...and then the floods came

“Let The Drummer Kick” by Citizen Cope has been in my head ever since i saw a routine by a pair on "so you think you can dance", so this is a recommendation to readers and a reminder to myself and to download this song when i get home. back to business...

it has been a busy week once again, which was further complicated by the fact that it has been raining for longer than i can remember, and our tent leaks. nuthin a wall of towels can't fix. progress is being made on our building site in cedar. slowy. a stall for our composting toilet is almost ready, as is a solar showering area. its really cool because it has been woven into the surrounding underbrush. i'd take a picture, but unless you see it in 3d, it just looks like a bunch of sticks. so me and antonio have been shuttling back and forth doing this and that, but also getting our pedalling fix. oh, and i just eclipsed 2000km on my oh-doe-meter the other day since i left toronto. i was distracted by a beautiful sunset as we were riding back home, and neglected to stop and have a celebration by the highway side. aside from the building project, we have also been hard at work trying to figure out how to build a bike generator and scavenge the parts in preparation for our workshop in a week. amazingly, we found a beautiful red (hand-me-down) bike behind one of the local grocery stores which we claimed, cleaned up and are now putting into service as our soon to be electri-shyon genera-shyon sta-shyon. the stand for said bike was also recently built with much care (in the rain with power tools). we are now just eagerly awaiting the arrival of a alternator in order to turn our pedalling into power. but all that stuff was temporarily put aside for the weekend in order to learn about cob building first hand. we really got our hands dirty (and feet, and just about everything else) while attending a workshop on how to build cob structures. i am pretty pooped after spending the day dancing about on top of sand and clay, and then smashing it into a wall-like shape. the workshop was brought together in partnership with the mudgirls (www.mudgirls.ca) and earthmasters. And there will be more of these workshops to come in the coming weeks. we've also been offered jobs working with one of the premier alternative builders in this area named adam parry (www.hobbithomes.ca), which is wicked awesome, and i can't wait to take him up on his offer...when we get the time. aloha yall.