Hello all, family and friends.
Current update from the group:
Anda and myself (Eden) have been in Joshua Tree for the past week and will probably be here for at least one more. We have been spending time at our new friend Valerie's house, getting in some good quality girl time and helping Valerie out with some projects around her property. This week we will be spending a lot of time over at Lisa and Gabe's place down the road, helping them begin construction of the main portion of the eco dome they are building. Lucky for us to have met Gabe and learned about his project; we were a little bummed when we learned that there wasn't room for all five of us in the workshop at Cal Earth in Hesperia. Just another reminder that the universe provides!
Speaking of the workshop, Charlie, Cecelia, and Will are still in Hesperia with Aunt Cece, doing work trade with Cal Earth so that they may attend their Super Adobe workshop this week. Hopefully we will all get to work together here in Joshua Tree when the workshop is over.
In my last update I promised to continue the saga of our California coast exploration, which begins again in San Luis Obispo; oh how I love this town. We were fortunate to be able to stay at a 19-person cooperative house called the Establishment, located in old town. The building itself used to be a hotel for the train station across the road, there are 19 rooms along two floors, 1 through 20 with no number 13. The building itself was architecturally unique, some rooms had up to 13 foot ceilings, most with bicycles hanging from them.
(a few of us with a few of the residents of the Establishment)
We arrived just in time to participate in the 'Stabby Olympics 2011". This entailed a series of ridiculous physical challenges. We started off the day with a potluck at the neighbors where I certainly ate too much and then attempted to out growl the notorious Garret during the Growler holding competition. Participants hold a growler (or in our case a very large glass jug) filled to the brim with water straight forward from their shoulder with one hand. I lasted about One minute 50 seconds, the first place winner coming in at something like 3 minutes!
From there we moved on to the first eating competition, 6 saltines as fast as you can get them down. I came in second on this competition, losing only to Craig, the house president. If I had a second try I swear I could beat him now that I know the technique. After saltines we broke out the candy and the fireball/warhead eating competition began.
I didn't even consider entering this contest, and for those of you who are mentally planning your own ridiculous Olympic competitions, count this challenge out! It took a long time, caused a lot of pain (both tongue and teeth related), and was anti - climactic. Sorry Stabbies, but this one wouldn't make my cut. After we had sufficiently stuffed our faces (with real food), we headed over to the park to set up my slack line and rally for the next competition, Pixie Bike Whiplash.
Pixie Bike Whiplash! What the heck is that? Only the most genius of genius ever. Take two 'willing' participants, give them a bike tube to wear around their waists. These bike tubes are connected by a piece of webbing (about 30 feet long). Each participant picks a pixie bike (in our case the bikes were a little less then equal for this particular game) and faces the other participant on their own bike, 30 feet away at the other end of the webbing. On the count down, the pixie bike riders race towards each other, passing on their respective sides and continue pedaling as fast as they can away from each other, until, as you might guess, one of them is pulled of their bike; thus the 'whiplash' portion comes in. What fun.
(Garret bravely gearing up to face Craig)
But what does this all have to do with sustainability? I suppose the point is that we like fun, fun is certainly a sustainable community practice.
We trickled out of SLO over a few days, Anda left Saturday morning to ride to Santa Barbara solo, myself leaving Sunday and hitch biking, while the rest of the group took two days to ride the distance in. We found ourselves sucked into the campus community in Isla Vista (UC Santa Barbara). Between campus coops, and the political activism happening we were thoroughly occupied. We hosted a workshop at the Rainbow house near the end of our stay. The workshop featured a few segments, starting with Alpha on gift circles, Thomas on bike D.I.Y. bike touring, and Charlie speaking about urban foraging (of which he did a lot in I.V., so many delicious oranges!). We decided here to start leading workshops where ever we go when the time and space allows. Since then we have hosted a gift circle with Alpha Lo at an Evolver spore event in L.A., and are hosting another Gift Circle in Joshua Tree this Thursday in Valerie's dome.
After Isla Vista we headed to Los Angeles. This was Cecelia's first few days of biking and she faced fierce headwinds and packed L.A. traffic on her way into town. Way to hold it down Cecelia! We arrived just in time for the Evolver spore event, where the forum topic was, 'At Peace with War'. Some very interesting and important conversation spurred from this topic, and we were lucky enough to have Charles Shaw give us a sneak peak at his up and coming movie, Exile Nation (highly recommended).
While in L.A. we had one of our greatest dumpster scores yet, thanks to the Trader Joe's near UCLA. We reclaimed four large milk crates full of apples, greek yogurt, pita bread, spelt tortillas, scones, sausages, guacamole, and even two chocolate gnache cakes! We didn't find many farms in the area and we were unable to get a hold of the Urban Homestead while in Los Angeles, so we quickly made our way out of town to Santa Clarita, then to Little Rock where we met the lovely Rhonda.
(us with Rhonda just before to took off the next morning).
We were planning on camping in the desert somewhere, and had decided to stop for water at the next set of houses. We pull up to a stretch of trailers that seem to be the only thing around for miles, and a few of us were quickly drawn to Rhonda's door to ask for water. She was very kind and after offering her hose to fill up all of our empty bottles, she found herself in a riveting conversation with Will (who doesn't!). As things went along, we were welcomed into her house for the night where she made us a delicious home cooked meal and shared an infinite bounty of wisdom and experience with us. One highlight of the evening was a computer game that Will played. The game features a cartoon graphic of some scenery, with hot air balloon that floats along in front of the changing background. The point of the game is to fly the balloon around the world, you do this with a little monitor that you clip to your ear, no mouse involved. When your heart is inline with your head (similar wave patterns) the hot air balloon rises and begins to float forwards, when you become more inline, it floats faster, and when you lose focus, it starts to slow down and sink. What an incredible practice, Will did a fantastic job at navigating the balloon through the entire game.
In the morning we made a great big breakfast, took some pictures, and rode out towards Hesperia where Cecelia's aunt, Cecelia (or Aunt Cece) was waiting for our arrival. We didn't arrive till nightfall, and the weather had grown quite cold. I was quite worried about Charlie's un-gloved fingers for the last stretch. Some of the riders were picked up by a lovely neighbor named Troy, who returned to Cece's the next morning with Will's helmet that he accidentally left behind. Thank you Troy!
Aunt Cece hooked us up with Xenia and Dennis at Rainbow Ranch Farms. We spent a day of work and mostly play at their place, making pizza in their beautiful clay oven, and cleaning out the baby chicken coops. Will and Charlie are working on our video documentation of the trip and they will post it here soon (right, fellas?)
( Dennis, Cecelia, Myself, Anda, Will, and Xenia)
(Xenia's foster goat, Pauly, 5 days old!)
More about Joshua Tree Transition Town, and Cal Earth later!
Peace and Love,
Eden and the CR's.
Recent Comments