Change is afoot...

As usual, making plans doesn't result in flawless execution of said plans. We initially thought that we could convert Velda from school bus to RV in three months; we then extended our time frame to get us on the road by the first of June so that we could camp host in Utah over the summer. That plan had to be scuttled when we realized we were nowhere near having her in livable shape by April. Where I got those ambitious timelines I'm not sure, but suffice it to say that we're still working on her a year after beginning the conversion. That said, she's officially a licensed Motor Home, and we are about to get back on the road, ready-or-not, here we go!

 

It's been an amazing and productive and educational year in Wisconsin, and this Alaska boy is glad that he dipped his toes in the waters of the midwest. And I'm tremendously excited to be heading west again, this time to settle into life in Montana. Jess and I have accepted jobs as resident managers of a large mini-storage facility outside Bozeman, which will give us ample time to focus on making toys, exploring a new area, and spending time together. After spending the last several months working completely different shifts, with one of us often starting work before 8 AM and the other often not home until midnight, the concept of spending time together is reason enough to rejoice.

Unfortunately, it seems less and less likely that Kobi will be making the move with us, as he was diagnosed with a huge tumor growing off his spleen a month ago, and given four days to live beyond that diagnosis. He's a resilient little guy (you could also say “obsessed”, and if you know him personally that's probably the adjective you'll choose) and refuses to let go. He still follows me around the house, even though stairs are getting more and more difficult for him, and the custom-cooked meals we've been giving him generally go uneaten. It's only a matter of time before his spirit and body go their separate ways, so we're just trying to keep him as comfortable and happy as possible in the meantime.

This is a time of major transition for us, and as painful as some of the next steps will be, we are looking forward to starting new lives in a new place, finding community and reconnecting with old friends. Velda isn't “done”, but she's at a point where we can see her coming together, and we'll be able to work on her during our time in Montana to ensure that corners are not cut and that she's the comfortable home we have always envisioned her as by the time we want to live in her.

Until next time (which won't take as long as this update did) – best wishes and safe travels from Jess, Ben, Velda, Frank, and Kobi.

Alaska to Wisconsin, 2015: The first part

On September 13, 2015, after a journey of over 3,000 miles in 22 days, we pulled into Severance, Colorado, where we based our bus preparations (i.e. learning to drive it) before heading to Wisconsin. Our drive had been largely lackadaisical, and although we put in a few 500 mile days along the way, most of our legs being five or six hours of driving between campgrounds, AirBnBs, and friends' homes. We witnessed the aftermath of several horrifying accidents, saw a wide range of rare and unusual creatures, and even passed through what would become the scene of an armed standoff between self-proclaimed Patriots and law enforcement from local, state, and federal agencies only a few months later. But we'll get to all of that in due time. 

We started the trip with a 3:30 am check-in at the Alaska Marine Highway terminal in Auke Bay (Juneau), Alaska. 

Our trusty steed, Frank (aka Francine), a 2004 Ford Explorer, waits in the lead of lane 2.

I've always been partial to the Alaska ferry system, and enjoy the deep rumble of engines resonating through the steel vessels. Although the M/V Columbia, the largest vessel in the fleet, has abundant diversions (less abundant now that the bars have been closed on all the ferries), the LeConte is rather bare-bones, with a cafeteria, observation lounge, and a tiny solarium composing the main attractions on board. Regardless of the vessel, my home turf is always the solarium, where overhead lamps can turn chilly maritime air into a near-sauna, and where no view goes un-noticed - unless you're too busy looking one way to see a view in another direction.

Our vessel, the tiny M/V LeConte, hums at Dock 3 of the Alaska Marine Highway System's Auke Bay Terminal.

Northern Lynn Canal, the arm of the Pacific that connects the communities of Skagway, Haines, and Juneau, is a glacial fjord which only gets more awe-inspiring the further north you go, and Skagway, our destination, is at its northern end. With that said, the view from the back deck (and thus, the solarium) as we pulled out of Auke Bay wasn't too shabby.

Auke Bay, with the Mendenhall Glacier in the distance.

Sadly for photography, but as expected in Southeast Alaska, our voyage north was rather cloudy and gray. Waterfalls cascaded from hidden valleys and hanging glaciers tucked into the clouds and shrouding mist above us. Skagway was similarly wreathed - indeed, inundated - with the moist air which makes moss grow on any reasonably stationary object in the temperate rain forests of the Tongass (where we were) and Chugach (much further west and north) National Forests.

As we climbed up the White Pass towards Canada, we paused for a photo of Frank, with Skagway's water supply line in the background above the White Pass and Yukon Railroad's tracks.

We had stopped at the Skagway Brewing Company for lunch, partly because we weren't sure when our next good meal not cooked on a fire or camp stove would be, and partly to let the other ferry traffic clear Canadian customs before we got there. (Well, those reasons and because their Boom Town Brown and Spruce Tip Blonde Ale are both fantastic, and I hate to pass through Skagway without making sure that the newest batches are up to my expectations. I'm not usually into blonde ales, but the spruce tips really round this ale out into a phenomenally well-balanced, drinkable beer.)  Customs is always nerve-wracking enough when traveling in a fully-loaded (and I mean to-the-gills loaded with EVERYTHING we will need for the next two months, plus my ski gear, two bikes, a dog, etc.) car, and being there when it's busy is just asking for headaches. 

When we reached Canadian customs, it almost felt like one of those hot, dusty afternoons in a sleepy town that you see in old westerns. If there had been tumbleweeds, they would have been the only things moving other than clouds racing across the sky and gnarled trees whipped by the steady wind. We stopped at the obligatory "stop here until signaled forward" sign, and waited for the officer on duty to come out and wave us forward. He wore the dark blue para-military uniform you'd expect, replete with badges, flags, epaulets, heavy black boots, and close-cropped hair, but his smile was warm and his eyes signaled a delight at life missing from the demeanor of all too many border guards. 

Now I have to back up and explain that we had decided, against the advice of many well-wishing friends and family members, to carry bear spray with us on this trip. "Bear spray", if you're not familiar with it, is essentially industrial-strength (really, grizzly bear strength) mace. The can is around 12 oz instead of the usual 4 oz can of mace for self-defense against people, and as long as you're not firing it into the wind, it will shoot a fairly heavy stream of pepper spray 20 feet or more. Although quite common in Alaska, bear spray is illegal in Canada. And everyone we talked to reminded us of this. But we were going to be camping, in a tent, with a dog, in varying degrees of bear country, for the next month. We were damn well going to bring bear spray, and if the Canadians asked, they could take it - but otherwise, it was coming with us.

The customs officer opened with the standard question of "just the two of you traveling today?" to which we replied that we also had a dog in the vehicle. He was rather incredulous that we could have fit a dog into a vehicle with so much other stuff in it, but he eventually caught a glimpse of Kobi peeking out of his throne between the seats and moved on to the other questions. How long will you be in Canada? Where are you going? You'll be camping the whole way? You're taking the Cassiar Highway? Then, the "do-you-haves": Alcohol. Tobacco. Firearms. Bear spray. "Do you have any bear spray?"

"Yes, we do."

He paused for a moment, as if recalling our other answers. We were driving a route that, although paved in the last ten years, is still almost entirely wilderness, making the resource-extraction civic centers of Fort St. John and Fort Nelson along the Alaska-Canada Highway look positively metropolitan. A route where you fill up on gas every time you can, because if the next gas station is closed or out of gas, you may not make it to the next station after that. A route which, at its end, runs into the portion of the Yellowhead Highway known as the "Highway of Tears" because of the astounding number of hitch-hikers (predominantly women) who have gone missing along it in the last 40+ years. And that's when you know you're starting to get back to civilization. We were carrying food (there's nowhere to buy it along much of the route), and even if it was kept locked in the car, its scent could attract furry predators to the area of our camp.

He nodded. "Fair enough." And waved us across the border.

The Klondike Highway, which connects Skagway, AK with Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, passes through British Columbia briefly before entering the Yukon. The route winds between towering peaks through a rugged landscape of scraggly trees and rocky islands set in a maze of sinuous lakes. The lakes helped form a major route into the Yukon and interior Alaska during the gold rushes of those areas in the late 1800s, when prospectors would build boats on the Canadian side of the passes over the Coastal Range and take them all the way to the Yukon River and points beyond. Bove Island, in Tagish Lake, is an iconic view along the route.

Bove Island and Tagish Lake, Yukon Territory, Canada

We weren't in any particular hurry at this point in our journey, and only needed to get to Whitehorse, YT, 109 miles from Skagway the first day. We camped at the Hi Country RV Park, a facility I've stayed at many times in years past. Although my friend of many years, Rose, was no longer managing the campground, the new staff were friendly and welcoming, and glad to meet a return visitor. My favorite spots at the back edge of the campground were taken already, so we ended up closer to the road than I've usually stayed, but it was still wild enough that we had a fox come into camp and check us out that night. Kobi is generally pretty laissez-faire about other creatures, but something about the fox got him much more excited than I'd seen him in years. Growling with hackles up, straining at his lead, fixated on a being just out of our sight in the dark beyond the fire light. We finally saw it as it cut across a beam of light from the highway beyond: thick and full, unmistakable in its silhouette and crouching run. 

The next morning we broke camp for what would be the first of many times on this trip. We would eventually learn to pack the items we needed on a daily basis more efficiently, but this first re-packing was, simply put, a mess. We had finished "packing" the truck some time around one in the morning the night before, and instead of having things we would need on top of everything else, we had the things we had put in the truck last on top. So strange things which didn't fit anywhere else, but which we certainly didn't need while camping in the Yukon.

After unpacking half the truck and then more-or-less strategically re-packing it, we headed to Birch + Bear to meet Amanda, a Whitehorse friend of mine for a very late breakfast (lunch for Amanda). It was delicious. Undoubtedly the best food I've ever had in the Yukon, and close to the best food I've ever had in Canada. Heck, it was some of the best food we'd have in the next 5,000 miles, and we spent almost a week in the foodie-Mecca of Portland, Oregon among other places. Fresh vegetables, simple and yet exquisite sauces, whole grains...it was real food, and filled us up with a sense of warm optimism about our upcoming journey. We said goodbye (for now) to Amanda and thanked her for setting us off with bellies full of great food and hearts full of the knowledge that we'd find friends along the way, no matter how alone we might be for the miles between experiences shared with those we love.

After lunch, Jess and I took Kobi down to the banks of the Yukon River to stretch his legs before we hit the road again. We were surprised by a tiny, two-car historic "train" chugging past the very new building we had just eaten in; the century-plus between river travel, trains, and the new anchor of Whitehorse's riverfront redevelopment plan fused for one moment, and was gone around the bend before I could take a decent picture.

It's a caboose! No, it's an engine! It's a trolley! No, it's the whole train!

Our next stop, Boya Lake, back in British Columbia and 50 miles into the Cassiar Highway, would be our home for several days. Boya Lake is, simply put, absolutely beautiful. Glass-clear water, thunderstorms butting against distant mountains, loons calling in the distance. We hiked (really, walked, since Kobi is, at the age of 14, is not really into a "hiking" speed) around the lake, watched fish from the dock, talked to the camp hosts and fellow campers, received tours of enormous RVs, and celebrated my birthday from our campsite overlooking the lake. Although scavenging wood is prohibited within the campground, it is nearly surrounded by forest which burned a decade ago or more, and harvesting dead and downed wood from the burn is encouraged, so our campfires verged on bonfires as the night-time temperatures dropped to near freezing. 

Our dinners were "hobos", tinfoil-wrapped amalgamations of sausage, potatoes, onion, kale, butter, herbs, carrots, mushrooms, and other delicious things which Jess had prepared in Juneau for our trip; cooked on a bed of coals for an hour or more while we enjoyed the last of my home town Alaskan beer and the forlorn sound of loons on distant lakes, these metal-clad burritos would become a staple food for our trip, and continue to be campfire favorites even now that we have a roof over our heads and a real stove to cook on. (Obtaining local and/or organic ingredients, especially ethically-raised sausages lacking a laundry list of preservatives and questionable additives, has become our primary mission at grocery stores in small towns across North America.)

Kobi, setting the pace as usual.

Join us for the next leg of our trip, when we see what happens when a semi parks in an RV, how aerodynamic and agile cows are, and explore the logic of allowing charcoal fires in the middle of a drought-inspired burn ban.

Until then, happy adventures and safe travels, whatever road you find yourself on.

Cheers,
Ben

A little history

We opened our Etsy shop last week, and are working on getting it fully populated with photos and descriptions of our products and information about ourselves. I know that I can be a little verbose, so when I hit page two on my artist biography, I realized that I was probably saying more than I needed to in that venue. But when I tried to paste the story of how I came to be a tinker, I was shocked to see that the character limit on my bio was 250...and I had 6,438. How can a person possibly condense the life story which led them to create, to include their creative process, their inspirations, their hopes for how their products relate to and affect their users, in a mere 250 words? That limit simply doesn't allow for connections beneath the surface; it precludes knowing the heart of a person's aspirations as an artist.

So here are my 6,438 words. Where I'm from, what got me here, and where I hope to go with this adventure.

-Ben

P.S. We'd love to hear from you - feel free to comment on our blogs directly, or send us a message! Our words are just babbling in the night without your involvement, and we'd love to know what resonates with you. Thanks for being a part of our journey!

***

I spent my early childhood in a dry cabin (no running water) outside Fairbanks, Alaska. My parents built nearly everything around me, from the boardwalk to the log cabin and sauna, my training toilet, and many of my toys (they also started buying Legos for me before I was born, and I had quite a proclivity for Hot Wheels cars as well). I started “helping” in my mom's shop, where she made miniature cabins – exquisite little rustic masterpieces with brass fittings for potbellied stoves, hand-painted balsa wood books, and butter churns made of corks and toothpicks – when I was three or four. I still don't know how my father managed to cut the intricate shapes of some of the tiny toys he made for me, but I recall my parents assisting me in my first forays into using a table-top band saw long before my fifth birthday. One of my earliest memories is of the birthday when my father gave me my own hammer and hand saw; too weak to push the saw away from me, I had to pick it up between pulls...and of course, I set it down on my thumb and pulled back as hard as I could. I still bear that half-inch scar, and think of the trust (perhaps naive) that they had in my abilities to not damage myself at such a young age. You could say that working with wood, especially making miniatures and toys, has been in my blood all along.

One of my wheeled oak dragons, and some of the toys my parents made for me 35 years ago. They continue to inspire me, and I can see now that I wouldn't have founded a toy company without them.

Of course, I didn't take a direct path to being a tinker. I taught skiing in Alaska, Colorado, and Utah. I attended college at the University of Utah, first obtaining a B.S. in Environmental Studies and then a B.S. in Urban Planning. Along the way I took courses in children's literature, sociology, outdoor education, and organic gardening. These forays may have been a bit off-topic from my degree focus, but they helped me see things in a different context: how a child's sense of wonder can be fostered or extinguished; how the joy of discovery can transcend time and bring delight to people of any age; how we can build a better society through compassion, dialogue, imagination, and not a little fearless whimsy (after all, why not build a better world for ourselves and our children's children?).

I spent over a decade as a land use and transportation planner in my home town of Juneau, Alaska, where I delighted in finding new solutions to old problems, educating and building consensus among stakeholders, and striving to help the town I hold so close to my heart be an even better place to live. Eventually, I found that I had simply become too adult. Not that I needed to live with the Lost Boys and regain my childhood, but that I had lost too much of the whimsy from my life. I worked, I went to meetings, I researched, I conducted community outreach, I wrote, and I went to more meetings. And more meetings. Finally, I had had enough. My heart ached, and my dreams were full of bureaucracy and politics. I quit.

It took over a year of soul-searching and having more short-term and part-time jobs than I had had in the previous dozen years, but an idea started to formulate. A new, playful, creative idea. I returned to substitute teaching, I job I hadn't done since college, and I watched children interact with each other and the world they were as much creating as discovering around them. I was disturbed by the degree of violent and sexualized play that I witnessed on the playground, and at the incapacity of many children to imagine beyond whatever movie they had watched or video game they had played the night before. Toys which children brought to school were always plastic, and always licensed by some larger franchise of trading cards, movies, and video games. But during “free choice” time, children would still gravitate to the tiny kitchen and the plastic and wood “food” they could prepare there; they would play with rubber sharks and toy boats in the water table; construction toys would be used in fanciful and cross-system ways which the designers couldn't possibly have imagined, with Legos and Tinker-Toys taped to empty yogurt containers vying for control of a landscape of blocks and Minecraft characters. All hope was not lost.

In one multi-aged classroom, I watched a teacher conduct a multi-day build of a sprawling block metropolis. I was informed that this was a fairly common exercise in Montessori programs, and that at least one Montessori school in New York City based their entire curriculum around a complex block city's construction and function. I had been thinking of starting to make wooden blocks, but as I watched this city - replete with bisecting river and expansive bridges - take shape, I realized that a decent set of blocks must include a large number of precisely-sized and exactly-replicated pieces. Hardly the fun or creative endeavor I was searching for.

Enter Jess Lila, who had watched me search for a new creative calling for over a year. We don't recall whose idea it was, really. It came from both of us, from hearts and minds which had tired of “going to work” just to chase a goal of “how things should be”. It wasn't working for either of us, and neither of us were happy. Our lives lacked creativity, spontaneity, and the joy of play. So we packed up, I sold my interest in my home in Juneau, and we moved to Wisconsin where we could be close to her family and get our toy company going. In years to come, we plan on living a bi-local existence, living and working in one of our home communities for a time, then moving to the other's home for a period. We're currently splitting our efforts between Thimbleberry Toys and working on “Velda”, our home-between-homes, a 1999 International Genesis school bus that we're converting into an RV. You can follow along on that journey at www.veldathewonderbus.blogspot.com. [Of course, you're already here - this was written for publication on Etsy, not here.]

I'm delighted to be working with my hands, by brain, and my heart. Looking at a piece of wood and finding the shape of the creature which yearns to be realized from it; finding the perfect curve of stitching to give a teddy bear just the right curve of belly or tuck of face; imagining a new form in wood or cloth which can inspire creative play unburdened by modern branding and cross-marketing. Creating unique toys which children can make their very own, the toy's story not flashing on a screen but sprouting from within the child themselves. And hopefully, helping the child grow in their own inspired way, still able to find whimsy in the world around them as they become adults in their own time.

-Ben Lyman

Kobi's Haiku to the Heater

If you've had the pleasure of meeting him, you know that Kobi is a crotchety old man of a dog. He doesn't like to be touched (much), and he'd be happy only leaving the comfort of the house long enough to do his business.

He seems to have a strange affinity for the electric space heater in our bedroom, and Jess and I decided (anthropomorphically, I admit) that he thinks of the heater as his friend. So we wrote this haiku for him, since he doesn't have thumbs and can't hold a pencil. It flows a little oddly for a haiku, but hey, it was written by a dog, so what do you expect?

I snuggle to you
Exuding heat, you don't touch
This is our hot love

TSA-approved shenanigans. And some that might not be.

Happy New Year!

Jess and I have been busy, juggling time with family with working on Velda, making toys, and generally figuring out what the heck we're doing. I headed back to Juneau to see my folks, friends, and mountains in early December, and although the snow wasn't the deepest or fluffiest while I was there, I managed to see some of the most stunningly beautiful views I've ever experienced, and summited two of my favorite mountains – several times each. On my circuitous journeys between Wisconsin and Alaska, I passed through: Chicago, IL; Omaha, NB; Seattle, WA; Ketchikan, AK; Seattle again, Minneapolis, MN; and Detroit, MI. I had all sorts of entertaining airport shenanigans, including having my carry-on searched twice, getting patted down in security in every airport except Ketchikan, and even getting a private-room pat-down in Seattle. Although I got some great ones in Juneau, the only decent photo I took along the way was coming into Chicago (but the memories of there and back again will last a lifetime...)

Chicago from above, way too early in the morning.

East Chutes, Eaglecrest Ski Area. Looking north.

Hilda Peak, Douglas Island (above Eaglecrest Ski Area). Looking west, Admiralty Island to the southwest visible at left.

Approaching Hilda Peak.

Admiralty Island - Kootsnoowoo (Fortress of the Bears)

Hilda Peak with my ski buddies Reid and Paul. Miss you guys.

I stayed with my parents for my first and last nights in town, but due to some technical snafus which eliminated the car I had hoped to use during my visit, I needed to stay closer to town for the rest of my trip so that I could get business things done. Luckily, my friend and ski buddy Reid Harris opened his home and wood shop in downtown Juneau to me for the duration of my trip. Reid co-owns and crafts furniture for Northern Edge Craftworks, so his (heated!) shop was more than prepared for the final assembly of a flock of dragons and dinosaurs.

Flock of dragons and dinosaurs after final assembly, Northern Edge Craftworks, Juneau, AK

The view I grew up with: Fritz Cove. Looking westish, Douglas Island to the left, Spuhn Island to the right, Admiralty Island barely visible in the middle.

The view in downtown Juneau isn't so bad either. Looking down-channel (southeast); Mt. Roberts (mainland) visible at left, Mt. Jumbo (Douglas Island) visible at right.

Moving from the comfort and community of my home town and residence for the last dozen years to an entirely new region of the country, where I not only know almost no-one, but live ten minutes from the 1,000-person town which I'm ostensibly a resident of, has been a rather shocking experience. I'm used to knowing all my neighbors, and to seeing them nearly every day. I spent years walking my ten-block commute, and could often tell the time of day by who I encountered where as I walked through Juneau's tiny downtown. Living surrounded by people whom I've known for a decade or more, many for over thirty years; waving at or saying hello and exchanging pleasantries with more people I passed than not. Never being anonymous.

Now, I find myself detached from that reality, living a life which is, in many ways, more remote than even my childhood off -the-road system in Alaska. And yet the dell in which I dwell has become home to me in many ways. Cross-country skiers glide down the loop beyond our driveway as we work on Velda; coyotes and their calls surround us in the night; Orion leaning into the pull of his bow takes the dominant place in the sky, while the Great Bear lumbers low, hibernating below treeline as I pass a winter much farther south than I am accustomed; turkeys more common than ravens, and much less personable than the greatest member of the Corvus clan.* The strange and wondrous experience of being in a new place and finding it both fascinating and familiar. Iconic silos, barns, and farmhouses dot the landscape, church steeples reach above the oak, pine, and walnut woods which separate fields and nestle around meandering rivers. And as if just to make things weird enough for an Alaskan to feel at home in the midwest, the property we're living on is part of the Iola Ski Club, which has miles of cross-country skiing and ski-jumping; it's populated by articulated wooden figures such as the 12' "Hiking Man" on the Ice Age Trail (which bisects the property); and it was the site of the Iola Rock Fest, the one-year anniversary/reunion of Woodstock - and even if you've never heard of it (I never had), it happened here...

Iola Ski Club - our private trail system when there's no snow

No...no, thank you, but no. Iola Winter Sports Club.

Hiker Man. Thanks for keeping the landscape fun, Donny!

Yes, that says Chuck Berry, Ted Nugent, AND Ravi Shankar.

The living area at the house has been taken over by sheets, piles, strips, and chunks of cloth in vibrant hues and patterns, teddy bears multiplying under Jess' ministrations. I even took a few uncomfortably cold days (negative temperatures exacerbated by wind) to refresh my sewing memory and crafted a couple of bears: a much more comfortable undertaking than working outside in sub-zero temperatures.

Other than one cold snap, it's been unseasonably warm, and the majority of my time is spent working on Velda or researching the remaining (and ever-more detailed) questions we have about what exactly we're supposed to do. The day that we installed the last exterior wall panel inserts where we had removed the original school bus windows was joyous indeed, and followed closely (finally!) by removing the Ricon wheelchair lift and installing nearly all of the floor insulation and new sub-floor. Jess' brother, Ben (that never gets confusing), helped me get the lift out before Jess even realized what we were doing. It was a relief to have it out without any smashed fingers or toes, or worse.

Jess rounding the corner and realizing that we'd already removed the lift.

Physical hurdles aside, registration of a converted school bus is generally considered to be one of the most difficult and frustrating aspects of owning a skoolie (what people who own these things call them). In preparation for our requisite State Highway Patrol inspection, I called the local field office and spoke with Inspector S--, who recommended that I not install the wood stove until after the inspection, and informed me that the conversion did not have to be complete for him to sign off on it: the bus just can't have the stop arm, flashing lights, or yellow paint job that identify it as a school bus any more, with working brake/turn/driving lights. And I imagine that we'll need to replace the rear door before a state inspector will sign off on her road-worthiness. So with the minor hurdles of installing and connecting new running and rear lights and figuring out how to attach a (cut-to-size) residential door to a school bus frame ahead of us, we are within striking distance of getting Velda registered as a Recreational Vehicle!

A few days after receiving this happy news, we were offered positions as Camp Hosts on the Mirror Lake Scenic Highway in northeastern Utah. Which means that we now have a hard deadline for when we need to be on the road; luckily, it is months after we intend to be capable of living in Velda. Which is probably a good thing, considering that we've been insulating and applying new sub-floor, but otherwise she looks like a gutted school bus inside.

Jess laying the groundwork for everything to come.

Although installing them isn't our highest priority right now, we received our custom-made, reclining, 360-degree spinning seats, right on schedule at seven weeks from the date of order. Constructed to our specifications in California by shop4seats.com at a price that I considered surprisingly low, I look forward to a much more comfortable ride than the original bus seat provided.

Since drafting the paragraphs above, I've been focusing (with mixed success) on installing the rear door and building a box for our generator to live in. Both are turning out to be much trickier than I had hoped, or even guessed. The flashing around the door is working well; that is, flushing out corners and making the doorway look like a doorway. Unfortunately, the material behind the flashing, a combination of heavy-gauge steel and sheet metal in various configurations, simply won't take a screw well enough to hold a hinge. I've broken at least four drill bits and nearly a dozen sheet-metal screws of various sizes trying to hang the hinges, and aside from making a tremendous mess of things, I've made no real progress on installing the door.

The generator box, which needs to be strong enough to hold (suspended below the bus) a couple hundred pounds of generator, is thankfully coming along better than the rear door. It's constructed of two layers of 5/8” CDX (exterior rated) plywood on each face, with angle brackets reinforcing it both inside and out. The exterior brackets are set into the plywood to keep a flush surface upon which I can mount sheet-metal to cover the box. At this point it is nearly built, with only four more exterior brackets and three strips of reinforcing metal to install inside the box before I put the last side on, clad it in metal, cut in the door, and figure out how to attach it to the bus (the box in the first photo below goes in the hole along the bottom edge of the bus in the second photo). You know, just a few minor details to attend to.

I also worked on installing conduit for our electrical wiring today, as well as clambering around under Velda and removing the last wires and relay which previously powered the wheelchair lift. And with that I wash my hands of construction for the day. If we receive the three to six inches of snow that are predicted tonight, I'll take the day off tomorrow too and go skiing. Granite Peak Ski Resort, located on Rib Mountain (yes, that confuses me too), may only have 750' of vertical but the snow has been fast and carvable**, and with another foot of snow many of the tree runs and “rock gardens” (which are actually labeled as such on the trail map) will be skiable. 

750' vertical, 500 snow guns...that's one gun per 1.5 vertical feet of mountain. And it shows.

We're teaming up with Jess' mom Jane, the miraculous glazier behind Mudder's Place pottery, to put together an etsy store that will feature Jane's quilts, Jess' bears and other fabrications, and my wooden toys (and once I know what I'm doing, my bears too!). We just had to get enough stock together to have an etsy store's worth of merchandise, but we'll be spending some time in the photo booth this week and should have the store up and running in a week or two. Now if I can just stop being obsessed with making progress on Velda for a minute...

Until next time, safe travels and playful journeys my friends.

Ben

*Yes, this is a totally arbitrary statement, and my bias is showing. I base it on my own proclivity for watching and interacting with ravens, and the historical regard of many peoples for this most-intelligent of birds. In Southeast Alaska, the Tlingit and Haida peoples regard Raven as a powerful force who does not create the world, but is certainly responsible for many attributes of its shape. The sun, moon, and stars live in the sky because of his trickery, and watching ravens play with the world around them makes this seem like a reasonable proposition, as creation myths go. But since this blog isn't about ravens or Raven, I'll just recommend this story and this article.

**"Carver", a double-black diamond (Experts Only) run which I skied last week for the first time (it had just opened), is groomed. If you know what I'm talking about, you appreciate the irony here.

On Finding Home - part 1

I grew up in a “semi-remote” cabin in Juneau, Alaska. When my parents bought the lot, the home was a pan-abode cabin – essentially a Lincoln-Log cabin big enough to live in. Barely. My father designed and built a timber-frame home in its place, every log, brick, nail, and window packed up from the beach and our trusty 14' Lund skiff. This skiff, a quarter-mile beach at low tide, or a half-mile walk over the hill and through the woods were our connection to the road system, the first and last part of any journey.

From the age of six until I moved out after high school, my home was tucked out of sight and mind, hidden in the Tongass National Forest, perched over the Inside Passages of the Pacific Ocean into Southeast Alaska. Neighborhood children were scarce, and the few playmates I had in the area tended, like me, to be happy fishing for Dolly Varden and flounders from the beach, using mussels as bait; mixing elixirs and poisons both imaginary and potentially expectorant; adventuring amongst the rocks, looking for treasures – or any interesting flotsam.

I spent many a dark night feeling my way over the hill, my youthful imagination making the most of every shadow and crack in the forest around me. At times on all fours, feeling amongst the moss and rotting stumps for the void, the emptiness of the trail, wishing time and again that I had an extra flashlight, or that I had changed the batteries in the dead one I grasped like a club, ready to respond to a bear in my face as best as I could. (The nose is the softest, easiest hit on a bear, with the best likelihood of resulting in the bear's departure.) One night, with six inches of heavy, wet snow on the ground, it took over an hour for my mother, sister, our next-door neighbor, and I to find our way home in this manner, calling to one another in the dark when we found what we thought was the path, or when we needed to feel our way back to each other.

Nightmares of our tiny skiff being swamped or capsized were not always terrors experienced from the comfort of bed. At as young as eight, my chores could include taking the boat to give a parent or a guest a ride to or from the road when the water was calm. The water was not always calm, and I was not eight for long. My experience grew, and my luck saved me on several occasions, such as when I realized just feet from a jetty of rocks that I was much too close to shore, going full speed in the dark. Or when the waves stood up just past our beach, crashing over the stern of the boat even as the bow rose over the crest of the wave ahead, unable to get far enough up the wave to escape the trough into which the outboard seemed to pull, a sucking feeling in my heart as I knew that the ocean was on the brink of swallowing me into its churning embrace.

In such experiences, I learned without thinking about the lesson – I had to get home. There was no other option. Crawl on all fours, feel your way blind through a forest, turn the boat into the wind. Find home.

With many years of used-up-luck and slowly earned experience behind me, I now find myself searching for home once more. This time, I seek not a home I've found before, but a new abode for heart and soul. The journey seems more perilous without a destination, and with no idea what paths might lead me there; but as in my early years, make it home I must, or live on the road as I seek.

“Home is where the heart is”, though perhaps tired and worn, is also tried and true, an adage for the ages akin to the Golden Rule in both simplicity and longevity. As I ponder the roads ahead, feeling loss and separation as I am sundered from my community, my friends and family, I return to this thought. Rejoicing in the moment, in each sunrise and the opportunities of the new world in each new day, I remember that NOW is when and where I am, and that the only home I truly need is the space in which I find myself in that given instant. I can find solace in the air I breathe, the food I eat, the nutrients and energy flowing and cycling within and through me. I can love those I love from afar, remembering their voices, faces, and hearts. The soil beneath my feet will change as I move over the land, but in letting go of roots I can find myself a citizen of a larger community, a part of a world beyond any horizon. Moving into stillness, and finding stillness in motion: even as I seek a place to put down new roots, I carry my connections and find that distance does not sunder friendships or love. Experience will always change us, and our luck may run out or grow thin, but our history supports us, tying us together as we weave the here-and-now.

I laugh to myself as I write these words, my personal mantra of many years resounding in my mind if not ringing in my ears. I have believed this since I wrote it, nearly two decades ago in Salt Lake City, but perhaps I am only now learning how right I was when I first intoned:

nutrients cycle and energy flows,

here we are, what is:

let's go!

I have not found home yet, but I carry it in my being, and know it holds me in its safe embrace, whatever path my feet may tread.

Namaste.

Time to Tinker

Over the last few days, Jess and I have stepped away from work on Velda, our Wonderbus and future home, and have returned to our love of making toys. Colorful bears are multiplying in the living room while dragons breed in the garage, but diving into tinkering is not without its learning experiences.

Although she's sewn dozens of bears out of her quilt scraps, it's been a while since Jess has assembled a teddy...so in her first attempt Wednesday, she fabricated three left arms before a right. That hiccup passed, and she brought a beautiful little pastel-flower bear into being yesterday, with one right and one left arm, and a matching set of legs. Its ears are cushy-soft micro-pillows that beg to be squished, and I envy whoever gets to lay their head on this teddy.*

I spent most of Wednesday learning about my new (almost) all-in-one tool, a Shop Smith Mark V. Especially how to adjust the band saw so that it wouldn't throw the band off and/or break it. Cutting the “blanks” (the rough-draft toy: no sanding, no holes, just the basic shape) for two new dragon toys took almost all day. For comparison, in the past I've managed to cut them out in about 20 minutes each with my jig saw, although the cuts aren't as clean and the tight corners aren't as tight as they are with the band saw. My DeWalt cordless jig saw can only cut approximately one-and-a-quarter toy blanks from 3/4” wood on one battery charge, so it just isn't a practical tool for the entire process. Be that as it may, I learned a lot about my Shop Smith, and got a lot of experience replacing and adjusting the band saw blade.

Thursday, I sanded. Which is in and of itself a simple process: apply friction, remove unwanted material. Of course, when you're dealing with tiny little crevices and trying to remove any possibility of splinters or roughness, things get...complicated. Let's just say that I've been struggling with figuring out what tools will best accomplish my goal of sanding nooks and crannies, and although I haven't had a stroke of inspiration which panned out yet, I've had lots of ideas and have attempted to make most of them work. With the result that I hand-sand the crevices and hard-to-reach bits with custom-folded/wadded/twisted sandpaper. Keeping it Old School. Sandpaper, fingers, elbow grease. (An aside: although I heard the term many times as a youth, it wasn't until late in middle school that I realized that “elbow grease” wasn't something you bought at a hardware store, but a metaphor).

After setting aside several mastadons and panthers which involved unforeseen complications in design, I finished six dragons, each of which had evolved from its own piece of wood in a different way, even though I'd only used two templates for their body types. Each sanded at least three times, with the final round by hand (everywhere, crevices or no). With the toys ready for oiling and wheels, I did my obligatory round of quality control:

Now, I'm not going to mimic a two-year-old and throw my toys across the room or jump up and down on them, but I do expect my product to meet a reasonable level of durability requirements, so slapping them together to get the dust off is a perfectly acceptable way for me to break my own toys. And break my toys I did. Every. Single. One.

In retrospect, I may be asking more of my toys than is reasonable. I gave a prototype to my three-year-old godson in August, and he still hasn't broken it (although his younger brother broke another toy within about two minutes of receiving it, hence the “mastadons aren't ready yet” situation). But no, I thought that a 185-lb 38-year-old slamming toys together would be an appropriate test of the forces that a child might exert on them, and broke every last one of them. The little wings and twisted tails which gave the dragons a taste of whimsy all gave flight, leaving shards and stumps where their fragile grandeur had once been.

So Friday (today, by the time I post this), I'll spend the day re-designing my flock and getting ready to send it out into The Holidays. The good news is, I've learned something new this week. Lots of new things, actually. Many of them have to do with the structural integrity of wood along its grain line. Adjusting my process and checking for weak points before final sanding is another lesson which will come in handy in the future. Humility and Patience were in there too, and Humor was chortling from the sidelines all day long as I struggled to sand the detailed curves of tail and wing, all destined to fly off in their own directions and all, ultimately, to the scrap bin.

Between Jess' extra bear arms and my extraneous wings and tails, it's looking a little like an abattoir around here. But it's also looking like a wonderful menagerie of wood and fabric: rotund little bears; scraps of quilts bursting in color; the scent of cedar, pine, hemlock; dragons, mastadons, and panthers vying for completion amid piles of wooden wheels ready to trundle them into the world.

Strong wings and fierce cuddles, my friends.

*I have used special (i.e. $$$) ergonomic/chiropractic pillows for neck support for over twenty years, and have trouble finding a pillow that can support my neck and head appropriately in both side- and back-sleeping positions. I have used the (very squished) bear below as a pillow for the last year, and have never had a pillow provide such fantastic neck support. Notably, he's also stood up to weekly machine washings and dryings without complaint – or pulled stitches.