Busy day today.. I tried my best to split my time between the things I want to be doing. Today’s split was between the burning man car and my family. Not an easy choice at all. I’ve really put most of my free time over the past 3 weeks towards gettign those @#^#$! lights working. It has not been fun.. and it’s taken me away from my family during our short precious summer.   At the same time.. it’s very gratifying to see the whole project coming together.. It
‘s down to the wire now.. The trailer is supposed to go out on Wednesday.. Thursday AM at the latest if they’re going to be at burning man a week from tomorrow.   We still have to fit the hydrolics and complete the power generation system.. I’m betting that we’ll pull it off.    I headed over to Davids this morning around 9. Today’s big prroject was gettign the motrs and chains mounted. That means mounting the huge spilt chans around the hub that will engage the hydrolic motors.   David cut the 3 foot gears in two pieces with ‘puzzle’ style interlocks to keep them straight.

David was also helping me today with the power distribution.. Here are the tiny mercury filled rotating contacts that will allow us to get 110 Volts AC out to each of the wheels.

Here’s the 40 horse diesel motor, the hydrolic pump and our alternator.

Mark and I were working to get the power from the inverter down through the axels.. that meant drilling into the clockwork…

Still, while < I have the lights running in one of the sheds.. I want to see if the stuff will last , So far so good . I went around today and labeled every connection necessary to run the thing.s.. there are a ton !

Overall.. the project is huge and impressive.. if we can only get it to run in time !

Giant Tim  doesn’t seem all that large when your purched up in the ‘clockworks’ of the machine.

Tim did bring some wonderful sourdough rye for us to munch on . It was made by the founder of Bread and Puppet.. it tasted the same as the bread they served for bread and puppet ! !

Homer’s overflowing with excitement and enthusiasmat this point.. I love seeing him so happy and fulfilled !

I hhad to leave Davids around 3L30 since we ha soem family projects we wanted to do.. One of them was to start making Diane and Max’s new mud oven outside. Diane , Gabe, Max and I spent an hour or so packing sand into the wholes in the cinder blocks.

We were running a bit low on sand, so we decided to add filler. Beer bottles are good isolation.   Of course we also needed to add a SamStone.

We packed the stuff down and then added the pavers to get a level surface

It took is a while to get every thing flat and that point.. but we did..   then Max place the firebrick

This oven will be made out of baked mud.. I can’t wait to see how it comes out..   I can tell you that the muffin sized oven held together pretty well.. When max tried to destroy it with a firecracker it showed just how strong it is !

 

Around 6 we knocked off and got washed up.. We all voted for ‘Asian bistro’ a Chinese / sushi place in Tafts’ corners.. before we entered.. Diane ‘invited’ us leave our cell phones in the car.. It was hard.. but we all managed to make it work. We all become so connected all the time.. it was wonderful not to all be staring at tiny screens !

Dinner took a bit long to arrive, so Gabe showed us his telekinetic powers !  Strange.. no ?

OK. I can hardly stay awake right now.. Here’s hoping for a more balanced week. coming up ..we’ll see.  Hope all of your are well .. Gnite folks. nite love
-me