Day Three: Annoyed but supportive, making lists, checkin' twice.

[Better Today]

This will likely be my last full day at home for a while. Barring an unexpected delay, I should be on the road late tomorrow, arriving at some town in either Nevada or Utah Tuesday morning. Yeah, I know I should know by now which course I'm taking to get to Vegas, but alas, I've spent so much time and energy on trying to be sure all the equipment and issues regarding the recording set up are resolved, that I've yet to sit down with the atlas to determine my course. So, that is today's focus. Additionally, I'll make the lists of what to load tomorrow in the way of my needs and of course, Cooper's. Since I'll have to travel with the bare minimum, most of the personal stuff will need packing near the last minute, as I'll be using things right up till then. Tomorrow I get the last loads of laundry ready, give a key to the neighbor, pay the utility bills, and get the electrical parts and pieces that I'll need (see yesterday's post).

There have been a couple of set backs since yesterday's post. Most importantly, my household heater is on the fritz. I removed the central air four years ago, due to noise, I just couldn't stand listening to the thing running. It was in a central closet in the the family room, and there is no alternative out-of-the-house place that it can be situated unless I want the carport cement drilled out and then replaced. So I bought a little natural gas powered, wood-stove looking, heater, attached it to the thermostat and Viola! we had nice extra warm front rooms, slightly cooler bedrooms, PERFECT, and QUIET as it accomplishes this with no blower added. I can even put a pot of food on it in the afternoon and have a lovely slow-cooked meal by dinnertime saving more gas usage at the stove. Unfortunately, it looks like something in the internal lighting system (a thermostat, and the other piece I can't remember the name of) isn't working. The pilot will hold it's flame, but when I turn the insert on, no whoosh, no fire. I fixed this last year, buying the generic $20 pieces instead of the $80 ones, so I know what and even how, to fix it. I simply won't have the time or resources to work on it before I leave.

Hopefully the weather won't get too cold while I'm gone. The neighbors promise they'll come in and run hot water for a couple of minutes everyday if it does get below freezing for an extended time so the pipes won't freeze through. And my daughter will be checking in when she can, a couple times a week. I guess the bizarre silver lining here is that I'll be well acclimated to the road trip, with the house being so chilly these last couple days.

I did not spend the night in the trailer last night. I had no electricity for the trailer since ... oh, I forgot yesterday to tell you a short story about a stupid choice I made yesterday morning. I'll preface by saying it was good that I screwed it up yesterday when I was intending to find and resolve other electrical considerations. So, here's what happened.

OOPS, I BLEW IT, LITERALLY

As I was laying in the trailer the night before, I got to thinking like I always do. I got to thinking about how long and how well the battery booster could keep my PC and monitor running. I thought perhaps it would be best if I tested it while I still had time to charge the booster on a wall socket. So first thing yesterday morning, I brought the booster inside with it's inverter, unplugged the power strip for the main PC from the wall, turned off and unplugged all the peripherals except the monitor and the PC, and plugged it into the inverter. (The inverter is the piece you'd plug into the lighter socket in the car if the car battery was being used.), and turned it back on. Y'know, knowing what I know now, I'm surprised it got as far as it did. It made it 2/3rds of the way through the boot up and POOF!, everything went down, I blew the inverter.

Guess what. Not only does the booster have to be able to handle the electrical load, so does the inverter. Mine was rated for only 100w, and the guy at Interstate Battery figures I was 50-100w over that, so the little inverter was fried. Since yesterday was learn and research day, I didn't buy a replacement. I think they are closed today, so I won't have mobile electrical again till tomorrow. All will be fine, but for part of the day yesterday, I feared that I wouldn't be able to hook up the main PC for editing,etc., which would make the trip much more difficult to pull off in a timely manner. Having the video without being able to upload it with the blogging, just isn't what I had in mind. It does look like everything will be resolved, at about $150, which is below the $200 mentioned yesterday, so I think my friend here will pay for at least part of it.

ANNOYED BUT SUPPORTIVE

As some of you may have figured out, the impetus for getting this started is this trip to Vegas to see my friend, then follow him down to his place in CA where I have some website and photography work to do for him. I figured, well, I've wanted to do this across America trip for a couple of years now, but have been too chicken to leave the house, too hopeful about economic recovery and spending too much time loading and reloading job sites' listings in hope of something more mundane, like a job. So he knows I'm about to go drive-about with my equipment, but that was about all he knew.

Now I hadn't talked with him since before I posted anything here, but last night he called, wanted to be sure if I needed anything or wanted any more advice. I discussed some of the week's issues and the solutions or tentative solutions and the conversation was going just fine when I said, "Oh, btw, you have an industrial heat blower, right?" He says, "yes."

"Great! While I'm down there I need to remove the branding off of the trailer." I say.

"Why on earth do you want to do that?" he asked, sort of annoyed.

So I go off on a schpeal about how I feel that for my own safety it might be best that not drive around in a trailer that would allow anyone to get online and find where I live, and stuff. He doesn't see the problem with that. He thought I was just going to travel around taking pictures. He knew I might approach DU for places to rest and stop, but he didn't know I had posted,nor the level of response I got. Nor does he grasp the quality of exposure that DU gets, and though I surely cannot share all my PMs there are a few that indicate if the test run goes well, I may be offered even larger outlets for the blogging and videos. So I'm explaining all of this, and still he's not understanding why I feel the need for a little bit of anonymity, like not driving around with a branded trailer.

I see I have two security issues. One, if folks are following this at all and know I'm on the road, my residence, which is also my home office, will be at risk if my company and all are proudly displayed. Two, if this becomes popular here or any liberal arena, we know freepers come here and read. I live in freeperville, so if I am fully exposed, I may come home to more than just potential vandalism. I don't plan on pulling any punches in my blogging and that will surely rub a few freepers very much the wrong way.

Let's remember, I'm an old lady, 5'5", barely reaching 100# after a heavy meal. Perhaps I'm being paranoid, but at my size and as many times as I've been beaten, tortured, or raped in my younger days, I'm not willing to take careless risks. A little too paranoid seems a better choice that foolishly carefree.

So I explain all this to him, being careful not to use terms like freeper because he's only a few feet away from being one himself, and the phone connection becomes progressively heavy with silence from his end. It's obvious he's none too happy. He does ask though, "how can just going out and taking photos and videos of events make anyone unhappy with you?", at which point I realized I had never really told him that the idea was to record the political and social unrest and ugliness going on in the country. A nearly daily record of Great Depression type images, not just the 15 second blurps about one soup kitchen or one foreclosed neighborhood like you get on the evening news before the 20 minutes of jabber it takes for the weatherman to tell us that it will be chilly and sunny tomorrow, just like today (oh, which is of course wrong a good portion of the time).

Well as you can imagine, he's none to happy with me. Yes, I know it comes from a place of caring and concern. Even though we've primarily been phone friends over the past 10 years, we do care a lot about each other. After some extended silences, he says, "well, it's your dream, you gotta do what you gotta do." So he's annoyed but supportive. He still thinks I'm being a bit too paranoid about things like the trailer branding, but he will loan me his heat gun to remove the branding, nonetheless.

I still haven't figured out a great name for the blog and youtube channel, but I guess I have till I'm done at my friend's home in LA to keep recording and blogging into Notepad++ (did I mention I love this program), before I'll really be on the road for the true test of this all where the posts need to be online. Part of those initial blogs will be me imagining, evaluating, then choosing methods to better assure my safety as I travel to places unknown to me, visiting people known only through DU, with distances in between where I may be entirely on my own, except for Cooper of course.

My daughter just arrived, so I'll close for now. Time to get busy with lists and all.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Sounds like you're in touch with reality!

And reality can be a harsh mistress...

Time to kick your thread back up!

Have fun with your daughter and all those lists!

:hug:

[Suich]

2. Another kick!

:kick:

:hi:

[alfredo]

3. kick