If I could figure out some artificial way to periodically limit my internet access, in a way that I couldn’t immediately hack, I think I’d do so. I’m on another plane, and though I’ve had a lot to say lately I haven’t been blogging, as you may have noticed.
Mostly lately I’ve been busy learning about, buying, fixing, learning about, driving, learning about, fixing, and driving my new RV. It’s a 2004 Pleasure Way Plateau, which is a honking big Sprinter van. It’s “looking down on F350s” big. It’s “being able to see really well off of bridges and get slightly nervous at how high they are” big. It’s “gotta circle the parking lot to find two spaces in a row” big. It’s “I can see over traffic” big. It’s “better slow down early” big. It’s “I don’t think anyone would notice if I weren’t wearing pants” big.
Really though it’s quite small as RVs go. I can just barely fit sideways on the bed in the back, but not quite comfortably. So I’ve slept lengthwise, or diagonally depending on how level I could get the thing with the Anderson levelers, which I totally didn’t invent. They are super clever though, a curved ramp with a matching chock. They only go up to about 4 inches though, and the site in Andrew Jackson State Park was significantly unlevel even with the levelers. I blame that for the coffeepocalypse, which is now in my autocorrect choices, and is the best thing to come out of that incident. French presses full of boiling water don’t like to balance on sloped propane stoves. Just in case anyone asks.
I’ve been experimenting with using small amounts of power and water, less than is actually reasonable and available. I see it as a resource management game and though I can’t trade wood for sheep, I don’t like sharing my bed with sheep anyway, and I can’t eat a whole one before it goes bad. Managing the solar input, the battery charge level and depth of charge, the fresh tank, the gray water tank, the black water tank, the propane, the food, the wifi, the 4g, and the sanity of traveling alone is a whole new game. Mostly fun, coffeepocalypse aside.
Yesterday after work I added my second Renogy 160 watt solar panel in parallel, feeding my Victron smart 100/30 MPPT into my Battleborn LiFePO4 100AH battery, none of which would have made much sense to me 6 weeks ago. In the interim I’ve learned about all these things.
The Battleborn is really the star of the show, it’s a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery, which you already knew if you took chemistry and we’re paying attention. I’m not sure what advantages it has over lithium ion, but it’s what all the cool kids are using now. It replaced what was supposed to be a 100AH AGM, which is a lead acid deep cycle battery with fancy geometry. But by “deep cycle” they mean you can safely go down to 50% depth of charge (i.e. 50 amp hours) which means your battery is half as big as advertised. The LiFePO4 can be fully drained, especially since the Battleborn (brand) has a built in BMS (battery management system) which cuts off the charger if the voltage gets too high or low. This makes it a “drop in replacement” for a lead acid battery, supposedly. It has been good so far though I have heard several cautions around how the internal resistance is low (good) that it causes it to pull a lot of current to charge quickly (good) which might overload your wires (bad) potentially melting them (really really bad). So far I’ve been keeping an eye on the charge rates, and since my power converter and MPPT are both 30amp, I think I am ok. It also charges from the van’s alternator, and there’s some concern there. I may need to add a current limiter, or upgrade the wiring.
The reason for that is that electrical power (watts) is the product of volts times amps. So if you need 700 watts to run your Instant Pot Mini Duo like I do, you need 700 divided by 12ish volts or 55 to 60 amps. In comparison if you pulled 60 amps on your 120 volt house you’d be talking 7200 watts, enough to power your whole house. Big amps need big fat expensive wires. So there’s a scaling factor that works against low voltage systems. This is why it generally makes sense to run higher voltages, such as the 24 volts which Tesla’s batteries supply.
So let’s about Tesla batteries and why they are interesting. Or rather I’ll talk, or write, and you listen, or read, or not, if you’ve given up by now. Tesla seems to make the best battery module in the business. There are 15 modules in a model S comprising basically the whole floor of the vehicle, with seven to a side and one more up front. Enough of these cars have been scrapped that the used modules are available on the secondary market (eBay). If I recall correctly they are around 250 AH each, more than twice the rating of my Battleborn. They do have a built in BMS, but it’s proprietary and hasn’t been hacked yet. Also as mentioned it’s 24 volts and the van wants 12 to run most things, so I didn’t go that route. They also have built in liquid cooling and heating plumbing to interface directly with the vehicle’s corresponding systems, to keep the passengers comfortable. If it gets too hot or too cold the battery will either blow up or be ruined, so this is pretty important, and a good reason to go with the Battleborn instead. Still I am tempted to get a couple of them and run a 24v inverter so I can run the air conditioning off grid. I would have to dedicate a significant portion of the storage for that, which is another reason it hasn’t happened. Yet.
Mostly my plan is to go places that aren’t so damn hot during the summer. So far that hasn’t worked out, since on our maiden voyage we (the van and I) visited NC and SC, both of which are Satan’s armpit in the summer. Still the trip was good overall, a great learning experience to get used to RV travel, and a generally leisurely journey. I can work from anywhere so I’m trying to do that.
I took conference calls in the Shenandoah National Park, with a 50 mile view out my window. It’s cooler at higher elevations (3 degrees F per 100 ft , which is 1 degree C per something meters for those of you who live literally anywhere else). The 22 foot long van is plenty maneuverable to scramble up any sort of normal road.
I drove a National Forest road in Uwharrie without issue, albeit slowly. There I hiked a 6.7 mile loop, encountering only 5 people all day. I returned to the RV, sweaty as hell (see: Satan’s armpit) and luxuriated in a cold shower in the “wet bath.” A wet bath means the floor next to the toilet has a drain in it, and the whole thing is meant to get wet. There’s a shower curtain (which was missing prior to my purchase) which keeps water off the vanity cabinets and GFI outlet. (GFI means it will probably not kill me if it gets wet, but it’s still best not to.)
I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the shower. When I could I used the shower at the RV park and later at my parents’ place, both of which are significantly better than the one in the RV. The same can be said about the toilet, both my preference for and use of terrestrial facilities given the option. Still having the shower and the toilet give more options, and they work fine. By the way, the shower would be warm if I turned on the propane 6 gallon water heater but my thermodynamic objective was decidedly exothermic at the time. I felt so deliciously comfortable afterwards it made the whole day worth it.
I’m not really in shape for hiking right now. Neither am I in shape for swimming. But I did both on this trip, and wasn’t horribly sore. Investment in exercise over the last few years has been very valuable. The past 8 months I haven’t really been very mobile though. We are what we repeatedly do, and I’m pretty sure I’m an internet.
I’m in a strange relationship with the internet right now, codependent probably. I am hyper connected, gathering enormous amounts of knowledge about anything and everything, but also wasting hours on nothing.
One recent focus has been dating sites. I’m newly single-ish, having seen the end of a nearly seven year relationship at the start of the year. So I’m more active in that respect, but due to the aforementioned travel and indecision I’ve not had any dates, per se. My life’s pretty atypical, so “per se” is the operative term.
The RV scene seems pretty incompatible with dating so far. It’s mostly retirees or couples, and at least till now I’ve been unable or unmotivated to meet any of them. Ideally I think it would be cool to share an RV journey with a partner, but for now it’s a solo adventure. Honestly this is probably a good thing, or at least not a bad one. I think it’s good for me to take some time to figure out who I am again. People change in relationships, and I need to take some time to reset my level. Fortunately I have leveling blocks. Also a sweet app and corresponding Bluetooth sensor which can help with that. Or not.
Anyway this need for reinvention is what spawned the name I gave the RV: Metamorphose. Specifically the directive form of the word, a command to myself to dissolve into goo and reemerge from my chrysalis with some shiny new wings. So far I’m not doing any flapping, but a shakedown cruise does not a Marco Polo make.
I wonder how he would feel knowing his name became a game of aquatic tag? We can’t choose our legacy but we can try to live our lives with import. So far I feel like I have just been getting ready. Preschool prepares for elementary school which prepares for junior high, for high school, for college, for a career, for a house, for a … What now? Kids are a cheat code for a legacy, I think, provided you don’t totally fuck them up you know your influence will live on. But I’ve never been interested in having kids. I am interested in figuring out what the last half of my life will look like. I figure I’m about half way now, if I get pretty lucky I’ll double my current age. Maybe I’ll live longer, but that would be above average, and assumes I don’t get eaten by a Grue, which is no sure thing.
So what am I getting ready for now? When I scratch my nails across this world, what sort of mark will I leave? I always figured I would invent something. No one knows who invented the wheel but they have impacted countless generations. I don’t need to be famous but I want to have mattered.
The older I get the more I realize my brain is pretty special. Don’t get me wrong, I totally suck at a lot of things, but I’m also really really really good at some things. I once read a one page of summary of some self help book (my work used to subscribe to a service that provided them) and it said that if you work really hard you can get pretty OK at things you suck at. Or you can focus on being the best in the world at things you are good at. It’s probably important not to completely ignore things you’re bad at, since many of them facilitate aspects of success, such as public speaking and not being a fuck head. I’m still working on both of those.
Mostly I’m good at understanding complex systems and troubleshooting what’s wrong with them. If my resume were one word it would be “Troubleshooter.” I’m glad to have found a position in IT that pays well, but if computers didn’t exist I would be fixing motorcycle engines or building factories. As it is, I play a lot of board games in my spare time. Mostly I enjoy learning new games. I love it when I unfold a new board and it starts as complete nonsense, with icons and words everywhere, and over the course of a few minutes explanation everything falls into place. It’s like learning a whole new language in 15 minutes. And then you use your new skill to fight your opponents to a bloodless victory.
The other games I play a lot of are role playing games. I’ve talked about this before but not lately. I’ve always loved stories and I think I’m a good story teller… when I don’t perceive it as public speaking and get nervous. The difference is when I’m playing an RPG I don’t know how the story ends, and I’m not the only teller. Sessions run as a give and take, an improvisational melody. Really at its best it’s less a game than a performance, each of us performing for each other, playing off the energy of the group. The rules are there to guide the tone and help add some randomness via dice rolls. That way none of us know what will happen or how the story will end. This sense of adventure and discovery is one of my favorite feelings in the world. It’s why I hate to watch movie trailers. I want to be told a story without foreknowledge, as the author intended, even when I’m one of the authors.
I’m always bothered when something is called an RPG that isn’t. Computer games are not RPGs, since there is a story to be discovered, not created. I suppose there are MMOs with some amount of speaking in character, but it’s not even close to the same experience. While dungeons and dragons is the most popular RPG by far, it is not representative of the landscape of tabletop RPGs. It can be a mechanism for telling a cool story, and if you have fun doing it don’t let me stop you, but I’ll never play it again given the option. D&D and Pathfinder are so focused on maximizing your character’s stats that the story is often lost. People hack and slash and kill the faceless goes and take their nonsensical loot, and pretend that’s interesting, when mostly it isn’t. Would you want to watch it as a movie? Probably not. Granted some movies suck too.
My favorite games are those that leave players speechless. Or laughing until they can barely breathe. Or both. With people pulling impossible faces, or affecting personalities worthy of an Oscar. Or sacrificing themselves for the peasant everyone loved. Or betraying their Lord because of their own moral code. Or affixing scuba gear to a kobe cow to avoid robotic killer koi in a sewer escape, while stealing it from the Japanese emperor to make a meat cake for the wedding of Ian Anderson and Patty Hearst at the haunted Mansion at Disney world. (Naturally our spiritual advisor had plenty of hallucinogenic drug pills to scatter over the water to drug the unsuspecting koi.) I’m going to remember that scene forever, which is a lot more than I can say for SuperDude Punches Some Other LessSuper Dude Repeatedly Before Predictably Winning In The End Part IV. Not that I don’t enjoy that sort of thing sometimes too.
I’ll be landing in Orlando soon, then off to the hotel to rest up in preparation for five straight days of gaming. This is an atypical year for me, as I’ve neither played very many games not followed any board game podcasts. In prior years I’ve frequently been the one to teach the newest games, or know which New Hotness was up my alley. This trip I really have no plans beyond learning Wingspan, because I heard it was good. I’m also back to flying solo. The past few cons I’ve had roommates that I knew and we spent a lot of time gaming together. This year I will know plenty of people I’m sure, but a few of my con friends won’t be attending. All my early convention experiences were this way so I’m sure I’ll manage.
Really I do enjoy solo travel most of the time. I like being able to make my own decisions and travel at my own pace. Whether picking a board game or deciding when to stop on a hiking trail in the woods, or sitting on a thousand year old temple in India for an hour just because it felt like the thing to do, it always is calming to set my own pace and direction. The RV is a new mode, but the same idea. Point it and go, and stop when I feel like it, and see things as I am inspired to. Every con is different. They say you can never step in the same river twice, and I think accepting that everything changes is a real key to happiness, or at least freedom from anxiety.
So, onward I go. Wish me luck.
H
I second what Lynz said, and will also add that I am ever-amused by and love the expressively descriptive words and little phrases that you invent in your writings. Looking forward to seeing what comes next in your adventures . . . .
As always, amazed by what comes out of your mind and experiences. I delighted in reading this. Wisdom, laughs, learning. So glad to be witnessing your current growth and explorations. ❤
Plenty of parallels to my life with music events and solo travel, albeit a different flavor, somewhat. Still, enough that I appreciate it deeply.
Edit in some paragraph breaks for your future readers. 😉
Love and hugs.