Mexico!

Sat 18/10 Santa Monica (if it's blue, you can click on it - places link to a map)
got email from Nicole saying her & Tim (Exile) will be in Mexico City next Friday night - are you in the area. Mexico city in a week. Doable.

Sun 19/10 left Santo Monica, arrived San Diego
Eve tells me how the guy we were staying with in Santa Monica spent every minute my back was turned trying to convince her to sleep with him. 2 Faced prick. I should out him. Or not.

Mon 20/10 left San Diego, arrived Sonoyta, MEXICO!
bought new front speakers $20 from chain car store - proper job!
crossed border rinsing salsa
bureaucracy with car - found banjercito a few km in from border to do paperwork for car. Timeconsuming process but not impossible.

Tue 21/10 left Sonoyta, arrived Navajoa
stopped by police for not stopping at stop sign - let off!
lorries indicating left to motion that it's safe to overtake....????wtf!
Stayed at Palace Motel

Wed 22/10 left Navojoa, arrived El Rosario
applied muffler strips
left leatherman in motel. now other side of mexico but have found phone number on soap stolen from motel.
stopped for speeding, let off AGAIN!- cop said "just make sure you're not doing more than 75, maybe 80mph" - when that's what i was doing when he stopped us.
had 1st margarita. expensive in (other) hotel bar. felt good though.

Thu 23/10 left El Rosario, arrived Huaniqueo (500 miles as the crow flies...)
left early morning - amazing light in morning - leaving so soon allowed us to get as much (superfluous...) stuff done as possible.
picked up manuel, shrimp farmer, co-op 3000
left laptop at motel, drove back 90km with manuel, perlava with tolls & drugsearch (they wouldn't believe that we'd been collecting fresh herbs to put in a bag to make the car smell nice - and found a tiny tiny scrap in the carpet. Eventually convinced them.)
no hotels in huaniqueo, moved to next town, old walled cobbled courtyard hotel (no TV! yeah!)

Fri 24/10 left Huaniqueo, arrived Mexico City
Tim's gig - fucking fat
on tha VIP list innit - Anson Room vibes a bit except full of Mexicans havin it.


Sat 25/10 left Mexico City with Tim & Nicole, arrived Tuxpan, beach on North (Carribbean) coast, late.
car making strange sounds when putting into 4WD. needs looking into (along with the rattly muffler, the nonfunctioning alarm, handbrake, leak, clunky transmission...). still (very) driveable.

Sun 26/10 left Tuxpan, arrived Otumba
dropped T&N @ Teotitlan
beach. swimming. lush.

Mon 27/10 Otumba
sick. must've been dodgy oyster at beach. Or swallowing too much seawater. Or the oil refinery next to the beach.
should've gone to the south coast. beaches are lusher.

Tues 28/10 left Otumba, arrived Love Motel (Teohuacan)
still sick. and getting sick of driving.

Wed 29/10 left Love Motel, arrive Oaxaca
in Oaxaca for Day of the Dead in 3 days.
still sick. getting better. will be fully better tomorrow.

Thu 30/10 Oaxaca
Monte Alban. lush very old ruins short bus ride away.
went with nice bunch at hostel.

California

Sat 4/10 Sebastopol (California)- stayed at abigail's
worked in garden picking tomatillos
start to fit amp in car - run 12v lead from battery, install phono cable, rewire speakers


Sun 5/10 Sebastopol - stayed at abigail's again
finished installing amp - works a treat - need to get replacement front speakers

Mon 6/10 Sebastopol - abigail's
pm beach - foggy
tasty abalone for dinna and hot tub

Tues 7/10 left Sebastopol, arrived Vallejo
Treasure Island. No treasure except good photos.
stayed at Clint & Emily's (met at Emerald Earth) - good to see them again and talk about EE


Wed 8/10 Vallejo
hanging around to wait for espresso maker I left at EE - Prana leaving from Oakland tomorrow - try to arrange pickup time - got call from Prana, left, didn't bring it. doh.

Thur 9/10 left Vallejo - arrived SF
The Warehouse - cool saloon type pub/cafe/bar on the other side of SF Bay. amazing place, must go back when open.

Fri 10/10 SF

Sat 11/10 SF
critical mass - didn't make it, watch has stopped working and phone is out of battery. :-(

Sun 12/10 SF
burning man decompression. fun. got box (with old car stereo in) back.
good to see the playa on the tarmac...

Mon 13/10 SF
recovery. beach.
Chinese Dumpling Session - sessioned









Tue 14/10 left SF, arrived State Park nr. monterray bay

Wed 15/10 left State Park, arrived Santa Monica
left park early, avoided paying.
The Get To A State Park Late And Leave Early Theory is born with (almost) conclusive proof.
picked up 2 alchie hitchhikers, in their 40s, sweet old couple.
cliff fire. drove back 30 miles to go around. v. annoying retracing steps.
stopped in Santa Barbara to offload hitchers onto local beach posse ( - jolly nice folk).
got drunk with guy we met at decompression and now turns out to also be a coke dealer.

Thur 16/10 Santa Monica
checked out Venice beach.
bad mood.

Fri 17/10 Santa Monica
LA hell.

When is a worker a skilled worker?

Friday 3rd October, noon

Just about to say our goodbyes at Emerald Earth, it feels like we've been here a lot longer than 2 weeks. I'm quite sad to be leaving, I've had the most amazingly grounding experiences, that have fuelled my dreams and excited my fantasies. Is it strange to have fantasies about building mud huts?

And it was my birthday on Thursday, Lisa made a fabulous morell mushroom risotto for dinner, just like I wanted, and stuffed squashes to boot. And the birthday cake was an Eve Special - bananas, brandy-soaked raisins, chocolate. Mmmmmm Mmmmmn.

So I explained a bit about the setup in my previous post. That was quite broad, so I'll say a bit more about the details, from my perspective anyhows. The 2 weeks here were also cut in half by going to the Handcar Regatta to help out our "Producer" friend who "organises festivals".  Maybe I'll start with that.

So we arrived in Santa Rosa on Saturday, the day before the Regatta, to help out with what I assumed would be a busy day for him. Well, nobody on site seemed to know who he was, nor could be discover his whereabouts. Hmmm. We headed back to Sebastopol, and collected our post - the new car stereo and rear speakers. A couple of hours and twizzles of wire later and we could now play whatever music we want as mp3s via a USB stick. Nice.

Well, it turns out we were not needed until Sunday actually after all, which is a little disappointing because we left Emerald Earth, missing the earthen oven making workshop which I was rather looking forward to. The photos show the development of the oven in preparation before the workshops, and after. The seduction of glamour can be deceiving (of helping our 'Producer' friend that is). No matter, the Regatta sounded exciting, and furthermore, Aubergine, the huge vintage clothing store in Sebastopol, was having a party to celebrate opening a bar/cafe in the back of the building - a huge wooden structured warehouse. With free food - my favourite kind of party.

Well, the party was OK, the sound system was a couple of regular Mackie speakers that simply couldn't quite fill the space. The band were good, but perhaps better on a CD than live. The bassist was a good craic to watch tho - the most energetic of them all, bashing out a smooth reggae bottom line. If I had a slightly larger wallet and wardrobe, I would be more interested in all the fantastic vintage wear, but alas I have neither so I tried to restrain my visual appetite.

The Regatta on Sunday was a blast. The dress code appeared to be 1920s inventor with a good dose of playa chic. Ideal for the old red braces and dress shirt get-up, with a marker-pen handle-bar moustache. We personned one of the info booths, selling T-shirts and jute bags and pointing to the food ticket booth a lot. And as for our Producer friend, Joseph is actually a friend of one of the Producers - with a slightly overinflated sense of importance, bordering on the delusional. But a lovely chap nonetheless. And despite his adamance in advance to the contrary, there was no afterparty.

looking at the old cob earth oven mid-destruction

So on Monday we trekked back to Emerald Earth, via a couple of stops to run errands, picking up some Hardy frame templates for the foundation of the new Common House. It's being made up to California Code specifications: an interesting pragmatic choice sewing a gap between visionary utopianism and the 'default' world.

laying the foundation for the new earthen oven

So in the 2 weeks I was there, I dabbled in a plethora of different tasks around the place. Trench digging had to be the toughest - good to get the blood flowing. Hauling, stacking and chopping firewood was fun. Fence bracing - for the new deer fence around the new Common House site - was fairly laborious but a useful skill. Clay waddling the new chicken coop was great - a timeless technique - I think I need more practice, as mine sagged a fair bit. Working in the garden, I moved 17 wheelbarrows of horse manure, and got a good sweat on. I cooked another meal, lunch this time, onion soup with polenta. And I helped out with the child care. The nice thing here is that everyone has a go at helping with childcare, including non-parents.

laying the sand/clay/straw mix for the oven base over the wood-store form

The sauna went on a couple of times over the weeks, a nice end to the day. When the hot tub's leaks are fixed it would be great as a cold plunge bath. The shower suffices for now though. At the end of a day up at the foundation in full sun all day, it's a welcome treat for the muscles. I spent a few days dogsbodying up at the foundation, helping out when I could. In that time, I had a good think about a lot of stuff, and one of those things was about 'skilled' labour. At the moment, there's one or two skilled workers working on the common house. A lot of stress is placed on those shoulders. If one of those got ill, it would set the whole thing back a lot.

laying the oven base

The problem is that most people are unskilled in this line of work. You can't just tell someone to go get on with that portion of the foundation. This interrelated to another problem, which is that one person is the site manager (as well as the main worker!)- that is the person overseeing the whole operation, and knows exactly what's going on everywhere on the site. So he's got to set people up with mini-projects, oversee them to make sure they are accurate and precise, while getting on with stuff himself, figuring out what needs doing in what order, the next task for helpers, etc. A mammoth task, undertaken admirably.

making the door arch

So there are the inter-related problems of skill more generally, and specific expertise on the section that needs work. Now what got me thinking is how do you gauge someone's skill? There is the underlying factor that work on the foundation needs to be very accurate - as it's holding up a building, hopefully to be able to withstand an earthquake, being that we're not that far from the San Andreas fault. I guess it's a process of building a picture - from experience of using particular tools (or at least how they work), and accuracy and precision. The more experience, the less mistakes, the less questions and the faster the work gets done.

completed earth oven

Anyway, these were some of the thoughts that drifted through my head as I dug into (admittedly soft) rock with a pick and a rock bar. And some questions - am I a skilled worker? Does that fact that I know how to use a bunch of tools and I have a good dose of common sense and got top marks in my physics A-Level assessed practicals make me skilled? Probably not. Does the fact that I don't know that the rafter goes from eave to ridge (and then the purlins go on top horizontally) make me unskilled? Probably.