The Light Is Clear In My Eyes

Summer heat never bothers me. It’s the humidity. The irony is that I moved back here two decades ago because I loved the humidity. I wanted to sweat, I wanted to suffer that overbearing presence of the world, air so thick you could cut it with a knife. Sometimes I still do. I’ll take a humid night in New Orleans over a cool one in Chicago any time. But increasingly I find myself itching for that first day when the humidity breaks and you can feel Autumn in the air.

You can see it too. There is a quality of light in dry air that is cleaner, crisper, more revealing. The world sparkles more, feels more brilliantly alive.

I’ve come to think lately that it’s not Autumn that I was wanting, but the dry western air of my youth. That dryness is calling me back home. Technically speaking, I grew up by the beach, the air was rarely dry like the desert. Still, it was never as humid like it is here.

I miss the desert. But I miss the balance between extremes even more. I miss the damp foggy mornings that give way to warm, but crisp clear afternoons. Around here the damn foggy mornings give way to… damp foggy afternoons.

At least it’s cool and we can get outside again. We’d gone soft over the summer. We lived inside. Cheated the heat. Lured into the air conditioned nightmare. It’s hard to escape it without some serious effort of will. It also helps to have something worth going outside for — white sand, red rock, cool mountain forests, waves, tacos, something.

The minute the humidity broke though we went back out. The hammock went up, the camp chairs moved back by the fire pit, the rope swing got pulled out of the branches where it had hung, unused through the summer heat. Life is good again.

I’ve said for years living indoors was killing us. All of us that is. This year, for the first time, I’ve seen quite few other people saying the same, albeit for different reasons. Stale, recycled building air is especially bad if you’re trying to stop the spread of a virus, but it’s bad for a host of other reasons too. Long after this virus is a distant memory, spending all your time indoors will still be bad for you. Get outside more if you can. Spend a little time every day under the open sky and you’ll feel better. No roof but stars.

With the heat gone I finally got to work cleaning and fixing up a few things on the bus. I replaced the exhaust manifold gaskets, flushed the radiator, bled the brakes, replaced the starter relay (again), and cleaned up some wiring. There’s a considerable amount of exhaust leaking though and I think I am going to take it in to get that looked at. I have neither the tools nor skills to redo all the exhaust pipes and joints. I did finally get started washing and waxing it though.

I also started on some interior work. I installed a new MPPT solar controller that is a thousand times better and cheaper than the PWM controller we had previously. It’s amazing how much the price of solar components have come down in the past five years. Even LiPO batteries are about half the price they were two years ago.

Next I tore out an entire wall, taking out the couch, and pulling down my custom made cabinet. I also removed a good portion of the ceiling. I did all that primarily so I could fix a water leak where the wires from the solar panel came in. I added a proper cable entry cover to stop the water leak.

I decided not to drill for the cover, opting instead for some high strength polyurethane adhesive. It makes me a little nervous, but I thought this made a good test since if it fails, the wires will keep the cover from flying off. It definitely solved the leak anyway, how it holds up over the years remains to be seen.

I figured as long as the wall was torn up I might as well make a few improvements as well. I installed some heavier wire coming down from solar setup so we can add a couple more panels down the road if we want. I also ran some coaxial cable up to the roof for a Wi-Fi antenna. Then I added a shunt to the batteries and ran some wired up through the wall so we can monitor the battery state without Bluetooth (which is handy, but will inevitably fail).

Since I was tearing up the ceiling I also decided to test how my initial ceiling panel installation strategy worked. I deliberately left some strategic gaps (which are covered by the metal strips you see in the photos) so I could remove the tongue and groove panels without removing all of them. I’m happy to say this did work, perfectly in fact. I was able to easily pull out a couple panels over the stove to fix the ground wire on the light there, which had been flickering annoyingly for years now.

After a summer in which I was unable to do much of anything, working on things again felt good. When we were on the road I tended to work in small bursts when time and circumstances permitted (or at the side of the road when circumstances required). Now though I can get a little bit done everyday, which gives me a sense of slow, steady progress that I rather prefer to the burst and then nothing workflow.

I find this interesting because I was once a fan of the extremes of things: everything and then nothing at all. I still see the merit in this for some things, but the danger is that time spent doing nothing at all comes to vastly outweigh the time spent in intense bursts of work. Everything or nothing too often turns out to be nothing at all.

I’ve come to appreciate that steady, little-bit-every-day approach. The secret is to never take a day off whatever it is, make it a habit. Do something every day. It doesn’t matter how much, just do something. Sometimes it’s hard to tell you’re making any progress, but if you just force yourself to sit in the chair and do the work anyway, then one day you look back and realize how far you’ve come.