Freakishly Happy

Hi All!

We took part of the weekend off to go hang out in Iowa City. On Friday we
left the farm late in the morning and drove the hour or so to Iowa City.  We had lunch at a restaurant we frequented
(and by frequented I mean three or so times per week) when we lived in Iowa City. It was good,
but unfortunately, our very favorite waiter was gone, and the food wasn’t quite
as good as we remember it being.  

After stuffing ourselves on Crab Rangoon, we went down town and did a little
shopping. Iowa City
has a lot of cute shops, but unfortunately a lot of them feel so trendy that it’s
almost painful going in to them.  

After a while of looking at things we’d never buy, we
decided to head over to the Futon Shop. We’ve been sleeping on an air mattress
for over a month now. It wasn’t so bad in the beginning when the thing was
retaining air, but after an unfortunate incident with a tack, we’ve been
hitting the floor long before morning for some time now, so we decided to look
in to alternative sleeping options. 

We’d been contemplating building a futon, but then decided that we’ve currently
got enough on our plates, and that we might as well go shopping to see in
anything piqued our interest. Couldn’t hurt, right? 

We had been looking causally at furniture at another place and the sales person
was completely clueless about what the furniture was made out of, where it was made
what the warranty was etc, and I was a little more than disgusted…. So I was
very pleased  a few weeks ago when I called
the Futon Shop to see if they had any organic cotton and/or wool mattresses,
and the guy had been very helpful and knowledgeable, (little did I know he was
the Employee of the Century (www.iowacityfutons.com)).

Needless to say, we’d picked out our futon in a little under 20 minutes, and
spent the next hour or so gabbing with the sales guy about parachuting and
living on a bus.

We did a little more shopping before going out to dinner
with John’s dad.  After dinner I took a
nap while John worked on his father’s computer (it’s great being me), after
which we all went to Scattergood School, a Quaker boarding school outside of
Iowa City, to go contra dancing.

Let me tell you, contra dancing is SO much fun.  I like it almost better than the ballroom dancing
we used to do, because you don’t really have to worry about planning your next
move, because it’s already planned for you!  I know that sounds a little too structured to
be coming out of mouth, but you’ll have to trust me on this one. It’s great! We
danced late into the night (well, okay 11pm) and went back to John’s parent’s
house and crashed.  

We woke up late on Saturday, too late to go to the Farmer’s
market, (although we did make a valiant effort and got there just as they were
closing up), so we went to the Co-op instead.
I love the downtown Co-op in Iowa City.  Everyone looks freaky, like us and it smells
healthy.  We bought a few things, but
mostly just enjoyed being at the Co-op.

We went back to John’s parent’s house and decided that we’d go try the new
Russian restaurant in a town nearby that John’s dad had discovered earlier in
the week. We had Borek, a flaky Turkish pastry, and potato dumplings similar to
Pirogue. Every thing was delicious! 

After lunch we went down to Kolona to the Mennonite store in search of a
clothes ringer and some other things we needed for the bus. Unfortunately, the
woman looked at me like I was crazy for asking if they had one. We did find
some great bulk foods, wicks for our oil lamps and a few other odds and ends.

On our way back into town we went to the New Co-op in
Coralville because I’d been jonsing all day for concord grapes. The produce
manager had just thrown them away but he let me take them out of the compost
bin! Free grapes taste better!

On Sunday I woke up late (surprise, surprise…), we went to the Fiddler’s
picnic. Fiddlers, mandolin, banjo and guitar players as well as many other
musicians from around the state gathered to give/take workshops as well as jam
out with other musicians. It was wonderful. 
We got to listen to a lot of really great music, and I met a woman who
not only knew where Vermont
is, but had actually lived in Castleton, a town very close to where my family
lives.  When living in Vermont
I thought it was really great meeting Midwesterners, but it’s nothing like
being in the Midwest and meeting a Vermonter. It
feels sort of like finding the proverbial needle in that proverbial haystack.

While we were at the picnic, I discovered my future instrument: washtub bass. It
seems only to require a sense of rhythm to start, and the rest you kind of pick
up as you go along… and it doesn’t really matter if you don’t get really good,
because who really cares, right?  (no offense
to any wash tub base aficionados out there).

We also got to do a little more contra dancing… I’m telling you people, if you
haven’t already tried this, especially if you live in Vermont the land of contra-dancing plenty,
you really must give it at least a shot.

It’s getting pretty hard for me to keep my eyes open, so I
will close.

G’night!

So things have been going pretty well since we left Vermont and landed in Iowa. The drive out here was long, but mostly uneventful (except for when our under storage bay popped open and our hammer bounced down the highway).

Since we’ve arrived we’ve been staying on John’s grandmother’s farm, a little north of Cedar Rapids. It is truly beautiful here. I’ve never really been fond of Iowa, but this is nice. I think that if it weren’t this picturesque here, the transition from Vermont would have been much rougher.

The farm is situated on some open country side. The land is rolling, and the farm is surrounded by meadow on one side and land that is being turned into natural prairie on the other. There is also quite a bit of wooded area all along the farm, which seems to be pretty unusual for the rest of this area. The house itself is surrounded by several different types of fruit trees, apples, pears and plum, which were nearly all ready to eat when we arrived.

John’s cousin, Shannon, also lives on the farm and helps maintain the house as well as keeping an eye on Grandma. Shannon has three gorgeous horses, two Frisian (huge, black, beautiful horses) and one Palomino (white with brown paint). The horses graze freely on the meadows behind the house during the day. It is really nice to be able to look out the window and see them running and playing on cool evenings.

Since we’ve been in Iowa we’ve been trying to do a lot of catching up with family and friends that we missed while we were in Vermont. It’s been really great to catch up with everyone, although there are still a lot of people we haven’t seen yet.

Bus-Life has been really really good, too. It’s been a little hard because at first we didn’t have running water, electricity or a toilet. While we still don’t have running water, we’ve got the other two under control. We also have wireless internet, which really sucked at first, but after John fussed with it and bought a couple different pieces of hardware, it works great! It’s exactly like Little House on the Prairie… except in a bus… with electricity and internet…

For those of you who were wondering… the composting toilet has been working really well, with only a few minor hiccups. There is virtually no smell (and that’s not just because we’re dirty hippies and we can’t smelly anything over our own stench either! I had our friend Dawn verify… lucky her, right?) and it’s really easy to use (always a plus in a toilet).

There really are only a few downsides to living in a bus. It’s been a little frustrating because we have all of our stuff with us and haven’t really built much storage or shelving yet. But it’s definitely giving us a perspective on what we need… and what we don’t.

The only other downside is the flies. I’ve never lived on a farm before, and have always had screens on the windows. I guess when you live on a farm, and/or when you don’t have screens on the windows you are targeted by every fly within a 20 mile distance, or so it feels. By the time night sets in we have mizillions (millions of zillions) of flies ALL over the bus. Luckily/unfortunately they sleep during the night. This means that they are not a nuisance when you sleep, but also they are harder to find/kill and they start dive bombing you bright and early in the morning. Now I was really pacifistic towards all beings before moving here; a mosquito could land on me, suck my blood and I would do nothing, figuring that it was his right as a mosquito… (Shut up Rich). This tendency towards universal kindess has dwindled somewhat in me, especially where flies are concerned. Flies completely gross me out. The little hairs all over their body, the crunchy yet moist quality of them… the buzzing noise… you get the picture. Everything about them completely freaks me out and to have at least one if not ten of them touching various parts of my body, John’s body, and all of our stuff at any given time makes me a little neurotic. Now oddly enough killing flies with a fly swatter also freaks me out. I don’t want it done any where we eat, cook or sleep or any where that the body might fall and not be seen, thus leaving it exposed to bare feet. Call me crazy (again, Shut up Rich). Also, I feel bad every time I kill one and find my self walking around going around something like this, Whack!! “Sorry,” Whack! “Sorry,” and there is really only so much guilt a girl can take. So we’ve come up with some conventional and not so conventional means to dealing with them.

Last week we bought Kmart out of fly tape. I have always hated fly tape, almost as much as I hate sneeze guards, finding it utterly repulsive. Although my feelings for it haven’t changed much, it’s sure effective and leaves me mostly guilt free and it’s the flies who are choosing to try and cannibalize other flies who are stuck to the tape, thus getting stuck to it themselves… it’s their bad karma.

We figured out really quick that hanging the fly tape high doesn’t work John and I both got it stuck in our hair within 10 minutes of hanging it, and besides the flies are down low during day while they are buzzing around, only going to the ceiling at night to sleep. So I started hanging it down low (this also proved awkward right after hanging it when I got the whole thing stuck to the back of my thigh while wearing a dress, and had to run screaming from the bus “get it off, get it off!” It was some of the nastiest, stickiest stuff I ever felt. Ten minutes after this experience a fly got stuck to some of the residual gunk on my thumb, causing me to scream and dry heave in my mouth. … Since we’ve figured out a system of hanging it where that we can’t get it stuck to ourselves, it’s worked really well. The other day I hung some and honest to goodness within an hour we’d caught 50 flies on one tape. Gross!

The other day our friend Dawn was here, when we had a particularly huge crowd of flies (the biggest crowd ever I think). After dinner, she decided to see if she could suck them up in our vacuum cleaner. Now a couple of years ago I begged for a really nice vacuum, I know, a funny gift for a girl who hates to clean, but now that gift has paid off. Our vacuum has a detachable handle that turns into a sucking wand with a 16 foot reach. This was really really useful for sucking the little buggers off the ceiling and besides it made us feel really cool a la Ghostbusters. We all took turns holding the flashlight and sucking up flies for at least a half and hour and by the time we were done there must have been well over one hundred flies in the canister. Not only does the vacuum have a long detachable sucker-thingy… it also has a see through canister so we could watch the little nasties flying around in there like it was perverted ant farm. Man do we know how to spend a Saturday night…

John has been working really hard on his engineering contracts lately, which means we’ve not been working as hard on the bus. But we have gotten some stuff done. Today John built a wooden platform for our woodstove to go over the steel cage he and our friend Adam built while we were in Vermont. I’ve been sick with a cold for the last few days, and have been taking it pretty easy, but I’ve been doing a decent job of being the foreman in Rich’s stead. We also moved the stove over on to the platform ourselves!! This was quite a task and thank god John is an engineer. The stove weighs in the neighborhood of 400 lbs. and so there’s no way that we could lift it ourselves. Instead using engineering principals, we lifted up the stove and put boards underneath it until it was level with the platform. Then we put two longer boards under it, screwed them down to the other boards (which were also screwed down) and John “walked” the stove on to it’s platform. For the record, he is still the strongest and smarted guy I know.

Tonight we had pizza from our local pizza place. I’m not sure if it’s just small town Iowa pizza, or small town pizza everywhere, but man… it was good/shitty pizza. You know what I mean… upon first biting into it, it’s lava hot with molten cheese that you can’t chew and grease dripping all over your fingers. It’s got sickeningly sweet sauce but golden brown crust. It’s that perfect dichotomy between delicious and disgusting.

Now that I’ve got this dauntingly huge blog out of the way, I will try to update more frequently! And post pictures soon, too… Probably a longer wait on that one though, as our internet connection is still a little slow. We haven’t put up the webcam yet either, we thought it might be a little awkward since we’re actually living in the bus, but it may come back online one of these days. Who knows?

So thus far we are very happy with our choice to live in a bus rather than be grownups... I'll keep you posted of any changes or continue to gloat about how great it is in the future :)

    Just wanted to give you a quick update....

 We finished our final coat of wax on our floors today, and so far they are looking really good. We found quite few loose hairs stuck to the first coat, which was not only a little gross, but also a pain. I think I might write the company and tell them to put hair-nets as a requirement on the can.  They probably don't have too many dirty hippies using their product though, so it's probably a wash.

Today we also went up to Rutland and got our bus registered and signed up for a new license.  I really thought it'd be more difficult than this, because we had to have a constable or state police officer sign off on it. Lucikly, our friend and my sister's employee Lindsey's dad is a state trooper, and he stopped by yesterday after work to help us with the paper work.  Hooray! New plates should be arriving soon.

That's about all for tonight... I'm fighting to keep my eyes open. G'night!

It seems entirely impossible that it has already been a month since I last posted, but as I’m looking at the last post I see that it’s only three days shy of a month. It’s incredible. Needless to say, we have been busy and time has been flying.

Since the last time I wrote, we installed walls,made it up to Bristol to pick up our floors, laid the floors and even hard-waxed them! Like I said, it’s been a busy month.

Right after we finished the floors, we began working on the walls. For this we bought more Advantech plywood-like substance, which is low in chemicals, is waterproof, and has a 50 year warranty). We decided to put an extra layer of insulation on the walls, in addendum to what we’d already done. We cut and wrapped huge 4 foot-long (or longer) sections of foam board in Red Rosin paper to keep it from squeaking. We had to do two pieces for every length of wall for both the foam and the Advantech, as there is a metal lip running down the length of the bus, about a foot of the floor. So there was one piece of foam/Advantech that would be over a food and a half for the top part, and one that was around 10 inches for the bottom part. Then as someone said, we “screwed the holy hell out of it.”

We really wanted our walls to be solid, and solid they are. After John cut the boards to size, we took a drill with a counter-sinking bit, and bored holes in the wood where it would be able to screw into the metal bars under the windows and in the center of the wood just for good measure. We used hex-headed self-tapping screws. For those of you like myself who have no idea what those are, they are screws that have a head that is about 3/8 of an inch tall and hexagonal in shape. Unlike a normal screw with a Phillips head, these are much stronger and won’t strip out as easily. The self-tapping part just means that it has a small drill on the end of each screw, so that you do not have to pre-drill the holes. Unfortunately for us, we often had to pre-drill, because the screws would begin to melt once they got through the wood to the metal. We bought a box of about 1000 screws, and I’d say we used just under half of it. I have pectoral muscles of steel from boring holes!

All of the walls are the same height, except for a piece in the middle of the bus, which is four windows long. Eventually this will be where our kitchen counters are. Even though we’re really trying to keep the space open we decided it’d be ridiculous to try and do them the same height as everywhere else, as we’d basically have to get down on our hands and knees to cook. This wasn’t an option we liked and we decided we could sacrifice four windows.

During the first week in July we took Tim’s pick-up, “Ben,” as it is larger and able to bear more weight than the truck we’d been using. Unfortunately, unlike the rental car, this meant no Bob Marley for us.

It was a rough trip up and an even rougher trip back. We went to pick up the wood late in the week, because the place that we bought the wood (Lathrop’s Exclusively Vermont Wood Products), would be closed over the weekend and the entire next week. It was threatening to rain as we left, and we encountered some heavy-ish rain along the way. As usual, when we are working under someone else’s schedule, tensions were a little high.

Even though we left in plenty of time, we made it up to Bristol only 45 minutes before they closed, and just after a huge downpour of rain. One of the workers, a great guy named Jody, helped us load the wood into the bed with a skid loader. We put a tarp over all the wood, and tacked a red plastic cup to the back (it was the only red thing in the truck that we could use as a caution) and were on our way home and our tension began to subside.

This was short lived. After pulling out on to the road, we realized that what we really needed, and had failed to bring was a tow-strap. Even though we had it tied down with ropes, every time we hit a bump the wood would bounce, and every time we went up a hill it’d slide toward the rear and the open tailgate.

We crawled back towards Middlebury, the nearest sizeable town with stomachs in our throats, on a windy, hilly and bumpy back road. Then we had to merge on to a busy intersection that was uphill and nearly lost the wood out the back. At our wits end we stopped at the nearest building, a hotel, to find whether there was a hardware store nearby where we could by supplies. Unluckily, there wasn’t. But there was a large gas station just up the road which serviced semi-trucks that would likely have what we needed. And as an added bonus, the road to it was mostly down hill.

We crept back on to the highway and backtracked, inching our way along. When we finally got there, I pulled in and began to fill the truck with gas while John went in to see what they had. He came back out within minutes, as they had nothing that we could use. We went back in to talk to the girl behind the counter, to see if there was a hardware store or auto-parts store anywhere in the next town. She looked at us rather blankly, chewing her gum, and said that there wasn’t. We tried asking her several different things, trying to convey to her our desperation, and still she looked at us blankly. John quickly gave up on her, and went out to the parking lot to see if anyone had a strap that we could buy from them. As they say, the third time’s a charm. After asking two people, John struck it lucky, and a very kind and generous man said that he had an old strap that we could have. He refused any money for it, and even helped us tie everything down. It restored our faith in humanity for the day.

It was one of those things where he was gone as quickly as he came, and we didn’t even catch his name so that we could write him a thank-you note. I went back in to the station, to ask the girl behind the counter if he was a regular, and if she maybe knew who he was. She said that he came in for coffee almost every day, if not several times per day, and I was astonished when she told me that she had no idea what his name was.

My family owns a country store, and we know probably 95% of our customers on a first name basis, especially our regulars. I felt really sad and frustrated about the corporatization and de-neighbor-fication (a new word I just made up) of our country. We left without being able to say a proper thank you, but with a resolve to help others out in the future.

We made it back home safely although slowly with out much incident. As soon as we rounded the bend at Lake St. Catherine, and headed for home the skies turned black and they opened up with full fury as soon as we pulled in the driveway. We sat in the truck for a few minutes watching the rain and then went and sat in the bus and waited for it to subside.

As soon as there was a break in the clouds, we ran back to the truck and started undoing the strap and the tarps and the metal bindings that held the wood. We began trying to stack the wood in the bus, two pieces stacked together at a time, as quickly as we could before the rain began again. Our friend and neighbor Jason was really sweet and jumped in to help us. John took the brunt of the labor of hauling over 600 pounds of wood from the truck to the bus and stacking in a neat pile. It was well after dark after we finished and we were pooped.

Unhappily, at this time we only had the walls partially finished, so in the end we had to move the wood to the other side so that we could complete our walls. We also had to finish up some of the subflooring in the very front, and in the driver’s area and along the wheel well before we could lay our floors. John again did the majority of this task.

Finally the day came last week when we were able to begin laying our floor. And just like anytime we start anything, it was the hottest day that we’d had in weeks. My dad went out to help John and Juli’s contractor, John (who is working on her house)while I took his place in the store. By the time I got done with work at six, John had almost half of the floor laid.

We borrowed a floor-nailer from our friend Josh, who is a great carpenter and cabinet maker. The nailer isn’t an air-powered one, but one that you strike with a hammer. You have to line the nailer up with the tongue of the board, keep it steady as you bend over it, and whack it soundly several times with the hammer. “Whack, Whack, Whack.” The thing that you are striking is spring loaded, and drivers further and futher down into the machine, pushing the nail in until it reaches then end when it pops back up for you to begin with the next nail (does that make any sense? Perhaps John, who did the nailing can describe it better?).

The next day we got up and started the whole thing again. I had bought some “green” floor adhesives from a place on line (www.ecoiwse.com), but instead of sending us the 4.5 gallon container they sent us a 1 gallon container. This mean that by the end of the first day, we were not even half way done and out of adhesive. (I did call and they did refund us, no worries). It had taken over a week for the stuff to get to us in the first place, and we weren’t about to wait a week to continue with our floors. We bought some conventional stuff from a hardware store and were about to set forth when I read the cautions on the bottle. It was really horrific. I really have a lot of trouble using anything that is a neurotoxin and so I was really torn about what to do. I didn’t want to stall the project, but I didn’t want to put us in danger either. I called one of our local hardware stores to see if they carried anything that would be suitable. Now, Upstate New York and rural Vermont are just beginning to ride the “green” wave, so I was pleasantly shocked that our local guys had just started carrying an eco-friendly line of products. We rushed right over, (much to my father amusement I think) and bought six tubes.
Now before nailing the floor down, we first put down an adhesive. This will keep the floor from buckling and from squeaking. This was my job. We also had to use a miter saw to cut the ends off of each board, so that they’d have a flat edge and make a snug fit. My job was to hold the ends of the long board while John or my dad cut the other end, so that the board would be flat all the way across(t). Then the board would go into the bus where John and I had chosen, we tried to lay similar boards together. Then came the difficult part, because each board had to be laid with its groove in the previous board’s tongue, and had to be pounded tightly against the previous board before it could be nailed in. This often proved tricky because either the board would be slightly warped, or the bus would be cured and once you got one side pounded in, the other side would pop out. John and my dad rigged up a great system using some large wooden posts, scrap pieces of flooring and a car jack and a person (usually me) standing on the board. It was quite a thing to see. John really did a beautiful job, and we only have a handful of gaps to speak of. The pieces against the final wall were tricky, and had to nailed in by hand and then screwed down because the nailer couldn’t fit that closely to the walls.

On Friday John cut out the pieces to go around the wheel well and the driver’s area. I really can’t remember what I did…. But I know that we worked until 8 o’clock at night. After working, we went up the road to Tinmouth, Vermont to SolarFest, an eco-minded music festival that they hold every year. It’s held a place called the Forget-Me-Not Farm. There is a huge sound stage, with a full light display, many vendors of solar systems, sustainable living things, and of course hippie clothes, which are all powered by solar! We ate some really great food provided by none other than our favorite Samosa Guy (of Farmer’s Market fame) and talked to a guy about power systems.

Many people come to the event and camp for the three days, but we had too much to do so we went home.

On Saturday, we rented a huge pad sander from Wendy at American Hardware, and set to sanding the floors. I had the honor of doing a lot of this, although John helped considerably, especially toward the end. On Saturday I sanded the whole floor down several times with 36 grit paper (a really really rough textured sand paper), to get as much unevenness out of the floor as possible. Then I did the whole thing over again with a 60 grit paper. By the time I finished it was dark, and we headed back up to Solar Fest. We walked around for a while, I bought a great Rose Quartz necklace, and we listened to some great blue-grass music which was being played away from the main stage. Then we ran into our friend Kate and Adam, who were exhausted after being there all day. We talked with them for awhile before wandering around some more. We came up over a hill, and found that there was contra-dancing going on! Contra-Dancing is sort of like square dancing, except way cooler. You stand in long lines (not like line-dancing though), and face your partner and move through a series of steps that you learn at the beginning of each step. It was so fun to watch, because the dancing was being done out doors, under colored lights and everyone was dressed like hippies, so it gave the impression of faeries out for a frolic. We joined in several of the reels, and I tell you what, I need to get into better shape! I was winded and breathless within a few iterations of the dance! Now, one would think that with my history as a ballroom dancer, that contra-dancing would be no problem, but this is not so. I have a lot of confusion when it comes to right and left, and when I don’t have a lead partner there to direct me, mayhem ensues, the hardest part was when we had to face the other two partners, clap opposite hands, and then turn to our partner and do the same… But things began to look up just before the dance ended. It was so much fun! I am really excited to do more of it in the future!

On Sunday, we finished up with the final floor sanding. We first did the whole floor with an 80 grit and then John and I finished it together using 100-grit paper. Now the floor feels like a baby’s bottom. It feels amazing on bare feet! Yesterday, under the recommendation our building guru, John Richardson (my sister’s contractor) we mixed some wood glue with sawdust and filled the holes along the walls where we had to screw the floor down. Our friend and foreman, Rich stopped by after being mysteriously absent for a few weeks. We were really glad to see him, especially because he proved knowledgeable about what we were doing.

this morning I had a few minutes of freak-out, as the wood glue dried much darker than it started, which looked really awkward against our untreated and lovely floor. This brings up an interesting point. I LOVE OUR FLOOR! Every piece is unique. Some are light with dark streaks, other have what looks like licks of fire running through them. I could wax poetic all day about it! It is magnificent…. We got out the sander and started again with 36-grit, working our way back up to 100 grit, going over each screw hole multiple times. In the end John got it looking really good (he’s the one who did most of the sanding, while I worked on the outside of the bus and made phonecalls).

After he was finished, I vacuumed the whole floor several times, but still couldn’t get it clean, so I got out a dust mop and dust mopped it before going over it twice with tack cloth. When I was finished it was like butter under my feet.

Under the recommendation of some fellow bus people, Moss and Pixie (www.enchantedgypsy.blogspot.com) we decided to use a finishing product on the floor called OSMO Hardwax. Unlike a polyurethane finish, which makes a plastic-y build-up on the floor, OSMO leaves the wood feeling natural. It’s also water-resistant, and can be used on children’s toys as it’s non-toxic. It’s also a German product, and we figure that the Germans know a thing or two about dealing with wood. : ) Late this afternoon, as the sun was getting low we did the first coat of it on our floor. I must admit, that after two weeks of looking at the natural wood, and falling in love with every board, it was a bit shocking to see it turn a different color. Even though I love the color, I think it’s going to take a while for me to get over the natural boards. The natural boards were really light in color, with almost pink and red under tones. The finished product, although beautiful is darker, with butter-scotch and cherry (wood) tones. Don’t get me wrong, I adore it, but it’s going to take a while to get used to.

In other news, we’ve order several accoutrements for our kitchen, namely the cooking stove and a refrigerator. We ordered the kitchen oven/stove from a marine place. It’s much shorter than a regular stove, but just as deep and as wide. It even has a broiler! Hooray! It’s being built in California by a small family operation. I also ordered the fridge today. It’s one that runs well with solar-electric and has amazing efficiency. It should arrive next week from Massachusetts.

A few weeks ago we also ordered a few small boxes of tile. Rich definitely called my bluff on this one, because even though we bought it locally, it did come from Brazil. But really, it was too cool to pass up. It’s similar to this http://www.intrepidrocks.com/sitetools/product.php/view/detail/id/512/prd/0 , but much much cooler when you see it in person. We will find a use for the local slate that comes from Vermont, Rich. Don’t worry! : P

Well, that’s about all for now… I just got some residual sunscreen in my eyes, so it’s time for bed. I am still working on photos, but now that the webcam is up, you at least have something to look at!

I hope all is well! For those of you in Iowa, we look forward to seeing you soon!

Love,
J,J&j

Summer has arrived in the Green Mountains, and I have the barefeet calluses to prove it! It has indeed been a long, long, long, long, long time since
I have blogged. We have been working very hard (just ask Rich). We were abducted, not by aliens, but by Mary
Lou at the Slate Valley Museum- more of this to come later.

We finally got the leaking in the bus to cease and desist,
at least for the most part. There were a
very frustrating days way back in May where we’d think that we had the leaks
licked, but then it would rain and there’d be water all over the floor and we’d
have to start looking for leaks all over again. John spent many a warm day on top of the roof
scraping out all of the old nasty caulk and replacing it with new. This means
not only do our windows not leak, but our roof is drip-free, too! Hooray.

We have also been trying to paint the bus with a
tractor-primer coat for a very long time.
We got most (95% or so (but my math and estimation skills are lacking so
ask John about the exact number) of decals off the bus, and scuffed the ENTIRE
surface to prepare it for painting. Unfortunately, we need a stretch of three
perfect days in order to paint. We’ve
had several of these stretches in the last few weeks, but unfortunately, they always
seem to coincide with other scheduled events.

Last week we insulated the walls. We are using board foam
insulation, with foil backing, which means that it has a higher “R” value. For
those of you who are not total geeks, the “R” definition of value is, “a measure
of a material's resistance to the passage of heat, the higher the R value, the
more insulating.”

Foam board is a great product, the only down side to it is
the squeak factor. Imagine driving down
the road with a whole bunch of Styrofoam in your car, eeee rrrr eeeee rrrr
every time you hit a bump. Now magnify that by 40 feet. You can see our
dilemma. We had already purchased this
stuff called Red Rosin, which is used when you are laying down a floor to keep
squeaks out of the flooring. John had the brilliant idea of wrapping all of our
foam in this before putting it in the walls. So, he cut and measured the foam, while I put
the foam into little pink packages. It looks like our bus is making out like a
bandit at Christmas time. We have jumped
up and down in search of any noises and things have been quiet.

Before we began working on the floor, we had several holes
that we needed to cover up to prevent bugs and moisture and colonies of gnomes
from moving into our bus from below. I
was really concerned about this aspect, being certain that it was going to be
too difficult for us to do with out some sort of outside help. Neither of us had ever experienced cutting
metal before, and it seemed like a totally different ballgame than cutting
insulation or wood. But, after going out
to a great brunch in Londonderry, John and I
decided to tackle it. We got out the old
air-conditioner casing that we scavenged from Juli’s
trash pile, and set to work. We measured
the holes and drew templates on to the steel, and within probably 45 minutes
had all of the metal we needed cut out. It was WAY easier than I had anticipated. The we set to work making a caulk seal around
all of the holes before placing the metal on top and riveting it down.

We also laid down insulation on the floor with subflooring
on top. We began this project one
evening after I’d been in the store all day.
We’d been having a hot stretch here, where it was 98 degrees and it felt
like it was at least 130. It was so hot it took my breath away and made me want
to cry and scream at the same time. We
were tired, hot and frustrated, but decided that we wanted to make some
progress that evening. We cut out the Red
Rosin to go on the floor and laid the insulation and just as we were starting
to cut the subflooring the sky began to rumble. We decided that we were determined to get at
least one board in before it rained, and we did. Just after we dropped the
board, the sky broke open and we went and danced in the rain. It felt so good
to have the heat break, and the rain helped wash away the frustrations of the
day.

It took us a few days to finish, but it’s all in now, and
looks great! As of last week we’ve been
married four years and holding. It’s amazing how fast time has flown by. We spent our anniversary at the Slate Valley
Museum, helping them to
get ready for their big opening on Saturday. We love Mary Lou, and will gladly spend any
anniversary painting for her!

This week has been somewhat adventure filled. We went up to Bristol (about an hour and a half away) on Monday,
to go order our wood floors. On our way
up, the brake light and ABS light in the truck came on. Now, growing up I drove our old Toyota pickup, whose
brake light was ALWAYS on, because the emergency brake wouldn’t go all the way
in. This kind of desensitized me to any dashboard light-up warning mechanisms,
so I didn’t really think anything of it. That was until, we were coming up over a hill
at a T intersection, and no matter how hard I punched the brakes we weren’t
gonna stop. Fortunately, there were no
cars in our immediate vicinity and we were able to get to a automotive shop. Unfortunately,
we had to try three automotive shops before we found one who could or would
help us. When we popped the hood we found that there was no brake fluid left,
but that the shop couldn’t get us in until Wednesday. Not wanting to be stuck in Bristol, or miss our Monday night potluck :) we bought some brake fluid and headed back to Middlebury. I learned a lot about driving a manual that
day, and am now quite an expert. Heck,
who needs brakes anyway? We found a nice
garage in Middlebury who was willing to get our car in that, and have it ready
by the following day. We rented a car
from Enterprise,
and headed down the road.

The car we got was really really nice, especially compared to the truck, with
no power-steering, brakes or radio. This
one had all of the accoutrements, including a kicking stereo with XM. Now
normally, I can’t stand XM. They’re a big radio conglomerate… don’t get me
started… but on this occasion, it was really nice to be able to drive home
listening to Bob Marley with good windshield wipers and brakes.

We went back up to Bristol
on Tuesday and ordered our wood floor. We were going to go with Maple and had
already checked some out at a place in Bristol.
After talking with a friend of ours we decided to check out a different wood
company than the one we were going to go with, whose wood comes exclusively
from Vermont,
and is sustainably harvested by Vermonters.
The other store definitely couldn’t boast these types of credentials,
and the second place had more of a selection and better prices. We ended up deciding on hickory floors,
because they are harder and lighter than maple. Although it’s not what you typically think of
when you think Vermont, this too is an all Vermont wood. Unfortunately, it still needs to be planed
down, which means another trip up to Bristol
next week *sigh*.

Well, that’s pretty much all the news on this front. I am
truly sorry there aren’t more photos. We actually just got new cameras (yes,
one for each of us!), and there should be many many more pictures coming soon! Thanks
for not giving up on us!

One last thing! Guess what arrived in the mail today? An Improved Meyer Lemon Tree! John got it for me for an anniversary gift! Hooray!

I have a latest obsession as of ten minutes ago.

I just found this great miniature lemon tree, that you can grow indoors, that produces full sized fruit twice a year! It is supposedly easy to grow, which leads me to wonder why everyone doesn't have a lemon tree!

http://www.emmitsburg.net/gardens/articles/adams/2006/lemon_tree.htm

Now if only keeping goats on the bus were this easy! 

On Saturday night/Sunday morning we had the first rain we’ve had in a long while. I don’t remember another cloudy day that in all of April. This was unbelievably good for the plants that were beginning to look a little woebegone from lack of water, but was a mixed blessing for us.

We’ve spent the last two or so months trying to remove all traces of rust from our floor and sidewalls. We finally accomplished this aim last week, when we finished auto-painting the entire interior of our space. We’ve also spent a lot of time trying to prevent any new moisture from getting in. The bad news is even after the minor rainfall we had (way less than an inch), we still have rivulets of water on our floor and full fledged puddles near the wheel wells. The good news is that the POR-15 auto paint that we used held up, and that all of the water was beaded up on the surface, not soaking into our metal floors. Luckily, we found out about the leaks before we'd installed anything that could be damaged.

We sucked up all the water with our Shop-Vac, and started trying to come up with a plan. We decided that we should continue the caulking job that we’d started on Saturday, not being sure whether that meant caulking EVERY seam, window and crevice. Unfortunately, we were nearly out of caulk and as it was a Sunday afternoon, and we live in a sleepy Vermont town, nothing was open (we did call around to all the local places first, I swear). We ended up taking a lovely Sunday afternoon drive up to Rutland- I will spare you any more jubilations about spring in Vermont. After finding one of our favorite hardware stores closed we went to *gasp* Home Depot. Jorgi (our little white dog) was most excited to accompany us. We’ve found that nearly all Hardware/Lumber yard type places allow dogs if you just ask first.

We found the caulk that we needed (alongside about 25 different types that we didn’t need). We also talked to several nice employees who helped us with our flooring and appliance questions.

When we returned home, we took the advice of someone on one of our ‘skoolie’ sites, and took a hose to the bus to simulate rain so we could find where the water was coming in. Fortunately, the roof seams and sidewall seams were solid. Unfortunately, the water was coming in through the windows in torrents.

We decided that instead of just caulking around the base of the window like we'd done the day before, we needed to seal around the entire thing. It took two windows before we finally got the hang of things, and it took us a good long time to do each window. We worked out a system where John applied the caulk and I smoothed it out with my finger or a paint scraper and removed the excess. By the time we were experts. We were only able to do about one-third of the bus before it got too dark. Just as we were finishing up, our friend Rich stopped by to check on our progress. It’s so fun to have guests!

After we ate a late dinner, we decided to put the tarp back on, as there was a 100% chance of rain today, and neither of us felt like doing any more vacuuming than needed.

Today, as promised it’s raining. You can almost hear the grass and flowers squealing with delight (not to mention watch them grow before your very eyes). John is currently working on two contracts, and has been staying up most nights working on them, so we decided that since it’s raining, we’d take another day off and recoup and plan out our next move.

I think I'll spend the rest of the day on the sun porch, looking at the green green trees and watching the rain fall. Happy spring all!