Friday, March 2, 2007 8:42 AM
Good morning Quartzsite, Eugene, Fort Collins, Yuma and other free chick locations. I'm going to just make one point this morning - because you know me when I get started. There is an I Bonobo rant on eating animals and their products in her blog and while it seems a bit like splitting the hair of a hair of a hair on an entire dying planet, I do love to read where she goes with her thoughts. This single phrase caught me,

"Our culture makes it very difficult and next to impossible to live our lives in any meaningful way in alignment with our values."

This is one of the many pieces that have been pushing at me. In a broader context than she was using it here, she is exactly right. It is the cognitive dissonance between what we are learning, understanding and KNOW and what we can do about it given our current life. It would be good to be a really free chicken, enjoying the sun, working on your art projects, writing a story to read to your friends, with plenty of time for hiking and looking, learning and making love. But few of us, or any of us that are of my acquaintance, have that life. We are free chickens only in part, with a leg or arm or body caught in the rat trap of our "culture" and civilization.

Thursday, March 1, 2007 9:22 AM
My boots are wet on my feet and cold. I've been sitting here at the computer in wet boots for about 3 hours, finishing for pay webwork and answering mail. I've many computer projects going - printing topographicals of the route from here to Eugene which will take lots of ink. I'm finishing my knife handle today on the found knife, using ironwood that I cut from a destroyed tree here earlier last month. It is an interesting wood, very tough when dry, but doesn't have the pleasant texture of oak, nor the strength.
Gary wrote this morning and he will try to blog today, but they are in the last couple of days of checking things off their list. I should see them down here in 10 days to 2 weeks I think. I haven't seen Gary and his family in person in years and I'm looking forward to it.
Below, I'm soaking the new boots and then wearing them until they dry to speed up the break in period. I filled them full of warm water and brought the sink water (small sink, little trailer, big hands, ... big ego) up over the boots. I left them soaking for two hours while I talked to Ed how walked over from Rice Ranch. He was nervous about Katie being at the dog doc for tooth cleaning and extraction - all of which turned out fine. While talking to Ed I fished the shaping of my knife handle. Below right is a picture of the right side of they handle.

My boots gave me a blister. My feet are odd as the rest of me is too I guess. They, my feet, are wide at the front and the ball of my food is narrow. I have to get wide boots and then I have problems with the insides of the ankle pushing against the inside of the rear of the boot. I fix that by soaking them and wearing them until their dry, which definitely makes them no returnable.

My found knife enters the final sanding, and multiple coats of varathane. The other side is heartwood and flat and will have a petroglyph down vertically down the handle. While ugly and wicked looking, The best use of it so far for me is sharpening pencils. The blade doesn't flex and makes it easy to trim the point precisely! My Swiss Army knife is there to give you a size reference and the map is one of a series of topographicals I'm printing off my inkjet.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007 10:20 AM

$2.50 at a junk site in town. Both purses are leather. Right: the leather from the left purse. I got more than that from the right purse and still had a very nice leather bag that looks like a Dispatch case.	I have three knives that need sheaths. Leather is expensive, but old pocketbooks are cheap!
I am willing to pay for good boots. These are Altamas and they were on sale at $64. It is a summer version of the boot I normally wear. I did my first break in walk with them today - with the full pack. I have two blisters so they are not perfect. But I will prevail in breaking them in.	I found Baby's prints close to the trailer again. Yesterday on the way to Rainbow Acres - continued

to pick up the new boots at Ed's house I went by the petroglyphs and Moma's tracks were right were I found them before but very very clear. They were on top of some running shoe prints in one area and I was a bit nervous being so close to the mining cave - where the prints headed. I went into the wash to continue and saw two ATVs there. There were two young women on top of Petroglyph rock, and their tread patterns were those I saw around the corner. Seems that the lion had to be there right NOW. I called up and suggested they disembark the petroglpyh site and why. I took off whatout further conversation and they and their ATVs where gone when I came back a few hours later. Moma is bolder and bolder.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007 8:08 AM
Gary wrote to me this morning - his link is on the left - the Daily Pill. He is almost underway and busy trying to fit an entire house, two kids and his wife into the fifth wheel. If you're a full time RVer you'll know that this is a particularly difficult step. Emotionally we are owned by our stuff, labor for our stuff, go into debt for more stuff, and we grieve when we lose it or leave it. Phil mentioned "stuff" in an essay last week. The odd thing is that when my "stuff" is gone, I don't miss it. It is a weight off of me, one less thing to keep track of. I love a line I read somewhere - The philosopher Thoreau wrote and lived simply. He used a rock for a paperweight in his cabin. One day he noticed that it was dusty and he should clean it. He threw it out. I suggest you start getting the weight off your shoulders chickies. Life is a party and you can't dance with all that weight.
I'll have pictures after my walk of my new boots, my very nice knife handle in progress, and of course more on the art of living way the fuck outside of the box cheaply and with a deep sense of satisfaction every morning I wake up. My only regret is waiting until I was 57 to really get in shape. I LOVE THIS!

Monday, February 26, 2007 6:54 AM
Battery Reclamation - the art of living with batteries as your energy storage device.
There are many ways to discuss batteries. You can view them at the chemical level because they are a chemical reaction that is reversed when charging and later goes forward converting chemical energy into electrical. My problem is that you have to make your best guess on a battery you are trading for or buying for the core charge at an auto parts store - all without extensive testing. Of course later you may be pulling them from abandoned vehicles - how do you know which one is worth your time? That is the art, and I'll try to tell you my view and method, which as you know is not always full proof.
Picking out a battery. There is no shortage of cheap discarded batteries. Any place that sells batteries or any tire shop, any repair place, any automotive electrical place, and dumpsters all over the world have batteries for near nothing. The trick is getting good ones. The reason they have been discarded is that the owner thought they were no good or too old. Sometimes they are right, and often they are very wrong. We want those good discarded batteries and we have to have a set of easy to remember rules to make our $5 (price you will probably pay for a "core") yield a likely great battery. YOU are NOT looking of glass mat batteries or maintenance free - you can't work on those and they are not worth the effort in my opinion. There are many reasons and that is a whole article in itself. I would be glad to defend that at a different time. We are after standard wet cell with caps that come of and have liquid in the cells.
1. Heavy is good. The heavier the battery the more lead in it, and therefore the more energy can be stored. If you are offered two batteries and one is heavier, take the heavier one if the rest of the criteria are equal.
2. If the battery is 6V it should be paired with an identical battery. For salvage batteries it is easier to stay with 12V. However if you are offered Trojan T-105s for example - they are golf cart batteries and fork lift batteries - you'll always find them in groups. Take the two or four or six with the most similar voltage and appearance.
3. You must have a cheap volt meter with you - Harbor Freight has a multimeter, bright yellow, about the size of a small paperback book for $5 and is often on sale. It is fine. You want batteries that are above 12.2V
4. Look for batteries that are not perfectly clean. If you look in the holes on the top (12V has six holes) 6V batteries have 3 holes, you should not see the cells filled all the way to the top. Why? I was fooled on my last big beautiful heavy battery when I read 12.23V but someone had just been charging it and it took me two weeks of occasional charging to realize that there was a shorted cell (I get into how to tell a little further down). So the battery should look a little dirty, neglected but NOT have bulging sides, or leaks out the sides or bottom. If the voltage is 12.2 or higher it is likely good. If there are a few all of the same weight better. The same brand, better yet. You say you found six of the exact same battery and they are all heavy and they are all the same brand, hot dog, you have the makings of a great RV size, or cabin sized energy storage bank.

Step one - is it a dog?
Even though it reads about 12.2V that doesn't mean it wasn't a trick like my last one (sniff). Bring it home, and hose it off. Get the dirt off and check for cracks on the outside. Pop the caps off - it is usually two plastic plates and when you pry the two of them off you find 6 holes (12V). Clean carefully around the holes and try not to push the dirt into the cells. You can use your finger if your old and leathery. Swish in water to get rid of the acid before you touch your clothes.
Check to see if the cells have fluid in them. Do that by tilting the battery gently towards the holes until you can see fluid. All of the cells should have fluid, non dry. A dry cell means a useless battery. I expect to find the fluid level there, but low.

Step two - add distilled water - you can make your own with a teapot but lets say you just hit the grocery store and buy a gallon for about 90 cents or less. Don't use tap water as it has minerals which may interfere with the chemical reaction that is the heart of the battery. Bring the cells right up to the bottom of the holes so it just touches. I often add EDTA which is an organic weak acid in crystals to the distilled water, at the rate of 1 teaspoon per cell. You don't have to do this but later we may discuss that. It is a way to help the battery recover it's full capacity if it is a little sulfated. All batteries are slightly covered with crystals of lead sulfate after a while and it gets in the way. Sulfate is the enemy of lead acid batteries - but that is for another article.

Step three - charge the battery for one or two days with solar or for a few hours with a commercial battery charger at 10 amps or more on grid power. Since I don't have that kind of amperage, I use the 3 amp little solar array and charge for a couple of days. Remove the battery from the charger and come back in an hour. Test the battery voltage and write it down. If you're doing many batteries at once, write it in crayon on the case. Wait 24 hours and test again. If you the battery for example tested 12.5V after the charge and a day later 11.8V you have shorts in the battery and it is no good. If you see as drop to 12.3V I would expect that and say this is a battery you can recover. It will take a couple of discharge cycles to be sure, but it is likely good. A 1/2 V drop in a few hours would mean it is not worth your effort.

Step four - punishing your battery. This is very bad and you can die. But you probably won't. Very low probability. Make sure the cells of your battery which is now charged up to at least 12.6V are topped up to the bottom of the cells with distilled water. Short the two polls, the negative and positive together very briefly with a big long screw driver with a big plastic handle. This ia like a dollar cheapy screwdriver from HF - don't do it with a screwdriver you love. DON'T LET IT STICK! just whack it across and break the connection. Big sparks. Scary. Do it several times. It is awful and would void any warranty -but really it is fun!
At the plate level this is like a hurricane and tornado rolled into one and it exposes fresh plate material. Doing this will almost always increase the storage capacity of the battery back towards new. Combining that with EDTA can restore the battery to near new. Shorting the terminals can also destroy the battery and if you are really dumb and didn't fill the battery all the way up to the bottom of the holes it can theoretically blow up, blinding you and making you into a republican. It can they say, I've see the pictures.
So I told you not to do that, I'm telling you what I and other senseless pirates do. It works, it's fun. And of course it teaches the battery who is boss. Recharge the battery until it reaches 12.67V when off the charger for several hours. That is fully charged.

Step 5, the overcharge. Since you have slightly overfilled each cell - you have the acid mix touching the bottom of the cell fill hole it is time to overcharge the battery and "boil" that extra distilled water off, and at the same time forcing the battery to charge every part of every plate equally. This charge is called battery conditioning. It fully mixes the acid and water evenly throughout the cell and extends the life of the battery. With my solar array I just connect it directly and let the voltage slowly rise to 15V. If you pop the caps off you'll see vigorous bubbling in every cell. Is it boiling? No, that is water molecules being split into Hydrogen and oxygen. Don't be smoking or making sparks - that is an explosive mixture. IF you are doing it outside it dissipates so no big problem. When I condition or equalize (that's another word for overcharging for 2 hours) the inside batteries in the trailer, I unplug everything - I don't want 15V going to anything running. No lights or satellite gear. Many items in the 12V world have an upper limit of 14.5V. This is no good for equalization - got to boil those babies.
There are solar people who run whole homes and the holy grail of batteries are nuclear submarine batteries which are as big as you and much much heavier. Instead of equalization (they are just like our car battery, just really big), they have pumps inside the battery to circulate the acid and keep it evenly mixed. Overcharging does that for us. I do it twice a year to my T-105 bank of 6 batteries and they are now 5 years old and are perfect. On my salvage batteries I do that when they are being resurrected and then every month or so if I think of it.

Because you are splitting water into two gas molecules your level in each cell drops. Check when you're done - say two hours of abuse, and bring any low cells up so that the plates are full covered but not so high that it is touching the bottom of the filler holes. If you plan to make a welding setup like I have done, let the fluid come up to the bottom of the holes. Why? Because that way there is no space for hydrogen to gather and have a welding spark ignite it. If you leave a big space between the plates and the inside top of the battery you could pop it and splash acid everywhere. Us pirates really don't give a shit about that so just fill the holes almost to touching and move your work a few feet away from the batteries. You can cover the batteries with a throw away towel or tarp if you're not willing to compete in the Darwin awards.

That's it for today. IF your salvaged battery passes being shorted and over charged and keeps it's charge across 24 hours without more than a .25V drop, you are in business. Your first cheap battery and you are on the road to independence!

Sunday, February 25, 2007 7:51 AM
State of the Alan message:
Bicycle is running fine on the old wheel. New wheel doesn't work. Not smart enough to figure out why, or not willing to put more time into it. I'm back using the bike and Burley trailer. Shopping, running garbage runs and not using the truck which is great! I have spent so little so far. I came down with about $6200 and knew that I would get about $3000 later in March from my tax return and some webwork. I have $4400 of the original $6200 left after three months. So I might actually come back to Oregon with more than I left with. Great! The two biggest changes this year are not running the truck - now usually only every 6 days for just a few miles, and not eating out. Without the City Bus Cafe which cost me about $9/day last year and lots of gas driving there and back, I am living a very full life without the normal expenses. The LTVA costs $140 for 5 months but since I'm only here for part of that - this year December 10 through April 14th which is roughly 135 days, which equals $1.04/day. I have previously written 88 cents a day but that is based on being here the whole season which I'm not.
Since I make all my electricity, and I have been loaned various DVD courses (my next one is the great philosophers), my only real continuing expenses are a smidge of gasoline and one tank of propane for the next three months. My big continuing expense is food shopping, and it is about $40/week including a lot of diet pepsi which I should cut back on. Oh and lest I forget I must pay for my privelege and pay my car insurance on Monday which is $479 on the truck/trailer this year.

I am not living the life of a impoverished person. Every day is filled with learning new things and tending to my little solar world (which requires nothing but to put water in the batteries once per month), and getting my body in shape. I love the sun and the walking and it clears my head and makes me less nervous about writing to you, loosing friends, and being battered by people who just want our little world of privilege and piggishness to go on forever. Whoever says the emperor has no clothes tends to get stoned (in a bad way).
I am learning new skills and have several trade ideas that I can learn or already have done which would give me a sub rosa life now and and later. It is difficult to implement some of these because I do not have a real home base, I'm staying light so that I can move next month, south to Imperial Dam which has a large impound reservoir that has beautiful hidden kayak fingers all over through rush filled passage ways. My LTVA permit is good there too. So I don't want to start too many more projects.

Currently I'm writing a breakdown of my life as lived each day, into function categories - like entertainment, power production, food, cooking, shelter, water. What I'm trying to do is work around my own memes - those knee jerk assumptions - that we have discussed briefly before. I'm trying to see how to reduce my own internal emotional inefficiency.

What does that mean. Right now a few of you are caught in that place of angst and frustration over preparing for an uncertain future. I am less concerned with that now. I am in the stage of grief that is called acceptance. This lets me start to put legs under my assumptions. There are places already in America that are preparing their whole community for the peak oil crisis, and are dealing with these things we have discussed in groups of 40 to 60 people in town meetings. Like the Cuban energy video it shows that we can respond to the coming changes with productive ideas. Here is their website http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/08.10.05/willits-0532.html. It is in California on 101

I continue to believe that each free chicken must confront his locked in assumptions. It is the mental work that makes each of valuable to ourselves and loved ones in the future. If you are not even willing to see the problems you cannot deal with the coming future. As always remember that each of us has fertilizer value at least. I however would like to be useful in other ways as I will get around to fertilizing plants soon enough without just dying with the large herd. My goal and I'm happy and comfortable with it is to live and learn and contribute and poke you with a sharp mental stick for a long time (or with you my free chicken reader, until we can move on the the building of our sane new world, which is much more fun that just poking you with a sharp stick - don't get me wrong, I enjoy this too).

Status of a few projects:
Battery reclamation of the found battery failed - shorted cell.
Skinning knife finished - pictures tomorrow
Repacking all the bags is underway and off the floor and quite educational - more on that later.
Welding and power cart - haven't done more though the batteries are ready to go - full up, all of them in the trailer and my little group of three outside. I actually am getting too much power now so I will leave the satellite on most of the time now while I'm awake. If I leave the batteries at full charge all the time I have to check and add distilled water more often.

Upcoming projects: Battery reclamation article almost complete in my head - will write it this week.
Hunting knife handles are half shaped and will be glued on today.
I would like to make a willow backpack frame identical to the one that was found on the Himalayan guy they found frozen - he lived 5000 years ago and what he has for a tool kit, bow, backpack, tool belt, shoes, etc. is very interesting to me. His backpack is exactly the one that Torjus made on his blog. You have to work back through his posts to find it. Here's his link.

My time up and down the Q hill - trailer door to trailer door was 27 minutes yesterday, my personal best. The only way to beat that is to run some parts of it which defeats the purpose. I did the 27 minutes without pack. Today I will be carrying a 40 -50 lb pack (as soon as it warms up). The last time I did this I made a groin muscle sore, so I won't be timing this today.
TJ sent a link which I just read of a working solar cell to hydrogen to fuel cell to electricity website. It is extremely hi tech and expensive. It is on an island off the coast of the state of Washington. Here is the link. This has possibilities - but before some of you start thinking it is a replacement to fossil fuel - it is really just a big solar array with hydrogen as the storage media instead of batteries. I, you, can learn to build a battery from the salvaged billions of discarded car batteries, but we will probably not ever be able to build the membrane that cracks water. Here's the link to the Stuart Island Energy Initiative.
Friday, February 23, 2007 2:57 PM
I feel really great today and I'm in a big messy project on the floor of the trailer. All my camping gear, all my lists of 72 hour pack stuff, all my sleeping bags, ponchos, mess kits, walkie talkies, knives, box cutters, firestarters, flashlights, food packs, mountain house packs, all of it is in a seething mass on the floor as I am working through and organizing it. Oddly it has begun to organize itself when I look away, and 45 minutes ago I saw my first sighting of the floor.
It is windy, a gust just went through at about 50mph. Just sec, got to check on my dove. She's OK. She is nesting about 5 feet from my front window in a paloverde. She has been sitting on the nest every time I've looked for the last two days. That gust that just came through almost took down la casa blanca. I went and tightened up all the ropes. Zephyrs - I think is the right word. I'm off to town on my bicycle in the wind, as I want to get polishing rouge (yes, I'm buying something new - but just a little) and a small bag of chips because I have the munchies. I have yet to walk the hill today because of all the dust. I'm hoping it will "relax" at dusk so I can walk. This is the only post today barring some great excitement befalling the desert.

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