Much more to come.
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Leaving tomorrow… and book recommendations!
January 23, 2012 – 11:07 pm
Unsurprisingly, SoCal vernacular lacks a satisfactory word for the kind of rain we had today and Saturday. More than a drizzle, but lacking the muscle to give the roof a satisfactory pounding. Whatever you call it, the wind is throwing it at us sideways. Thankfully, the forecast shows a week of mild sunny/cloudiness starting tomorrow, and we’ll be riding down the mountain in it.
Today I’m cutting the final rafter for the Peace Pavilion during the misty windows. Sitting around is frustrating, but bad weather for outdoor power tools is also bad biking weather, no matter how antsy we are. We greatly appreciate all the public and private words of encouragement.
Hopefully we can impose upon you all, probably for the first of many times for some reading recommendations. Among many wonders, I anticipate the journey gifting us many dark hours in a tent. Please help us fill them. Left to our own devices, we’d be reading only dystopian fiction (Laney) and increasingly depressing accounts of the race for the Republican presidential nomination (Ben). Despite the synergy of those topics, we’re trying to branch out.
Please send word of anything we should add to the Kindle about or relevant to the topics of (interpret broadly!):
- Exploration
- Interesting ways of living (particularly with constraints)
- The Southwest/Desert
- Older things
Leave recommendations in the comments or email them to s l o b l u e @gmail (remove the spaces first). It would be awesome if you could explain your recommendation a little bit. We’re hoping to do a followup post with the complete Ancient Eccentric Desert Nomad reading list with the reasons particular books were included. Read along with us and this could turn into sort of an informal book club if you need another to participate in.
Next post from the road.
Why we haven’t left yet
January 17, 2012 – 4:50 am
This is mostly my fault. We’re still here because I’m trying to get the Peace Pavilion project to some sort of acceptable endpoint, which I’ve decided is when all the major timber framing is done. I’m guessing one more day to make the remaining three rafters with the chainsaw mill, and another long day of raising the center post and framing the rafters into place. Then we’re off. My apologies for the protracted departure.
If you’re not familiar with the Peace Pavilion rebuild, you must not have spoken to me in the last year. I feel like I’ve been working on this project as long as I’ve been at the camp. Behind our dining hall we have a cob meeting area with an arched gate into the kitchen garden. The roof covering all this burned in the fire a few years ago, and we’ve been trying to slow the inevitable water damage with tarps ever since. (Cob=impervious to fire, weak-kneed when faced with a fine drizzle. Age-old search for the perfect building material continues.)
One of the coolest things about cob, aside from its dragon-proofness and sculptural potential, is that you can source it from your own property if your soil contains clay. If you can live with the environmental disturbance of a minor excavation, cob is as sustainable as building materials get. Responsible timber harvesting is also pretty sustainable, and in a synergistic coincidence, Camp Stevens resides on 250 acres of mixed oak and pine forest with clay deposits. Previous staff had prepped a few fire-killed logs for building, but by the time I got to them, they were too rotted out to use. Still, building with lumber sourced from the camp property seemed like the right way to do the project.
I frequently find researching things much easier than actually doing them. Luckily this time around I actually got around to building something, but after reading everything I could find on the internet about cutting down trees and turning them into dimensional lumber, I found myself in Great Meadow, hand-shaping timbers with an axe. This, it turned out, was not a fast process.
At some point I’ll get really nerdy about all the things I learned doing this project– the intricacies of hewing, chainsaw milling, octagonal joinery, lifting giant logs with a gin pole, etc. Towards the end now, I also have more fully formed thoughts about the actual sustainability of projects like this, why the aesthetic appeals to me, and lots more. But for now, I just wanted to throw some pictures out there to show the thing that’s wrestling the bike trip for my enthusiasm and energy, and also so you remember to direct all your shit at me when you’re making jokes about why we haven’t left yet. Laney is not to blame.
A special thanks to everyone that lent a hand during the construction process, especially the Thanksgiving Camp carvers, Garrett for documenting everything, and the Camp Stevens admins and Laney for their infinite patience.
Frame Bag Tutorial
January 17, 2012 – 4:24 am
My cousin Darby wasn’t the only one who realized the importance of staying hydrated. After reading lots of blogs and resolving a few design disputes, we created these nifty frame bags to hold our hydration bladders, an alternative to water bottles that will allow us to drink comfortably as we ride while simultaneously making our bikes look, for lack of a better word, bad-ass.
Although I never doubted for a moment our ability to come up with a design on our own, this small feat would have been a lot more time consuming if it wasn’t for all the tutorials we found. I think it is only fair to post one up in return.
For anyone who is viewing this tutorial for inspiration and direction, I ask one thing. Be creative :]
materials used
- ripstop nylon fabric
- polyester thread
- denim needle (thicker needles for thicker materials; take it slow on the machine)
- water resistant zipper coil & slider
- 2″ velcro
- scissors
- ruler
- sewing machine
- sewing pins
- sharpie
- cardboard
- good music
- (we bought most of the bag materials at rockywoods.com)
stencil & front panels
- cut out a cardboard stencil of your frame; make sure it fits snuggly inside the frame
- note on the cardboard stencil any places where it won’t be easy to attach the bag with velcro
- determine which side you want things to be on ( zippers, etc.)
- draw your design on your cardboard stencil (zipper, pockets, etc.) with correct measurements and placement
- use stencil to draw an outline on wrong side of fabric; remember that the two panels will be opposite.
- with a ruler, add a ¼ inch rim outside your original outline – I sew ¼ inch away from edge, putting me on the original line and preventing me from having to cut a bunch of fabric later on
- cut out front panels on the ¼ inch outer line.
- make sure both panels line up (place them on top of each other)
- determine which panel goes on the left/right. write L /R on respective panels
side strip
- measure perimeter of cardboard stencil.
- cut out perimeter length + an inch or two (just in case) for the side strip; our strip width was 2.75 inches
- remember to make a ¼ inch line away from original line on both sides (add .5 to width)
divider
- measure out how long you want middle divider to be on stencil
- divide width measurement from side panels by two. 2.75/2 = 1.375 (when sewn together later, they will equal the side strip width)
- draw two outlines on fabric, first half the width as the side strips, the second ¼ inches away from the first line.
- cut out divider strip on outer line with an inch or two extra
zipper
- make a guideline on one of the panels for where you want the zipper to be (double check it is on the side you want)
- over extend the lines; the zipper strip will cover up your lines when you pin it down
- cut zipper to appropriate length with an inch or two extra
- (if zipper and zipper slider come separately, put slider on zipper by pulling apart tip of zipper, sliding the slider on, and pulling the slider as you pull the zipper apart until the slider slides onto the zipper. sorry if that is confusing!)
- pin zipper in place, zipper faced down
- unzip the open end a little bit and pin the two open sides close together as if they were closed
- start sewing at closed end; when you reach the slider, put the needle down, lift the machine foot, and push the slider past the needle (prevents bunching/crooked stitches)
- sew over zipper a few times, then sew down lengthwise from closed end, about halfway between the zipper material.
- cut out fabric on right side, exposing zipper and slider (we used a water proof zipper which is why you can’t see the usual zipper bits
Attaching divider
- on both panels, draw guideline for middle divider
- align and pin dividers onto each panel
- sew ¼ inch away from edge onto original line
- cut off excess
Velcro
- mark on cardboard stencil where you want the bag to attach to the bike with velcro (keep in mind areas where bike features make it hard to attach with velcro)
- cut out velcro strips long enough to reach around majority of frame (the bag width will prevent the velcro from needing to go around the entire way)
- mark down on side panels where you want velcro to go; make sure to make identical (but opposite) marks on both panels
- orient which way velcro needs to go in order to attach to the other side; one needs to face down, the other up (i put the sticky side on the top facing down, and the soft side on the bottom facing up with the top sticky side on the same side as the zipper – seemed easier for me to pull off the straps on the same side i dismount from my bike)
- pin down velcro
Sewing it all together
- align side strip with one of the side panels, wrong side facing outward on both. velcro should be pinned in between the two; remember, figure out the proper direction/alignment of the velcro before sewing, otherwise they might not attach properly when you’re done!
- start sewing ¼ inch away from edges, along original line. make sure to keep both edges aligned; it is easy for the fabric to shift around.
- backstitch over velcro for extra strength
- stitch all the way to corners, put the needle down, and fold/realign side strip with new edge. continue till you reach where you started. Cut back extra fabric so they overlap a ½ inch or so. Stitch over and backstitch to finish
- stitch along the ends of the side strip to close it.
- open up the zipper so you can fold the bag right-side out at the end
- repeat with other side; align panel as best you can. again, double check the velcro
- this part is much harder, make sure your edges are aligned. It doesn’t have to be perfect, the bag will come out fine even if your seams aren’t super straight
- fold the bag right side out
- pull the dividers out of the zipper, without turning the whole bag inside out
- align the two lengthwise edges and sew ¼ inch away from the edge
there it is! hope it’s useful…
here are some of the other sites we used to develop our design
happy crafting :]
***If you would like a bag custom made for your bike, you can contact me by commenting or email and we can work something out when I get back around late Aug/early Sept 2012***
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