Welcome to Big Bear

School is done. The job search is awful. After a year of not working, my savings are hurting. Somehow getting more education has made me less employable. Lucky for me, my aunt Maryanne has volunteered to let me stay in her cabin in Big Bear, CA.

!!Maryanne Rules!!

Big Bear is not a bad place to be unemployed and looking for work. I have landed a short term gig with a group that works on the Yukon River. They employ renewable energy technicians, working to get communities away from using diesel generators to create all their electricity. I'll be training folks in remote communities and doing some installations with scheduled time in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Anaktuvuk Pass. I hit the road soon. I am very excited and I know this trip will be amazing. I'm also kinda fried from the endless dead ends in the job search. Hopefully the next step will present itself along the way...

These people hired me!! The Yukon River Inter Tribal Watershed Council

Which one's the greenie??

When you look at a huge batch of graduates, how can you tell which ones are in renewable energy?

Sooooo Done!

We have finished the last of the finals! I dropped off the A train, "earning" only a B in one of my classes. Who could believe it?!

Calhoun ran across a group of us drinking coffee and doing some last minute studying before the last final. Calhoun is one of the coolest people on the planet. He hangs for a moment, then rises at 10 minutes before the start of the test, and says "Well, after two years of classes here at San Juan, I am about to go track down a calculator to use in the final. I'll see you there."

After the last final we all got together for a beer. Maybe two. While enjoying cold beer in the high desert, Tevia and Brad decided to get up the next morning and drive for 13 hours to California to look for work. You can imagine correctly that 13 of driving in the desert the next morning after a couple of beers might be a little bright and a little hot and it was. We got to her sister's place in Palm Desert, barely above 100 at night, dropping down to mid-80's. Yesterday we went to the coast. The wild fires around Santa Barbara make it look like a volcano erupted in the hills behind the city. 

We knew the concept of just showing up would in some cases be ill received, and in other cases well received, and it would be a low rate of successful interactions. It's been good to hit the road, meet some folks that are in the local solar economy, and stir the pot a little. The electronic search has not been successful so here I am. 

Got Feral Kittens?

My back porch became a favorite spot for some feral and outdoor cats over the winter. I opened the blinds yesterday to see the new batch of kittens that were emerging from under the porch. The mama looked at me in mountain lion mode and doesn't look like she wants to be messed with. I'm not sure if I should do anything or just leave them be. I'm hesitant to call the animal shelter because I think they will assume they have rabies and put them down. As long as they look happy and healthy I'm thinking I'll leave them be. 

I must be getting old or soft or both, they look damn cute and it's tempting to claim a couple. 

Cats on my blog, what next?!

Earth Day Bonanza

The RE students (I think Daniel and Paul did all the work)  hosted a big earth day event on campus. They bused in local kids in grades 1-4 for the morning. An impressive volume of kids and participants, local farmers and other local businesses set up booths, educational stuff, and a raffle of organic products and earth day t-shits and such. I co-hosted a science quiz with Brian. The kids got super excited to win a raffle ticket for getting the right answer, and they got to play again just by going back into the line. They figured out that if they watched long enough, questions would cycle back through and they memorized them so they could win extra raffle tickets. So easy to brainwash 'em if you get to them early enough.

The most popular was the "paint the veggie oil car" event, seen above, and the solar oven baked chocolate chip cookies.

Apparently last year's emcee was pretty good in his role - and one of the kids let me know it. "You weren't here last year, were you? He was much better." Thanks for the honesty kid.

 

Spring!!

The mid-March to mid-April weather has cracked. Raw, blustery, nasty winds, sandstorms, freak snowstorms, and such are all part of the fun. Yesterday started at 32F, the sun came out and the intensity was back, ~75-80 in the late afternoon. Good stuff. Way to go sun. Temps dropped back to about freezing overnight, so it was 34 when I hopped on the bike. Much better than 26 and 20 mph sustained winds that feel like a fistful of sand in the face. 

April was worse weather than January, so I am glad to see the warm weather return. 

Put away the wool hats and reach for the sunscreen! 

Winter in April...

Heading north from Sante Fe I stopped to car camp. The intention was to get up and ride my bike in the mountains. It's April 11. 

It was after dark when I put up my tent. The weather was mild and the ground was sand and rock. Sand and rock don't hold tent stakes too well. The wind kicked up during the night. 4 times it ripped tent stakes out of the car, twice they were gone for good and I had to find new ones. Once the stake is out of the ground, the tent will flog itself to pieces, and you have to get up and deal with it. Then came the rain. Horizontal. The rain comes inside the tent when the stakes come out of the ground. An amazing amount of rain can find you inside your tent. It turned to snow at dawn.

Sunrise, well daylight at least, found me cold, maybe a little crabby and certainly wet. I drove out looking for breakfast. No way I was going to sit there and get the stove out etc, when civilization might be found nearby.

I stopped at a diner, I think in a town called Rio Chama. Coffee, eggs, chorizo, beans, potatoes, and a giant tortilla. The waitress was impressed with how fast I could eat. I mentioned I slept in a tent at Abiqu Lake. 

"Abiqu Lake?"she says. "That's a shit-center for bad weather. Why would you camp out there in April?" 

Like a moth to flame, that is a good question.