added some src essays and wired essay

2 files changed, 68 insertions, 23 deletions

diff --git a/essays/off-grid-brotherhood-of-the-wrench.txt b/essays/off-grid-brotherhood-of-the-wrench.txt
index 26cc969..1252414 100644
--- a/essays/off-grid-brotherhood-of-the-wrench.txt
+++ b/essays/off-grid-brotherhood-of-the-wrench.txt
@@ -1,26 +1,3 @@
-Beautiful is better than ugly.
-Explicit is better than implicit.
-Simple is better than complex
-Complex is better than complicated
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-Fail gracefully when possible (an elevator is still stairs even when broken mitch hedburg joke)
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-Complex systems are inherently fragile. The optimization that makes the system "easy" to use, also generally eliminates the redundancies and graceful degadation that makes a system resilient.
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-The exhilaration of figuring something out.
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-This little movie runs on a loop in my head. It invades everything I do. I see it sitting at stoplights, a similar path of electricity out of the breaker, up the light pole and to the switch which sends it to the top lens, which happens to be red.
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-I see it doing the dishes. The water leaving the tower, flowing down increasingly narrower pipes, off the main street line and into my hot water tank where it sits until a flick of the faucet calls it up through more pipes and out onto my hands.
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-Everything flows like this. Every system around us, when it works, does something similar.
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-Right now the Travco does not work. I can see it in my head and yet I cannot make it work. It has to be the fuel pump. I have spark, I have compression, the missing ingredient in the basic trifecta of the internal combustion engines is fuel.
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-But seeing it and understanding it are different than actually solving the problem, making it work. This is basic difference between architects and builders. Builders have to solve problems in the real world that architects will never encounter.
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-Days pass. I continue to fail with the bus. The real world of by time constraints, pay checks that don’t arrive, other commitments, weather. I work on other things. Hang wall panels, sand and apply finish. I do things I know I know how to do. More days pass. Still the bus doesn’t start. I get sullen. My wife thinks I’m mad all the time. I’m not. I’m thinking about the engine, I can’t get it out of my head. It reminds me of the first time I tried to write some code. It was fun, but it also was not.
-
 # Main
 
 There's no temperature gauge. It broke several thousand desert miles ago. But you can smell it coming, whiffs of radiator fluid slip in the draft at the front of the engine doghouse. That's when you know, it's time to stop. It doesn't happen often. The 318 likes to run hot, but climbing mountains with a 12,000 pound RV on your back will eventually make any small block engine overheat.
@@ -106,6 +83,74 @@ I was happy to realize there was nothing wrong, and I unhooked the temperature g
 
 Two months later, near the end of a summer spent in cool pine forests the rocky mountains, we decided to attempt a 10,000 foot pass near Ridgway Colorado. We'd made it to about 9,600 feet previously, and this pass was not a steep climb as Rocky Mountain passes go, so I thought we should be able to do it. We started early, but we didn't get more than a mile out of town before I smelled that familiar grapefruit smell of transmission fluid. I pulled over and crawled under the bus only to see the same transmission cooler line leaking again. 
 
+We turned around and limped back to Ridgway. I found a side street to park on, in front of a mechanic's shop as it turned out. I got under the bus to see what I could. This time I knew what I was looking for, and sure enough, once I got the nut off the flare was not just cracked but missing a whole chunk. The transmission cooler lines are fitted enough that I couldn't just cut them off, put in a new flare and reattach them. They were too short for that, and even if I could have made it work they would have been nearly touching the exhaust, which would heat them far more that the transmission cooler ever cooled them.
+
+I was forced to punt again. I called around for a shop that had big enough bays to work on the us and eventually found one in nearby Montrose. I put the existing line back on as best I could and limped back to the campground. That night we repacked and loaded what we needed for a few days of tent camping in a rental car. 
+
+That evening, I was sitting outside the laundry room at Ridgway State Park, watching the famous golden light of the Rockies play across the Cimmarron Range, when a fellow camper came to do his laundry. After he stuffed his laundry in the machine, we started talking. Eventually the conversation came around to the bus, as most conversations I have in campgrounds do. After he asked which engine was in it, he took a different tack than most people. He asked me something no one else ever had, something that caught me off guard and has haunted me ever since. He said, "do you turn your own wrenches?" I told him I did as much as I could, but that sometimes I had to get professional help. "You have to turn your own wrenches," he said shaking his head. "You can't have a vehicle like that if you don't turn your own wrenches." 
+
+This I realized that night is an absolute truth. You can't have a vehicle like this if you don't turn your own wrenches. You'll go crazy or broke or both. We spent a couple weeks in a tent while the mechanics Montrose tried to find new transmission cooler lines for the bus. Eventually they did and we were on our way again, but not for long. A couple weeks later, coming down western Utah, bound for Zion National Park, I stopped for gas and guess what I saw pooling under the bus? 
+
+It was a Sunday in Utah. We tried to find a mechanic, but there was no one open. Nothing happens on a Sunday in Utah. In the end we just pulled over on a back street, across from a mechanic's shop that was closed. I crawled under the bus and started poking around. This time the leak was from the back of the transmission line rather than the front. I unscrewed it and sure enough, the flare was cracked. I knew what to do, but I didn't have to tools and the hardware stores weren't open. 
+
+I climbed out from under and sat down on the step, wiping the grease from my hands. My wife had just asked what we were going to do when the rolling metal door of the shop across the street, rattled and then came flying up and open with a clang. A man about my age came walking over and asked if I needed help. I told him my problem. It turned out it was his shop. He didn't work Sundays, but he was still at the shop working on his own projects. Together we pulled off the transmission line and took it inside and cut off the cracked flare and re-flared it. We put it back on and he showed me where the previous mechanic had gone wrong. He'd overtightened it and cracked the metal. We tightened it. Gently. The mechanic wouldn't take any money. Help someone else out someday he told me.
+
+This is part of what I love about living in the bus, part of why we keep doing it five years later—because we haven't stopped needing to fix things. In the course of writing this article I had to rebuild the vacuum booster that powers our brakes system, replace two belts, change the spark plugs, and half a dozen other projects. The bus will never not need fixing. But the relationship has changed. I no longer look at the engine in awe and mystery. I know what all the parts do now. I don't know everything that can go wrong, and I don't always know what to do when it does, but I have the thing I've come to prize the most—the relationship with our fellow shade tree mechanics and car enthusiasts. They are what keeps me doing this. It isn't just me turning my own wrenches, it's everyone who turns their own wrenches. 
+
+---
+
+Sitting at the side of the road in Nevada though that community feels far away. It wouldn't do me much good even it was here though. The engine overheating isn't really a thing that can be fixed. It's what happens when a small engine tries climb a big hill. Whether its fixing it, or just deal with it's limitations, old cars will teach you patience.
+
+Even within the community of repair enthusiasts we get some strange looks when we say we actually live in a 1969 RV. It makes me smile a little, sitting out here in the middle of the Nevada desert foothills, waiting for the engine to cool enough to keep plodding up the hill. 
+
+I go for a walk up the road, to see what's beyond the next curve. Maybe the road crests a ridge and drops into a cool, lush valley with a river running through it. The bend doesn't seem to end though, I keep walking but can never more than the next few hundred yards. I give up and head back to the bus. My wife and kids are back from their explorations, ready to go. The engine has cooled some, so we clamor in and decided to make another push up the mountains. The problem is that now we're starting from zero. On this kind of incline, starting from a full stop I give us a mile before we overheat again. I will never know of course because the odometer is broken, but we don't get far. But we get on down the road. After about what I'd guess is a mile I spy a pull out. I haven't smelled radiator fluid yet, but I decided to take advantage of the pull out. 
+
+My wife and I discuss turning back. There's a strange college back in the valley behind us called Deep Springs. They have a sign out front that says no phone and not to bother them, but something tells me they'd be okay with bus. We could get a fresh start in the morning. It's been a long day of driving and the kids are tired and hot. 
+
+Then we here that unmistakable sound that always makes me smile. A loud engine, probably a Harley Davidson, is rumbling up the hill. In a few minutes the bike is too us and the rider pulls over. He checks to see if we're okay. I tell him we are. We go through the usual talk about the bus, but he tells us we're only about a mile from the top. 
+
+That changes everything. Suddenly we're not quite so tired. The prospect of making it over the mountains feels possible again. We thank the rider and he continues on up. We decide to give the engine another bit to cool before we try again. I am thinking about a conversation I had with some construction workers earlier in the day. We had stopped at the top of the first pass and had a snack. A road work crew we’d passed coming up the mountain pulled into the same turnout we were in. I took the opportunity to ask them about the next pass, the one we're sitting on now. They seemed to think we’d be fine, though one of them did say, "there's one part we call the narrows, it’s only one lane through there." I stared at him for a minute. "Seriously?" “Seriously.” “Don’t tell my wife that.”
+
+This conversation comes back to me now and I mention it, as casually as I can, to my wife. She does not seem thrilled, but we agree to try for the top. It's a long mile, we never get above twenty miles an hour, but about half an hour later we are at the top. A spectacular view of the Owens Valley in California opens up below. I can see the Sierra Nevada mountains rising up out the hazy valley. I have just a second to enjoy it before we go flying past a sign that says, "Caution, One Lane Road Ahead."
+
+The narrows come up so fast we don't really have time to even plan for it. We're just in it. Fortunately, nothing is coming the other way, but it is very much a one lane road. To this day I have no idea what happens if you meet another car coming the opposite way, especially if its one of the empty hay trucks that drive the rest of highway 168 at about 70 miles an hour. 
+
+Coming down the mountain is easier than coming up, but we do still stop to rest the brakes a few times. We have a vacuum brake system that works extremely well, but long continuous down grades of 6-8 percent do require taking breaks. A few hours later though we pull into a campground outside of Bishop California. It's empty this time of year and the road in is full of ruts that have the bus lurching and creaking around. There's a loud clang at one point and my wife and I look at each other, but I keep going and pull into the first campsite. I shut off the engine for the final time with a sense of deep relief.
+
+---
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+
+The community of people repairing things is an interesting group, perched on an interesting dichotomy. We are, by and large, a group of people who prize self-reliance. Whether that self reliance grows out of economic necessity, pure enjoyment, or some other factor, it is essential to spirit of repair. At the same time, the community is very hierarchical one, which means those us near the bottom of the hierarchy must rely on and must learn from those above us, which isn't very self-reliant, but I think this is a big part of what makes this an interesting and dynamic community. Self-reliance alone tends to make you isolated and either conceited (if you're good, or think you are) or intimidated (if you know you're not very good). The only way out of these predicaments is connect with other people who know more than you. In the first case they'll quickly put you in your place, in the second, they'll lift you up to where they are.
+
+
+That's part of why we were at the side of the road that day in Nevada. We were on our way to visit my uncle. I didn't know it yet that day, but he would end up saving us just couple of days later. He would keep the bus going when it almost broke completely, in an irreparable way. But more than that, he would show me how to turn my own wrenches. He helped me rebuild my carburetor and exhaust system, and he showed me that there was no mystery to it. It's all just nuts and bolts he would tell me every time I got frustrated. Remember it's all just nuts and bolts. 
+
+Nuts and bolts aren't where most of the work is though. Most of the work I do in keeping this engine running happens in my head. A mechanic isn't someone who blindly turns wrenches, anyone can do that. A mechanic, professional or otherwise, is someone who can listen to an engine and figure out, based on experience, which nuts and bolts need turning. It's the problem solving that happens in your head that separates those who can fix an engine from those who cannot. This is a skill that takes years, even decades to develop. I am still very early on this journey, but it is infectious and exhilarating when you hold something unknown in your head and step through the system until you come up with a hypothesis about what might be wrong. This takes me many miles of driving, many miles of thinking.
+
+It also takes asking many questions of many people. I've been fortunate to have my uncle who knows more about engines than I ever will to help me out, but there have been plenty of others as well. I've met Travco salesmen who knew the original designer, mechanics who've worked on Travcos in the past, and dozens of people who knew the 318 engine inside and out. All of it put together and you have perhaps the most important part of repairing anything: the community.
+
+
+---
+
+Even within the community of repair enthusiasts we get some strange looks when we say we actually live in a 1969 RV. It makes me smile a little, sitting out here in the middle of the Nevada desert foothills, waiting for the engine to cool enough to keep plodding up the hill. 
+
+I go for a walk up the road, to see what's beyond the next curve. Maybe the road crests a ridge and drops into a cool, lush valley with a river running through it. The bend doesn't seem to end though, I keep walking but can never more than the next few hundred yards. I give up and head back to the bus. My wife and kids are back from their explorations, ready to go. The engine has cooled some, so we clamor in and decided to make another push up the mountains. The problem is that now we're starting from zero. On this kind of incline, starting from a full stop I give us a mile before we overheat again. I will never know of course because the odometer is broken, but we don't get far. But we get on down the road. After about what I'd guess is a mile I spy a pull out. I haven't smelled radiator fluid yet, but I decided to take advantage of the pull out. Sure enough when we stop the engine is overheating it's just low enough on fluid that it hasn't flooded. 
+
+I shut her down and this time the initial silence is broken by the sound of an engine off in the distance. People. 
+
+Nevada is a lonely place. The so-called loneliest road in America runs across it. I think the road we’re on is far lonelier, but it's not as long, so I guess it doesn't rate. We'd had a good drive until we turned onto this road and got some hints of what was to come. The signs read steep, winding roads ahead. Okay, no biggie, probably. We'll take it slow, stop when we need too. Then there was a sign that said one lane road ahead, trucks not recommended. But we’re on a two digit state highway in Nevada, those don’t narrow down to one lane. I thought maybe it meant there was no passing lane. It did not mean that.
+
+Up and over the first pass was not too bad, though it was the windiest road we'd been on. We stopped at the pass and had a snack. A road work crew we’d passed up the mountain came down and pulled into the same turnout we were in. I took the opportunity to ask them about the next pass. They seemed to think we’d be fine, though one of them did say, "there's one part we call the narrows, it’s only one lane through there." I just stared at him for a minute. "Seriously?" “Seriously.” “Don’t tell my wife that.”
+
 
 
 
diff --git a/essays/wired-version.odt b/essays/wired-version.odt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f917c2a
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+++ b/essays/wired-version.odt