Things have been continuing at a fine pace, and the weather has cooled down a lot. Here are some new photos of the workers at their worksite.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Drifting Along Splendidly
Things have been continuing at a fine pace, and the weather has cooled down a lot. Here are some new photos of the workers at their worksite.
Friday, August 14, 2009
(Mis)Adventures in the Desert
Things don't always go as planned when you're living in the middle of nowhere. Yes, our campsite is beautifully desolate, and the only sounds we hear at night are the wind rustling through the juniper trees and the ground squirrels trying to eat our dried oatmeal, and we are most definitely in the back country, but we are also 15 miles from the nearest highway and 60 miles from town. This means, of course, that when your car breaks down, you are completely stranded.
This happened to us last Monday. We'd put a full day of work in and were prepared for a nice evening of letter writing, scrabble and star gazing. We drove back to camp and parked the car in its usual spot. I decided it was time to wash my hair (probably for the first time in a week, I was so excited!) so I went to the tent to change out of my field clothes. While I was in the tent, I heard a giant explosion, so loud that I though the propane tank may have exploded! I ran out to see what happened. One of the tires on the car had blown. I guess we had punctured it on the road and it didn't actually pop until we got back to camp.
I started changing the tire, loosened all the lugs and started taking them off. Things were going fine until I got to the very last lug. I started turning it and it froze. I put all my weight behind it and the lug started bending. I knew there was no way I was going to get it off, so we moved on to plan B.
The only thing for us to do was hike to the highway. We packed supplies (water, food, flashlights, clothes) and started walking. We started our hike at 4:30 in the afternoon and didn't reach the highway until after dark. I was trying to make good time because I knew that once we reached the highway, we'd have to hitchhike into town and I was worried about trying to catch a ride in the dark.
It was surprisingly easy for us to catch a ride. After a few cars drove by, a hippie and his 7 year old daughter picked us up. He told us some crazy stories and when I thanked him for the ride, he said he was glad to pick us up because we refreshed his hitchhiking karma. Apparently he'd be having trouble catching rides lately.
Eventually everything got sorted out. We got the tire fixed and things have returned to normal.
This happened to us last Monday. We'd put a full day of work in and were prepared for a nice evening of letter writing, scrabble and star gazing. We drove back to camp and parked the car in its usual spot. I decided it was time to wash my hair (probably for the first time in a week, I was so excited!) so I went to the tent to change out of my field clothes. While I was in the tent, I heard a giant explosion, so loud that I though the propane tank may have exploded! I ran out to see what happened. One of the tires on the car had blown. I guess we had punctured it on the road and it didn't actually pop until we got back to camp.
I started changing the tire, loosened all the lugs and started taking them off. Things were going fine until I got to the very last lug. I started turning it and it froze. I put all my weight behind it and the lug started bending. I knew there was no way I was going to get it off, so we moved on to plan B.
The only thing for us to do was hike to the highway. We packed supplies (water, food, flashlights, clothes) and started walking. We started our hike at 4:30 in the afternoon and didn't reach the highway until after dark. I was trying to make good time because I knew that once we reached the highway, we'd have to hitchhike into town and I was worried about trying to catch a ride in the dark.
It was surprisingly easy for us to catch a ride. After a few cars drove by, a hippie and his 7 year old daughter picked us up. He told us some crazy stories and when I thanked him for the ride, he said he was glad to pick us up because we refreshed his hitchhiking karma. Apparently he'd be having trouble catching rides lately.
Eventually everything got sorted out. We got the tire fixed and things have returned to normal.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
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