This Prime Automobile!

Blatant picture dump. So.... long time no post but I had this crazy weekend where I took a wind turbine to MIT energy night (which was sweet), drove back that night. Next day went to Pika's annual Cider weekend, took Rita Cooper with me... it was pretty sweet. Then finally the day after that I went to a VW swap meet in NH. Now that I am an adult... why not do ALL the fun things, right?

Sweet VWs and I scored some good parts for cheap!

Look at how jovial this guy is, yes that is a human powered cider press!

Rita and I kicked some serious cider ass this year. I just got in the zone and pedaled my arse off and also pushed apples into the cutter machine which is the messiest and most satisfying job. Made it home with a bunch of cider and some of last years hard cider. Nice.

On the trailer!

So, I found this one on craigslist for what seemed like a good deal. I got there and found out it actually was a good deal. The dude held it for me until I could come back with a trailer which was sweet. Also, it's very hard to find a trailer this time of year... seriously several Uhauls were out of car trailers two weekends in a row. This bus loaded much easier than the last one I put on a trailer. We hooked it onto my dad's truck and he towed it down the guys driveway (which was wicked nasty). Loaded it on the trailer when we got up on the pavement. I got to drive it while it was being towed, which makes it officially my longest ride in a VW bus thus far.

Checkout that plaid!... Just don't look at the curtains. Please.

This one is a Westfalia which means it has a wicked sweet pop-top. The tent is missing but I will replace it once the thing is running again. I was surprised at how much room there is in the top though. I am 6 ft and I could probably sleep up there. Also allows you more head room in the back if no one is up there.

At her old home

Needs a new battery and a list of other things but the important thing about this bus is that there is less than 10k miles on the rebuilt engine. The rebuild was even done by the guy who is doing my engine (or... actually what is he doing with my engine). Also the bus was stickered last year, so it is much closer to being road able than my other rig. I jumped it with the Subaru and got it to turn over, all the lights work and there is fuel to the carbs so .... it's on the right track. I mean it's so much further along than my other one that in my mind, it's already running! First things on the list are to fix the drivers window (which doesn't go up or down), get a new battery, recondition the wheels, fresh tires, brake job and obviously get the thing to you know... do the whole start and run thing. After all that I'll re-pad the front seats, get a new westfalia tent and clean up the top part, maybe replace the gasket up there too. 

Hooray projects!

To War

Before I start, ATTENTION TONY NUZZO, THE FUNNIEST MOTHER FUCKING COMEDIAN I KNOW WILL BE IN PORTLAND ON MONDAY OCTOBER 21ST. GO.

HERE HE IS ON NATIONALISM OR FREEDOM

So the plan. Get up at 3 AM Friday, leave to pick up Toby from a train station in Brewster, NY and then to Alfred by Friday night to help them prepare for the war. The next day, battle and party. Then on Sunday up at 6 AM to drive back to The County. Damn near 1700 miles of driving in about 3 days. My family said I was crazy. What they failed to realize is that this is what I've been mentally preparing to do for months. Also it was just sort of amazing to do something, anything, especially something a little insane for mostly very silly reasons. After four months of absolutely nothing, three days of hour by hour something were a godsend.

The truly amazing bit, it all worked. Brilliantly. The trip was zero stress and adhered to schedule surprisingly well. The only glitch was the curse of Toby. Every single god damned time Toby and I get in a car together and say "LET'S GO ON AN ADVENTURE" the car fails. Every. Single. Time. There was my trip to see him in Toronto where my Jeep died in the parking garage. Him and Renee's trip to see me where her clutch fell out. Then this time my battery just sort of disappeared about twenty minutes after he got in the car. After we pulled off it was pretty apparent that all that happened was the battery terminal was loose and sort of bounced the fuck off after a bump. But still we had to pull over and tinker for an hour to figure that simple thing out. It is Tobias Hrynick and I, we are not known for our mechanical prowess.

We arrived in Alfred and dove right into helping the club build swords for the war. We had a good twenty five people building swords quickly for about four hours and met our quota. of 72 new swords. Got to meet a lot of the new faces including one kid everyone refers to as "New Tyler". I was weirded out until I found out he got the name for having similar drunken personalities. Looks like I've got someone to take on an adventure at Hot Dog Day. Then Toby and I went back to AJs apartment, had some beers and went to bed.

Wake up at 9 AM for the Officers breakfast, Toby, AJ and I were not officers but insisted that we are a necessary element of their discussion. Also I need Battle Waffles, it's tradition to eat waffles prior to combat for me. It's kind of my thing. We ate our waffles and headed up to the field of battle to set everything up. There was a lot of on the spot improvisation as it turned out we didn't have half the things we needed but in the end the new officer corps did it up nice. Alfred States army arrived and after a pretty ad libbed speech about the rules, we all headed back to camp.

I was happy that this year we got time to properly put together a strategy. We divided up into units, nicknamed the units, even had a group dedicated to relaying communication from the General. I could have really used that last time. We fought for maybe 4 hours and it was awesome. I spent most of the match defending the AU homebase which eventually fell after a near 90 minute siege. In the end Alfred State won, again. I had fun, Toby had fun, trip well worth it. After the war we got a couple cars and took some good folk to the chinese buffet in Wellsville and then went to AJs apartment for a wonderful night of drunken revelry.  I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to see because of the short window of time I was there but I saw a good bunch. The weekend was pretty expensive to pull off but it was well worth it. PICTURES!

Toby Hrynick, in Alfred, helping fend off the State school horde.

My good friend Gaelen representing.

Pic from the final battle around the King Alfred statue.

A nice orchestrated group shot.

Toby and I left at 7 AM Sunday and I got home around 2 AM so I could start my new job at 8 AM. After 10 hours of OSHA safety videos I was considered an employee at Columbia Forest Products, making whole piece hardwood veneer of the maple and birch variety. The job is not exactly what I would call a dream job for me. The job is very physically demanding and only just mentally demanding enough that I'm not allowed to zone out for even a second. That said, the people are all very nice and the pay is quite nice. It's mostly headed to the bank where hopefully I can finally grow a small amount of savings. I haven't had more than a few hundred dollars in the bank since High School. A bit of money in the bank to fall on is just what I need while I plan the next step, which currently is move somewhere that people live and get a job that sort of uses this brain thing I got bouncing around my shoulders. It works decently and could be applied to any number of things.

Anyways, time to sit here and wait for something to happen.

Autumn, can we just call it Windmill season?

I've been at it at approximately 3/4 throttle with the gang at Pika over the past couple weeks. Last weekend was spent entirely at Common Ground Fair. Most of that time was hanging out at the Pika booth and talking with people who want one of our sexy wind turbines (I hope google catches onto that phrase and this blog comes up in search results for "sexy wind turbines", maybe I'll over use it in this post just to give us a fighting chance). I was pleasantly surprised to speak with some very informed customers on Saturday. Of course there were a few folks who didn't know how energy works but they were fairly few and far between. One point of discontent was that we had the wind turbine braked because in order to run we need an inverter and our inverter outputs "split phase 240V" which is what is at the entrance to your house.... however we only had a 120V extension cord. Most people understood why this was an issue but there was one man who simply did not understand that and was convinced that we were giving him some sort of BS. Next year we'll bring a transformer.

In the off times I hung out with Blandrea Jarrett (not actually bland at all) and her associated compadres. I have to say that after staying there all weekend, you really don't get the common ground experience until you camp there. The "volunteer" campground is the loosest run hassle free camping experience. I showed up too late to "get a permit" so I just pitched my tent anyways and no one bothered us the entire weekend, turns out that is what all of our neighbors did too. I just got a sweet new tent so I was excited to try it out, it worked great and despite wind, rain and uneven ground it kept me and my stuff bone dry. We did some contra dancing saturday night and witnessed a man playing guitar on hallucinogenics on Friday. Yup that's Common Ground.

That's right kids, it's a double rainbow over a wind turbine. Can you get anymore Common Ground than that!?!?! 

I didn't get to see much of the fair really but I did see a sweet booth with a bunch of bonsai trees. I nearly bought one because ever since visiting the national National Arboretum, I have thought they are awesome. There was some guy there who seemed to know everything about them too, unfortunately he was engaged in a Bonsai geek conversation when I was there and I didn't get to pick his brain. Overall a good time. On the way home my car started skipping, I put some "drygas" (moisture remover) in the tank and it ran fine the rest of the way home (more on this later).

Taking down our booth @ Common Ground

This past week we've been going great guns at work and installed two wind turbines and a bunch of solar stuff too. The two sites each have a turbine and 3kW of PV installed (or nearly installed at the time of this writing). We're not technically installers but we have been working with electricians and installers of other wind turbines to train them on our equipment. We had an out of state installer come up and walk through our manual during one of the installs with us. One of the sites has a sweet fiberglass monopole tower that comes in sections that slide over each other and glue together. The whole rig goes up with a winch so it doesn't require a crane, it's pretty sweet. We all take turns winching the towers up, not only is it a workout but it feels pretty BAMF to be part of the tower raising. 

I'll eventually get a picture of the monopole installed, I hope. My phone died part way through the install. 

In other news the Subaru is down with a clogged catalytic converter. After racking my brain to figure out why my car was loosing power, I decided to just play the uninformed idiot and drive it until it became obvious. After a painful 5 miles from my house to Josh's place (my car squealing and riding the struggle bus the whole way) I parked it and looked underneath. My catalytic converter was straight up about to be on fire. It was bright bright orange all over  and did NOT look pleased at all. A few months ago I had my friend scan the OBD2 port on the car with his fancy scan tool. The code read "efficiency of emissions tank 2 low", being an elitist cheapskate fuck I said "Oh it's probably just some sensor." Now I think that is probably directly related to the recent failure. Screw you hindsight, screw you! Also there really isn't much of a way around the expense of replacing one of these because the catalyst inside the part makes them $$$. Additionally it would be very difficult to replace with one person and no lift. 

So, this weekend I've been tooling around on my motorcycle which discouraged me from driving around at night much. It's kind of unsafe to ride when it is too dark, even though it is pretty awesome feeling to ride down the road surrounded by darkness with only a small headlight leading you home. 

I'm taking tomorrow off to spend the day with my pops at Fryeburg Fair for woodsmans day! It's where all the "big name" lumberjacks (is that even a thing?) come to participate in events like the springboard chop, two-man saw, underhand chop and various other lumberjack things. My dad and grandfather used to go fairly regularly but I could never make it because school. Should be a wicked good Maineahbubguy time! 

Slingin' Planks

Goodly evening unto you Gentlemen. You'll be happy to know that I have shirked the beast of apathy and have really begun to develop myself as a person during my free time. Been working on several projects, keeping up an exercise routine and really been using my time effectively.

Nah I'm just kidding. I've been playing Minecraft about eight hours a day with my other underemployed Alfred alumni.

One of the several projects I've built. This is the Port of Hawkbeard's
very own Comedy Cellar. I need to go outside.

I've also cemented my status as an unemployed drain on the system and bought myself a bass guitar. Overarching logic being that if I'm going to be home, I might as well develop a skill. It's been super fun actually and I'm getting to the point I can begin to jam with my brother in a rudimentary fashion, so that's like bonding and shit, good stuff. Also the diet continues to go well, down 18 pounds now. I know I'm a nerd, because my diet started with a new Excel worksheet. From the data of the past month and a half it is estimated I could reach a healthy weight for my height and age by St. Patricks day with an R² value of 0.8!

That upswing last week can be directly correlated with Bradd
Gustafson coming home from Army Basic and offering to buy
all the beers. And wings. And Chinese buffet. And gas station
microwave chicken sandwiches at 4 AM. It was good night.

But I shouldn't be unemployed for long. I have an orientation lined up now for a plywood factory as a piler. Basically I'm at the end of the line, I check the planks for quality and then put them in the corresponding pile. I was a little hesitant but then I heard it was 40 hours a week, on weekdays with $12-14 an hour pay. That sold me. My plan has been to work somewhere until after New Years, living at home with zero expenses and then basically go on, take the money and run. Woo, hoo oooh. In the meantime, having money and weekends off will hopefully allow me to travel a bit on weekends. I like long drives and I miss doing them all the time.

In the meantime I'm halfway done painting the garage for a cool $200 which will pay for my trip to the Alfred Civil War this weekend. Currently we have 86 people fighting for Alfred State and 61 people fighting for Alfred University. Both sides are hell bent on bringing a solid 100. I'm amazed how well they're doing recruiting. Last year we had 75 people fighting, total, for all armies involved. We have doubled that and they are still recruiting. They are running into a problem with lack of weapons, going for a massive build-a-thon tomorrow night I guess is their plan. 

Funniest part. They were complaining how much it was all costing. I asked how much of the budget they had spent. They asked, "What budget?". Apparently the treasurer fucked off and none of them knew that the former officer corps fought tooth and nail for a $250 budget just for the war. They've been buying out of pocket. I asked if they had receipts and thank god they do so they can get reimbursed. They also paid for a sword workshop out of pocket, for which they had a $100 budget granted to them. Grumble grumble. They've already curtailed some of the events due to money concerns and if they'd of known three weeks ago this wouldn't have been a problem. Oh well, what can a graduate do?

Anywho, I'm sure I'll have pictures of all that shit. It's going to be crazy.

Just to start thing blag rollin' again

So, I haven't posted in a while and I have a bunch of pictures from my awesome adventure to the big city, NYC, to see my sister. So here is the basic run down of the trip, but I think I'm going to make an album on the facebooks for all the pictures.

We drove from Maine to NYC on a wednesday night and I took thursday and Friday off. It's the only time I've taken off from work thus far and I feel like it was definitely well spent. Anyways, we stopped in Portsmith, NH at the Portsmith Brewery which was pretty decent. A big part of this trip was good food so I kicked it off right with a Chorizo burger which kicked ass but lacked some sort of delicious sauce. We got into NYC late that night and Chris had to work in the morning (poor Chris).

Morgan and I had to do some much needed grocery shopping but then kicked it into full-blown tourist mode by walking across the Manhattan bridge. K, I lied about all the pictures...

Checkout all the GODDAMN CHEESE!!!!!

Seriously though, that place had a massive amount of cheese that picture doesn't even capture it all or do it justice.

Here you can see the Freedom Tower (also know as America's middle finger) and the brooklyn bridge. 

NYC skyline

We checked out all kind of things in Manhattan including a sweet clothing store where the prices aren't bad and they fit your clothing for free. We walked about 9-10 miles that day so we covered some serious ground. Checked out Times square where there were about 6 different people dressed as Elmo. I also saw Iron Man, Batman and Spider-man hanging out there...I dunno... they seemed legit. Basically anyone in costume tries to take a picture with you and then tries to get you to pay for it, tricksy super heros. We checked out part of the NYU campus where there were these BAMF guys who had these huge steel rings that were large enough to stand in and they would ride them around on flat ground and do sweet tricks. Also, they were jacked.

Morgan brought lobster back with her from Maine so we cooked those that night but a bunch of them had actually died. If you know anything about lobster, you know that it is risky business to cook an already dead lobster. So, after deferring to the internet which basically said that as long as they haven't been dead for more than 24 hrs we would be fine. Since they probably had died within the past 12 we went for it and let me tell you..... Dead lobster is damn, damn, damnnnnnn delicious. I would almost consider killing it before I cook it next time. There were no ill effects whatsoever except that we ate more than our fair share of lobster that night. NOM.

The next day we went to the American Museum of Natural History, which was amazing. If you are ever in NYC and have a day to burn you should definitely check it out, it was sweet. It's also enormous. Protip: all admission (as far as I understand) is actually a suggested donation so when they say "That'll be $25," you can hand them a $10 and they won't bat an eye at you. Just saying. That being said I ended up paying full price, but that is beside the point! 

Narwhal!

So, one of the most hilarious parts of the museum (for me) was the plaque underneath this Narwhal skeleton that said something like "Obviously the Narwhal's sleek body was meant for swimming quickly through the ocean." That's all it said. No mention of the GIGANTIC FUCKING TUSK on it's head, nope no mention at all. What about the tusk man? We wanna know about the tusk, did it cross-breed with a unicorn? Are there any documented cases of Narwhals poking out each other's eyes on accident? If a Narwhal plunged headfirst into the sea floor would it be able to swim backwards to get it's self unstuck? THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS KEEPING THE WORLD AWAKE AT NIGHT PEOPLE!

After the museum we hit central park which was pretty cool. Lots of people running/biking and just a bunch of tourists. NYC is full of em for sure. That evening we went to this placed called BonChon to get their famous doubly fried wings, which were delicious and spicy as all hell. I don't know how Chris hasn't blown an O-ring or something because he ate them like he didn't want to live. We went to a comedy show that had this dude from 30 Rock as a headliner. It was hilarious and it was also just awesome how many comedy shows are happening at any given time in NYC. It's crazy and the selection of everything was just mindblowing. You've got options to see all of these comedy groups where really famous people came from for not that much money and it's awesome. 

The next day we went to this awesome food festival which was insane and had like every food known to man and unknown to me. On the way I got the stroke of brilliance to call Renee because her and Toby recently moved to the Bronx in pursuit of their various degrees in higher education. As luck would have it, Renee was actually in the area (quite a ways from where she lives). So, we met up with her and ended up going to the Bronx to check out their place and see Toby. We played some Munchkin and ate some animals crackers, you know... adult stuff. Apparently Renee is training to do roller derby and was doing the same course thing my sister had done earlier. That night we actually went to a legit roller derby which was BADASS. Chicks on roller skate beating the crap out of each other. I have to say one of the best parts about the whole thing is the names of the skaters. They choose their own witty names like "Puss and Glutes", "Donna Matrix", "OMG WTF", etc.

Then, on Sunday we went to this homebrew beer festival. We sampled 30 beers (equivalent to 5-6ish beers), the tasting started at like 1PM and we were there until like 4PM. They give you a card to write comments on and then vote for the best one at the end and let me tell you... my comment card is hilarious! At least I thought it was by the end of the time I was there, I kept it because at the time I was pretty convinced that it was an entire standup routine by its self. After all that day drinking, Mo and Chris took a nap. I went on a little city adventure by myself and just walked around Brooklyn. Cool town, too bad nobody knows about it... Anyways, that night I hopped the plane back to Maine (which was extremely empty) and landed with a bakers dozen of the finest bagels I've ever had. I brought them to work that morning and was the hero of the day. This concludes my awesome recap of my trip to NYC.

More recently (last weekend), I finally made good on something I'd been promising myself I would do since the beginning of the summer. I rode my motorcycle to the ocean and just dicked around. It was awesome and I highly recommend the many therapeutic benefits of a long motorcycle ride.

Yup, I should've done this more often...

This week it is back to business and preparation for Common Ground fair. Pika will have a booth there and I'll be there for a good portion of the fair. Hoping to camp out and meet up with some fun people. In the meantime I'll be salivating over cafe racer builds on the internet.

... Well that's just the cat's nuts!

So our kitten Remy had his manhood removed recently. This was him the morning after the procedure.

Considering...I mean that's pretty good honestly.

Been doing a lot of stuff at work recently (not like that is unusual...) but Friday we got to pour concrete for another site (relatively local). We needed two trucks to fill the hole for a 75 ft. monopole and a pole for a solar panel rack. In the morning I was running a concrete vibrator and in the afternoon I was programming stuff cause that's how we roll. Cool fact, this concrete has metal fibers in it which allows the foundation to be poured without rebar, pretty slick.

Don't fall in! That's a big hole.

My sister is home visiting from NYC, so I am hanging out back home with her and the family. She went wedding dress shopping today so I was left to my own devices at home.... where I realized I don't actually have a bed anymore. Kind of strange to not have a bed at your family's house, luckily we have a couch. Sleeping in strange places seems to be a common theme for me on the weekends recently, so the couch isn't too bad. 

I got the chance to sandblast my heat exchangers and paint them with some high temperature engine enamel. They look pretty decent, there was one spot that could possibly need some attention. I might eventually braze a little gap in the sheet metal closed but I might also just not worry about it. Hopefully the paint will preserve the metal for years to come.

It's weird all these people are going back to college, gives me a strange grown-up feeling. Things are kind of slowing down now that the college kids are leaving but I'm honestly feeling pretty OK with that. I made a list of stuff to do once I moved to Westbrook and I recently reviewed it... well let's just say I've got some stuff to do and I think this will give me a chance to get myself realigned to a more consistent schedule.  

I'll be off to NYC the middle of next week with Morgan and Chris. Looking for sweet things to do while I'm there so if you guys have any suggestions, let me know! Also, I miss you wankers!

Coffee

Today was a steak and eggs kind of day. So today, I had steak and eggs for breakfast. There are really three important points that make a steak and eggs breakfast.

1. Don't do it too often, you'll ruin the magic.
2. Remember, this is an occasion.
3. Always make like wayyyyyy more steak than eggs.

So right now I'm waiting to hear back about a job as a Potato Scientist. I don't know the official title but I'm sticking with that because that is what the description sounded like. Basically driving around picking up potatoes and then testing them for quality and stuff. I'm hopeful, since it's a good paying job near home that ends around December, so exactly what I was look for. Also, I'd get to put Potato Scientist on Facebook, and that's important.

That doesn't start for a week or so, so in the meantime it's same old unemployed crapola. A lot of spending all day really really tired and having difficulty doing stuff because I'm so tired and just wanting to go to bed. Then I crawl into bed when I just can't take it anymore and suddenly a carnival pops into my head that no amount of melatonin seems to be able to shut the hell up. The next day I wake up and I'm really really tired and having difficulty doing stuff because I'm so tired and I just want to go to bed. Then I crawl into bed when I just can't take it anymore and suddenly a carnival pops into my head that no amount of melatonin seems to be able to shut the hell up and so I wake up the next day and I'm really really tired....

This is literally the only problem I'm dealing with on any level right now. Twenty four hour days, seven day weeks, over three months now spent almost exclusively just trying to tackle a basic insomnia problem and no dice. The thing is I know what's causing it. I'm not doing anything and apparently when I don't do anything, I absolutely cannot justify sleeping. My brain starts looking over the day and goes "Really? That's what we did. Fuck that you need to learn a skill or something Jesus Christ!".

Oh well, I'm going to try the bed thing again. Maybe it'll work this time. It won't, but a man has to dream.