Roughing It...

I've spent the weekend writing in my trailer, which is parked at the in-laws' place in Morgan Hill. It's been a really productive time.

I left my house late Friday night, stopped at the grocery store in Morgan Hill and got some fruit, some bagels and cream cheese, some sourdough, some juice. I got here about 10pm, and watched a movie on my laptop, which is how I get myself into the groove.

I managed to get some work done on my "witch" story, and then went to bed about 4am. I work best in the early hours - there's something about the silence and the dark that lets me plug into my worlds so much more completely than any other time.

I woke up at 11am, spent some time alternating between watching a movie and writing until about 3pm, when it got really hot - it was probably about 80 degrees outside, which is hardly uncomfortable, but the trailer has no insulation, so when the sun shines down on the roof, which is still covered by a tarp, the whole thing heats up like a sweat box. I have fans going throughout, the door and all the windows are open, but it still does no good. I wound up sleeping from about 3:30 to 6pm, at which point the air outside was getting cool enough to let me concentrate on working again.

I've been thinking about how to increase the insulation or decrease the heat, or whatever, and I have a few ideas. I read a study once on the lifestyle of the Bedouin. One of the sections was about their tents and how they survive in one of the hottest places on Earth. Bedouin tents are always black wool, and it turns out that inside the tent, it's an average of 10 degrees cooler. You'd think that a reflective surface would be preferable, wouldn't you?

My hypothesis about this is that the black tent does absorb a lot of the sun's energy, but it holds on to it, so that there's relatively little energy to transfer to the interior of the tent. I had the thought that perhaps I could try stringing a black tarp over the trailer, but not touching it, and see if that had the same affect. The back end of the trailer is already under a tree, and I know that it's always cooler in the bathroom, say, than in the front dining area, where I work, which is under full sun. I'm not yet sure how to get a tarp up like that, but the trailer is parked next to my father-in-law's workshop, and it might be possible to attach the tarp to that somehow.

Anyway, just a thought. I'm going to have to come up with something soon, however, because it can get to 110 degrees here in the summer, and I can't imagine it would be even possible to be in the trailer without an air conditioning unit at that point.

I got up this morning at 9am, and I sat down to do some writing in my blog first - my brother-in-law set my laptop up to be able to access the in-laws' encrypted wireless network, so while the cell phone can't work this far up into the hills, I can now get to the internet, which has got Jeff feeling a lot better. He hates it when he can't get hold of me.

Ok, that's it for this morning. Back to work on the "witch" story now.

For your viewing pleasure: Rather like the "Super Stooges" of a few days ago, here's "Killer Horse Saves Baby", courtesy of some strange Indian movie from the 80's.



Toodles