I was to go on my PCT trip, I met someone fabulous. He was tall, dark, and handsome. We had everything in common. We spent those two weeks practically glued to each other. We went to Enchanted rock, Krause Springs, and hiked along the Greenbelt. We ate spicy asian food, pigged out on real Texas barbeque, and generally had a blast. Then I left him in Texas and caught a bus to San Diego, CA. (He drove me to the bus station at 3am)
I went to the Pacific Crest Trail Annual Day Zero Kickoff Party, and just met the most incredible people, saw several kickass slideshows, went to fun presentations, and even ran into Radar! (Nice hiker we met on the AT in 2003 when I was hiking from Key West to Virginia).
I started hiking from the Mexico border. Shortly into the trip I had misgivings. The PCT was something I had always wanted to do, ever since I was little. Heck, when I was 14 and ran away from home in Vermont, I ended up hitchhiking/taking a bus there and backpacking for 6 weeks while all of Vermont was in a frantic search for me/my dead body.
Well anyhoo, I started to regret leaving this fabulous Mr. X in Austin. I had never met anyone I had shared so much in common with, somebody I could just BE with, whether tubing down the San Marcos river or reading the paper with over breakfast tacos.
So I decided to hell with the PCT, I wanted to see what would happen with this guy. The PCT wasn't going anywhere. (Well, it does...with reroutes and everything, but it's still basically the same thing :-) I hitchiked from more-or-less San Diego, back to his doorstep in Austin, TX. It took me 4 rides and 30 hours. At a CA rest stop, I even ran into one of the people I had run into out there when I had passed through earlier that year on my FL to CA bicycle trip. How cool is THAT?
So, back in Texas. I ended up moving to a really wicked cool trailer park, but only lived there for <2 months before Mr. X and I decided to move to Utah for nifty jobs. We loaded up his car with my bicycle on top, and moved out there. We lived in Loa and Moab. It was a land of many Mormons and no breakfast tacos.
The jobs sucked. The compay made promises it didn't keep. And we both missed Austin....so we took a deep breath and moved back. Sort of. He had to go to a job-related conference way up north, so I waved goodbye as he drove off into the sunset with the car, and I headed south with my bicycle fully loaded, intending to move back to TX via bicycling through the 4 corners area, onward.
I made it a couple hundred miles before the snow got to me. Stupid snow...So I did what I do best-made some on the fly decision making involving Greyhound bus lines. I dropped by the station at 7am, and was told the only bus leaving left at 10:30. The only bike shop was a couple miles away, and opened at 10. To go on the bus, my bicycle needed to be safely disasembled and ensconced in a bike box, a box that could only be obtained at the bike store.
I trekked down to the store and pressed my nose to the glass, waiting for the store to open. Got the box (for free!) bought a pedal wrench to dissasemble my bike, and tried to hurridly ride back to the station while holding on to the box. HAH! No such luck. Impossible to ride and hold a big box into the wind while fighting traffic. So I politely pounced on a man with a truck who pulled into the parking lot and asked sweetly if he could give me a ride to the station. I got there with 10 minutes to go. I zipped into the office, gave the guy my credit card and started the ticket buying process while I quickly broke down my bike, stuffed it and some of my pannier contents in the box, duct taped the whole works, and had it ready to slide in the cargo compartment with 3 minutes to spare.
Then 3 days of driving across the boring expanse of middle America. I made a slight detour, blowing by Texas and going to FL to visit my mom. The Orlando station had me doing the process in reverse - dragging my bike box through the terminal, unwrapping my present, and assembling my bicycle to the amusement of onlookers. I then hopped on and rode it out to the parking lot, where my mother was waiting. Zeke the dog and Aleka the cat seemed unfazed...Zeke is used to picking me up alongside the road in strange places anyway from all my hiking trips, and Aleka is just a ditz. "OH, Heather? I didn't even notice you were gone. Say, do you have any Grey poupon? Or perhaps some high grade catnip?"
Mom and I went to Disney World to use up the last week remaining on our annual parks passes. We talked. We Ate. We bonded. We had Thanksgiving dinner. And the next day Mom and the pets dropped me off alongside the road for another adventure.
I rode my bicycle to Texas, again.
It involved a lot of coastal Florida bicycling. I (illegally) slept on a highrise boardwalk along the Atlantic ocean, watching both the sunset and rise. That night I peed in my Jetboil stove pot for lack of a better toilet facility. (It was either decend the many, many, many steps down to the beach, or walk 3/4 of a mile back to the parking lot to a "real" bathroom". Screw it, I was tired.
I also found some great campsites in newly seeded forest land, behind churches, and even in the same spot I had slept in the first time across the country. I even remembered the great radio stations I had listened to in several locales on my way across, and was able to tune in again.
I did laundry clad in only my rainsuit, while reading old copies of Watchtower. I ate roadside barbeque. I continued my quest to find the best piece of Pecan pie. I took an ocean-going ferry, and caught a wave full on in the face. I petted a multitude of random dogs.
I took a month or so, and did 1000 miles or so. I found a house. I live in it now. I work in a bakery. And that's all you get to know, until I feel like posting again. Pictures, sometime!
Who am I?
I've been thinking a lot of my former life lately. I really miss it on some levels, yet am glad I've moved on in others. You never know what you've got till it's gone, in a way.
Lately I've been talking to people about my former life - the house I built, the bike trip, growing up on the farm and in an underground house. When I was living those things, it didn't seem like anything special. Sure it was unusual and I was happy living that way, but it didn't seem THAT far from the norm.
These days I live in a metro area of more than the population of the entire state of Vermont. I live in a conventional house, not an underground one. I ride my bicycle and take public buses wherever I need to go, no van, no camper, no car. I buy my vegetables at a store instead of getting them from out back. I don't have 10 acres of land to roam on anymore, and instead, I have 23 libraries in city limits and a zillion parks/greenbelts/museums/clubs/groups within spitting distance.
It's taking some getting used to.
Lately I've been talking to people about my former life - the house I built, the bike trip, growing up on the farm and in an underground house. When I was living those things, it didn't seem like anything special. Sure it was unusual and I was happy living that way, but it didn't seem THAT far from the norm.
These days I live in a metro area of more than the population of the entire state of Vermont. I live in a conventional house, not an underground one. I ride my bicycle and take public buses wherever I need to go, no van, no camper, no car. I buy my vegetables at a store instead of getting them from out back. I don't have 10 acres of land to roam on anymore, and instead, I have 23 libraries in city limits and a zillion parks/greenbelts/museums/clubs/groups within spitting distance.
It's taking some getting used to.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Monday, December 18, 2006
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Tempeh Rubens
Last night I decided I wanted to make some tempeh rubens as a last hurrah before I start eating trail food. I bicycled 1 mile to the local HEB grocery store and wandered all over the place looking for tempeh. It's usually kept near the tofu, in the produce section. This store didn't apear to have any! I asked a lady wandering amongst the lettuce if she had seen any tempeh. She looked at me blankly and asked, "What's that?"
I hopped back on my bicycle and went to Albertsons, which is 1.7 miles from my house. No luck there either! I asked the produce guy if they sold tempeh in the store. He asked me how to spell it...When I told him it was a soybean product that was usually sold with all the other hippie food (tofu, soy cheese, etc), he remarked that I must be a second generation hippie. He claimed he was just a first generation, and wasn't that advanced in hippie food.
I stood in the produce section for a while, dazed and confused. It just never occured to me that a big grocery store wouldn't have tempeh. It was a real I'm not in Vermont anymore moment!
Ahhh well. I picked up some pasta sauce and zucchini, went home and made spaghetti with red sauce, sauteed onions, zucchini, yellow squash, and a green salad. I'm slowly cooking everything I have left in the cupboards and fridge. I have some chicken in there I need to figure out what to do with.
I hopped back on my bicycle and went to Albertsons, which is 1.7 miles from my house. No luck there either! I asked the produce guy if they sold tempeh in the store. He asked me how to spell it...When I told him it was a soybean product that was usually sold with all the other hippie food (tofu, soy cheese, etc), he remarked that I must be a second generation hippie. He claimed he was just a first generation, and wasn't that advanced in hippie food.
I stood in the produce section for a while, dazed and confused. It just never occured to me that a big grocery store wouldn't have tempeh. It was a real I'm not in Vermont anymore moment!
Ahhh well. I picked up some pasta sauce and zucchini, went home and made spaghetti with red sauce, sauteed onions, zucchini, yellow squash, and a green salad. I'm slowly cooking everything I have left in the cupboards and fridge. I have some chicken in there I need to figure out what to do with.
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