Nomadi

The idea of living a nomadic lifestyle has been in my head since I was very young, like old enough to ride a bicycle.  You see, once I had my "wheels" I discovered a much bigger world.  For years the ability to wander all day long, sometimes covering 60 miles or so, and still be home in time for supper was great, but eventually I needed something bigger than a bicycle.

After going through the pain of acquiring and supporting a car, I discovered that my world was going to be limited now by how much money I had to put into the car. After the car there is the girl, which leads to other interests. Of course, with the girl comes the likelihood of children which, for most people, will cause the sprouting of roots for many years or even decades.

Now my kids are gone, I have many vehicles and I still have the girl (which makes things that much nicer).  She has a pension for roaming and we both would like to reverse the roaming to working ratio.

I almost have the power.

It's mid February and I've gathered up my 12 volt 8 amp/hour battery, a charge controller and a 200/400 Watt power inverter.  Solar panel to follow once I get the roof on.  I'm looking at an additional wind powered generator to supplement the solar.  If you are doing the math, that is 96 watts of available power for a little less than 1 hour, minus the inefficiencies of the inverter. This is a camper, I got no good reason to need the equivalent of a 100 watt light bulb anywhere.  We'll see.  I'm also planning on adding several more batteries during the year.

Water storage has been designed.  I'll be good for storing 6 gallons. Water collection design will follow, kind of like the wind power idea.

Prelude to Spring

One 20 year long uncompleted project has bitten the dust.  Time to look at reality (yuck) and my age.  I'm 50.  Time to escape (reality). That is the plan.

The SKpod ALPHA1 is well underway but has been sidelined due to the fact that winter came on December 1st, 2010 and has refused to leave except for two brief weekends which were too wet and cool to get anything done.  It sits under tarps in my driveway waiting for warm enough weather to allow the use of adhesives once again.

In the meantime, solar and wind pod power is being developed as is pod power storage.  Water collection, treatment and storage have been designed.

This summer will begin the trial runs and, who know, maybe an ALPHA2 will need to take shape next winter.