The Joy of Mud

The joy of jumping into a puddle and sinking your fingers into mud does not disappear with age. We do manage to talk ourselves out of it most of the time by focusing on the future rather than the present. My nice shoes will be muddy, my feet will be wet and I will have a miserable afternoon. But what if you can plan your  afternoon around getting all muddy and cover the fact that all you really wanted to do was play with dirt. Well, that’s what Tucker, Julie and I did when we built ourselves an earthen pizza oven. The book  “ Earthen Ovens” by Kiko Denzer outlined the whole process. We gathered sand, straw, bricks and broken pieces of sidewalk and went to work. Using a mud mortar and the sidewalk chunks as rocks, we built a stone wall pedestal to build the oven proper on. We laid empty beer bottles on their sides and filled the gaps up with a mixture of clay slip (watery, fine grained mud) with wood shavings (lumberyard excess) to make the subfloor insulation. This was topped with a dense layer of stiff, sandy mud and then by the oven bricks, creating a smooth oven floor. Next came the sandcastle stage. The goal is a dome shaped oven, so in order to support the arch we built a smooth dome with moistened sand. Another mixture of stiff, sandy mud coated the sandcastle and as our painfully frozen fingers recovered we let the dome dry.

Tucker and Julie adding mud around the sand dome.

 That brings me to my main piece of advice: build the oven in summer. The warm mud is much more enjoyable to play with, each layer of the oven will dry faster and the long days are conducive to building longer.  Once the oven dried, we excavated the sandcastle to reveal the void of the oven itself.

The dried dome, ready for a layer of insulation

Another mixture of wood shavings  and clay slip completed the insulation shell and the oven. All that remained was to decorate and protect the oven. We added straw to mud and plastered the entire dome. This step can be a simple coat, or an elaborate art project. In our case we kept it to an even half inch layer to maintain the simple beauty of the dome. A final layer of lime plaster embedded with decorative shards of glass tile provided protection from the weather. I added a thick oak door mounted with a curved antler handle to seal in the heat for bread baking and provide a graceful finishing touch.Who knew playing with mud could be so productive?

When we use the oven, we start a fire right on the brick floor and keep it going for at least two hours. Once hot, the flame glides along the ceiling and bounces out the door. We push the embers one side and keep a small fire going there while we quickly bake pizzas right on the brick floor soaked in heat. Once the pizzas are all baked we pull out the fire and close the door on a few loaves of sourdough bread to let it puff and crust up. As I open the door to view the finished bread my face is engulfed in the thick, steamy air carrying the memorable scent of fresh bread. 

I want to tell

After another prolonged absence from my blog I have the urge to share again. We'll see if that continues or not.
I'm sitting here in my kitchen in Durango, CO looking out at intimidatingly gray weather. I've been working on the railroad and I have two precious days off before the two week push of working every day until Christmas until 11 pm.
How did I get here?
It seems like so long ago that Annie offered to help me get out to Colorado. I joined her and Lisa on their cross country drive, but jumped out in Fairfield Iowa, a strange town where Gold tipped domes and trailer parks live in harmony. I stayed in the trailerpark with John and joined him on a trip to the Iowa State fair with his posse of Chinese exchange students. It turns out fried butter is every bit as delicious as it sounds. To those poor souls who have not been exposed to fried butter, let me explain: Take half a stick of well chilled butter and impale it on a stick (wood, not butter). Now plunge the sticked butter into a thick, sweet, cinnamony batter and deep fry it. The result is a falice of batter that has been penetrated with butter and frying oil. When bitten into, salty butter oozes out of the middle. Get the picture?
From Des Moines I caught a bus to Denver where I was greated by my bike crazed family. It turns out I had timed my arrival in Colorado perfectly with the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, a 7 stage road bike race around central Colorado. My uncles, who are already cycling enthusiasts couldn't stop talking about the race. Before it started I kept hearing, "this is going to be so cool", and then, at the race, "this is so cool." The enthusiasm was contagious and I was hooked. I ended up following half the stages in a Tigger costume, bouncing and yelling as the racers came through.
Suddenly the race was over and I was faced with the decision I had been putting off: where am I going to live now? I had been leaning towards Durango for a while, with no alternatives really getting me as excited, so I borrowed my cousin Conor's car and loaded up my belongings to check out Durango. Now here I am and it has started snowing gently. Somehow the snow is more welcoming than the gray blanket leading up to precipitation.
So I moved to Durango and started looking for work and climbing a little, which progressed to climbing a lot and looking for work a little. I volunteered with some farmers and at a raw kitchen called the Turtle Lake Refuge. I managed to snag a week of work on a strawbale house, but that ended as quickly as it came about. Finally, I managed to find work at the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Rail Road (D&SNGRR). The event of the season is The Polar Express, based on the book and the more recent movie (if you love the book, don't watch the movie). When the first train pulled in I stood on platform and watched all the kids in PJs stare wide eyed as the hissing and steaming engine came to a halt before them. The conductor stepped out and yelled all aboard and a tear came to my eye. It really was just like the book that my parents read to me every year on Christmas eve, a dream come true for little kids and a huge revenue enhancer for the D&SNGRR. I hoped that feeling wouldn't go away for me, that I wouldn't stop believing in the magic of The Polar Express. Unfortunately, when I was told that the new hire for our department failed the drug test and that I would have to work every day from the 14th until the 28th, excluding only Christmas day itself, the magic failed me. I am beginning to hate Christmas carols and hope that all the kids can get off the train quickly at the end of the night so I can blow out the lanterns, unplug the Christmas lights, clean the depot and go home.
I will write soon about the joy of building a pizza oven and baking in it.

Life in the West

I haven't published a Post since returning from Asia, so a lot has happened since then and I will list a few highlights and get back to the present.
Bike trip to Fontainebleau:
I took a ferry to Dieppe in France with Clare and Greg, two friends from Bristol. The three of us spent 4 days biking from Dieppe to Fontainebleau, going through lots of charming french villages and ending up at our final campsite just in time to meet the rest of the climbing crew for a week of great bouldering and excellent fun.

Sam and Mara's visit:
After climbing in France I hitch-hiked home and soon after getting back Sam, a good friend from College, came to visit with his sister Marah. We enjoyed excellent weather and did lots of walking and some climbing and hanging out at my appartment. It was a great way to get home to have people to share the beauty of my little neck of the woods.
I worked at my restaurant job for a month and then John came to visit:

John's visit:
Once again the weather cooperated nicely. I took John, another close college friend, climbing and he got to witness the culmination of my climbing efforts that spring as I managed to climb the most challenging and satisfying climb I have ever accomplished. We also got to go on an excellent hike that involved a little hitchhiking, a long via ferrata up a huge limestone wall, a quick dip (with my cell phone...oops) into an exquisite alpine lake, and a day walking along a very narrow and exposed ridge. We also took advantage of a bad weather day to rappel into a cave that still has glacial ice stuck inside it. All in all a very exciting visit.

LPC Freedom,
After John's visit my grandparents stopped in for an extremely short visit of 2 nights and my parents and I took them to the airport, where I also boarding a plane for the states. I headed for Freedom, NH to be a counselor at a summer camp connected to the Ecole d'Humanite (the international boarding school where I grew up, but unless i'm mistaken about the popularity of this blog everyone who reads this will already know that). I spent 5 weeks in Freedom with an excellent staff and a rowdy and wonderful group of 9-13 year olds. Everything went very smoothly and now, without much warning, i'm done with camp and facing the rest of life.

Life in the West:
After a few more days in the Boston area I plan to head West and find a future. I haven't yet decided where I want to live, which is both exciting and a little difficult to plan around. I look forward to whatever lies ahead and will hopefully keep people updated on what that is.

Hope for Vietnam,

Important bus ride statistics:

Average time between honks of the horn = 6.4 seconds

The distance from my waist to my knees ≥ Distance between the back of my chair and the kidneys of the person sitting in front of me.

 Time it takes a Vietnamese person to fall asleep on a bus = time it takes to close their eyes + about 10 seconds.

Added value of a bus with onboard toilet facilities = $ 0.-, because the bus stops at least every two hours anyway.

The honking of Hanoi is incessant.  It has gotten to the point where the rearview mirror has been replaced by the certainty that everyone will use their horn to inform you of their presence. It has become an epidemic and at times the future of Vietnam’s streets look very bleak indeed. Yet there is hope, i met a few young Vietnamese who believed that, “people here honk more than necessary.” This counterculture of non-honkers is living by example in the hopes that it will catch on. They are also relying on influence from the West, hoping that as the country continues to develop and westernize, maybe they will also adopt the concepts of using rearview mirrors and right of way.

Despite the earsore, I dove into the culture by renting a motorbike of my own, the trusty Honda Wave, and I braved the streets of Hanoi for three full days and emerged unscathed.  My preparation for the streets of Hanoi was five months of travel in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, in that order. Before arriving in Vietnam, I had been made apprehensive by tales of fellow tourists being treated unkindly, ripped off, badgered excessively and overcharged to the point that many had found it to be the least enjoyable to visit in Southeast Asia. I prepared by setting up some contacts through Couchsurfing.org as well as some of Duncan’s study abroad friends. Things continued to work out as I headed from north through the country and I ended up thoroughly enjoying Vietnam. My experience opposed the reports I had received, as I found myself less pestered and more welcome than in any other country I have visited in my short life. Some examples of the hospitality I received:

 In the mountain town of Dalat I was approached by a nun, who was visiting with her nephew and offered me a place to stay at my next destination, Da Nang, where I was taken care of, fed, and driven around by the 22 year old gentleman who spoke very limited English, named Thanh, for two full days. Thanh’s family, none of whom spoke a word of English, refused to let me pay for anything over those two days, even getting the nun (who spoke English) to call me and tell me not to try to pay for anything.

Another example was a bicycling ice cream salesman I approached for a scoop only to realize I was completely out of cash. As he was dismounting his bike I realized my predicament and gestured that I wouldn’t buy the ice cream after all, but the old man calmly made me a cone, drizzled on some condensed milk and handed me the cone with a pat on my shoulder (as high as he could reach), no need to pay this time.

The final example I will give happened in Hanoi in a very touristy spot. I sat down to read my book on the grounds of a small pagoda and a woman came over and gestured for me to join her for lunch. She sat of the ground and unpacked a small feast of rice, steamed veggies, fish, soup, with lots of chunks of meat swimming in it, some meat jell-o and even some rice wine. Her friends joined and five of us sat there eating and trying to communicate. By the time I left I had also been given two passion fruits to eat and a coconut to drink and had a tentative date set up with one of the man’s daughters (that didn’t end up happening). Those were just the random acts of kindness that came completely un-looked for and unexpected. The people I met through couchsurfing were just as generous with their time, just as eager to meet and get to know people from around the world.

 The most uninteresting and unpleasant experiences I had were also the most expensive, namely the two tours I booked, one to see the Mekong Delta area, and the other to visit Ha Long Bay. The tours are westernized in a way that detracts from the experience. Everything must be idiot proof and accessible for 60+ year olds (no offense), everything is planned out, leaving no room for uncertainty and spontaneity, the food is bland and the people you meet are unexcited because all they do every day is deal with tourists. Also, you are surrounded by other tourists who were as uninspired as I was when I decided to sign up for a package tour. So basically, the tours go against many of my fundamental travel principles and thus are not my cup of tea (which was not very good either).

The opportunities

While I have been travelling I have had lots of time to read and think and putter around online. I have been feeling especially inspired recently by some alternative technologies I have been reading about, seeing, and taking part in. I would like to share some of the sources that I have found inspiring.

1. the book: Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World

This book is about a village in Colombia, South America, that is a model for sustainable living. They have built a ground up community that supplies it's energy from the sun, it's income from the rainforest while growing more trees at the same time. They are true pioneers, really forward thinking people. The book is great, a pleasure and inspiration to read.

2. Natural building:

Get on board, there are so many natural techniques that have been used forever such as adobe and cob building. An earthen home is cheap to build, doesn't require too much expertise, is beautiful, healthy and comfortable to live in and doesn't use nearly as many resources, unless you count dirt, which is an unlimited resource. Look into it, start with a homemade pizza oven: http://blog.sustainablog.org/how-to-build-your-own-cheap-outdoor-pizza-oven/ 

Here are some sites to get you excited:

3. Solar Cooling:

A college student figured out how to make a fridge that uses some very simple materials. The idea is so painfully simple it shouldn't work and yet it does.

Also, there are people designs for solar air conditioners that turn into solar heaters in winter.

The same principle has been used to make low tech solar freezers that can produce large quantities of ice. Check out this article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=solar-refrigeration

4. EM

It stands for Effective Microorganisms and is apparently the savior of our planet. A combination of a few different types of microorganisms (lactic acid bacteria, yeast, photosynthetic bacteria) can be cultivated to make this miracle substance. EM supposedly can be used diluted in water to help plants grow faster and stronger. It can keep compost piles, sewage systems, fish tanks , well basically anything from getting stinky and gross. It can be fed to animals to improve their health and yield (milk for example). It has been used to clean up after natural disasters such as Katrina. There are even EM recipes that people drink to improve their own health. EM is commerically available, it's quite expensive, but a little goes a long way, as you can dilute it quite heavily. There are also some recipes floating around online, but I can't vouch for any of them yet. 

How can you not get excited when you think about these things. I am starting to realize that despite the immense complexity of life, it is all so simple. The sun and dirt can take care of most of our needs. Let me know if you're inspired by something.
love to all,
Robo

Between the end of the banana season and the beginning of the coconut season

I love Vietnam. The people are friendly as can be and the places I’ve been are great. I will present some highlights of my time in Vietnam so far.

The ice cream buffet. Need I say more? Yes. It was a couchsurfing meeting in Saigon, so I thought it could be perfect. Meet other couchsurfers and enjoy an amazing buffet, all you can eat ice cream and whipped cream, real chocolate sauce, sorbet, fruit salad, passionfruit juice, oreos and sprinkles galore. I think I had about 10 mini Sundays and then some other stuff on the side.

Khan’s birthday party. I was couchsurfing in a 4 person apartment on floor 12A (meaning floor 13) of what must be one of the biggest apartment buildings in Ho Chi Min City. It was one of my hosts birthdays and we celebrated with a homemade feast and some drinks followed by a trip to a Karaoke lounge.

Visiting a farmer with a biogas digester. Duncan had worked to install a few biogas digesters in the Mekong Delta during his semester in Vietnam,  so I went to check out what they were all about. One of Duncan’s friends took me out to visit a farmer and translated for me the whole time as the farmer showed me around his fish ponds and pig stalls and then introduced me to his low budget biogas digester. Once he realized that I was truly interested in understanding the details, he drew it all out for me, pointing out some of the improvements he had made to the original system.

Dalat! The main destination for Vietnamese tourists to make a romantic getaway. Dalat is a small city in the mountains, surrounded by greenhouses growing strawberries and avocadoes, as well as more farmland, forests and lots of waterfalls. One waterfall had a rollercoaster that puts you in charge of the brakes winding down the hill through the jungle from the road to the waterfall. The other Dalat highlight was today. When I got here I met up with a French couchsurfer named Nans who had been hoping to raft down a river around here. We decided to buy some car innertubes and float down a river today. Getting there was the fun part. We drove my rental motorbike out of town and down into a flatter valley where we found a place to get our inner tubes inflated (a strange request for them in a town where we saw no other tourists all day) and then headed for the river. The river was beautiful, surrounded by rice patties and banana trees with basalt boulders strewn thoughout the river. The float itself wasn’t that successful as there wasn’t quite enough flow and the sun disappeared as soon as we got into the water, leaving us to slowly chill to the point where it was quite possible to forget that we were still in a tropical country.

Tip of the trip: Avocado smoothie, soooooooooo good!!! Just blend avocado and condensed milk, something like that, and you have a completely new way of experiencing avocadoes.

oh, and the title. It was something a Vietnamese said about when he would get married. Since coconuts and bananas grow all year round in southern Vietnam, it is a great way of not answering the question, i thought it was a good way of thinking about time in general.

rural to urban

My final day in Cambodia involved another trip into the countryside. This time I went with my agriculture partner, Kimsang. We took turns driving the motorbike to the village and then stood on the farmers plot wondering why his watermelons weren't growing.

 I was more intrigued by the fact that the cucumbers were growing on the same plot of rock hard dirt with no organic matter or water at all in the soil. The farmer was a friendly old man who also did some blacksmithing to make some farm tools that he presumably sold at the closest market. We asked some questions, took some pictures and gave him some seeds. Then along came his drunk wife, who fell in love with me. She cooed and pet me and then after a while she dragged me through some yards to the store, which was the village hang out and there someone produced a boom box so that she could dance with me.

 I was very embarassed, but didn't really see a way out, so I dance with her as about 20 people stood by laughing. I managed to pry myself out of that situation after Kimsang finally said we had to go, then we visited another farmer, who was too drunk to talk to. His plot of land reflected his drinking habit and there wasn't much use in analyzing the soil since he wasn't making much use of it. After that very rural experience I boarded the bus for Ho Chi Min and (after 14 hours) entered the bustle of motorbikes that everyone had warned me about. "You think this is a lot of motorbikes, wait until you get to Vietnam" is a common travelers comment. What first impressed me was the narrow buildings. Apparently at one point the government taxed businesses based on the width of the storefront, so now many of the buildings are only 4 meters wide, but very long and tall to make up for it. The war remnants museum was my first tourist destination and it was well done, making me wonder again how humans can be so inhumane. I was deeply impressed by the photography and at one point I had to step out of the exhibition on torture as it made me increasingly nauseous. I'm meeting up with Hieu, a friend of Duncan's from his time here. Tomorrow night i'm very excited to attend an icecream buffet for dinner. All the ice cream you can eat for just $5.- and as everyone knows I can eat a lot of ice cream.
Love to all.