gridlore: (Burning_Man)
[personal profile] gridlore
A busy day at Offhand Manor. We had several post-burn tasks to attend to. Because this damn thing never really ends.

First, we took all all the recycling to our local place. We're allowed to take all the cans from Rosie's Bar (the day bar we run as part of M*A*S*H 4207) home. That and our on recycling from both our personal consumption during Burning Man and the stuff that was at home got us $51.55. Not a bad payoff.

Next, we stopped in at Home Depot for a third 55-gallon storage box. These are the longer version of the now-ubiquitous black boxes with the yellow lid. We found that they are the perfect size to store horizontally in Darby's bed. Last year, we had two, dubbed the Sun and Moon boxes (holding our solar panel gear and our shade structure, respectively.) The third is the Earth box, holding not only all the kitchen gear but pretty much all our miscellaneous gear with room to spare.

This is going to make loading/unloading so much easier in terms of load planning and finding things. The Sun and Moon boxes will be practically empty after camp is set up, and can be used to set a borer for our space or stored under the trailer. The Earth box will have everything else. We also looked at an adjustable height folding table as a new place for our cooler. I like the idea as it would both isolate the cooler from the ground and make the task of draining meltwater into our garden watering can much easier.

As an aside, we can't just dump water on the playa. Clean water, like cooler melt, can be disposed of by sprinkling it over a large area. Being able to do this daily will again make our packing process that much easier. Graywater is another issue, and we mat make our own evaporator to deal with the liter or so of graywater we generate daily.

After escaping Home Deport, we went to [personal profile] kshandra's office/warehouse where our gear is stored in the offseason. There we two goals here: move items into their appropriate spaces and build an accurate inventory of what we had and where it was. Several items were coming home for cleaning, for example, or would be stored at home until it was time for loading. Having an accurate inventory makes life so much easier in the long run. Next spring, when we're starting to get ready, we can look at the inventory and know what we have already.

The work went we quickly, with a few breaks of course. I was really pleased that we could fit the bag containing our rolled-up camp table into the Earth box. My theory is the fewer things out in the open on the truck, the fewer things to worry about losing to a pothole bump or a thief.

Then Darby got a much-needed bath at Rotten Robbies. They recently installed a LaserWash 360 system and it works great. I was impressed, even the headache rack came out clean. There is still a mountain of mud in the truck bed, but I'll deal with that. Also, Darby's passenger seems to have a seal leak.

Finally, we had to go shopping. We cleaned out a lot of old food before we left, and the larder was rather bare. I avoid most of the impulse buys, and can I say I'll be happy when the IPA fad goes away?

One big piece of shocking news. We may be selling the Free Trailer Beowulf. We've decided that a purpose-built toy hauler or work trailer, with both a side door and a rear ramp would probably be better for our needs going forward. So if anyone is interested in a small teardrop trailer, or knows a potential customer, let us know!

We did this all today because tomorrow night we're seeing Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony tear down the Chase Center right after they finished building it.

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gridlore: Doug looking off camera with a grin (Default)
Douglas Berry

October 2023

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