Hudson, WI—Establishing a solar power system for your RV or van can be an overwhelming task. There is a lot information out there but because of the wide variety of personal considerations—power needs, technical ability, rig size, and budget—it is hard to find consensus and guidance on securing the right set-up to fit your particular situation. I thought I’d share my experience with solar and outline exactly what we currently have and why we love it.
Orangeville, UT—We left Bishop, CA at the start of April and slowly made our way to Utah after a productive and adventurous time in the Eastern Sierras.
Utah’s weather has been a little unpredictable, so we’ve tried to work around it as much as possible. For the last week or so, the storm clouds form over the mountains surrounding our camp and bring wind gusts, lower temps, and spitting rain during the afternoons. The amount of rain is pretty small, but it soaks everything enough to spoil climbing for several hours. A few times we’ve left camp with weather conditions that promised to make for fun climbing into the evening. We pack our things and prepare ourselves to be out into the night. We bring headlamps, LED panels and snacks to sustain us for night sessions on the boulders nearby. Then the storms rear their ugly heads just when we are finishing our warmups and are ready to try harder problems. We huddle under the rocks expecting it to pass, but it’s not happening. The rock is soaked and our packs are too. All you can do is laugh it off, go home, make dinner, and try again the next day.
The inquisitive and hilarious writer behind the ThunderCling blog recently interviewed Andy and I, along with 19 others, about how we balance our creative life with climbing. Dave’s level of seriousness in investigating this subject is impressive—he doesn’t just pull out the stock questions that could be answered with quick look at your website. His perceptive and carefully phrased Q’s elicit some very honest, thoughtful, and illuminating responses from a range of climbers with a variety of creative practices. The full article came out yesterday and although it’s quite long (with 19 people answering 5 questions each), it’s fully engaging and worth the read from top to bottom.
Lawrence, KS—Last Thursday, we had the honor of speaking to about 200 design students at the University of Kansas. DesignEgg was one of seven projects/artists invited each semester to share their work as part of the Hallmark Symposium Series.
About the Series
The Hallmark Symposium Series was established in 1984 through the generosity of the Hallmark Corporate Foundation with the goal and intention of enriching the education of students at the University of Kansas and in support of those in particular in the Department of Design through exposure to designers, artists and educators from the United States and abroad. During these nearly 30 years of collaboration, approximately 10,000 students have been exposed to these rich and various array of practitioners.
We drove about 11 hours from Kentucky (with a brief stop in Columbia, MO) before arriving in Lawrence, Kansas, a great college town and a liberal stronghold in a largely conservative state. On the afternoon we arrived, we checked into the hotel and spent most of the day going over our notes and refining our presentation, which would last about 45 minutes. It included 14 pages of text and 100 slides! I guess we had a lot to say about DesignEgg:)
BEATTYVILLE, KY—Once again, Jess and I find ourselves at the Red River Gorge. We are happy to consider this place one of our homes away from home. It’s one of the areas in the US where we’re most happy and in balance with work and play. Aside from natural beauty, it has most of the amenities that make living and recreating here a joy.