What does this mean for you?

1. No new posts on this site….
2. If you subscribed to my blog via your email address you’ll have to resubscribe to get notified of new posts. I hope you do because I had about 40 subscribers that I’m unfortunately going to lose with this site transfer.

We arrived to 10 inches of snow late Friday night after a late ferry ride, it was above freezing so it was pretty slushy. We didn’t have a cooler so it was nice to use the snow as our cooler the first night. It almost all melted by Sunday.

I also wired up a switch that will power 3 12 volt lights on the main level of the cabin. I only had 25 feet of wire so I stuffed it behind the insulation and then we put the paneling up. I’ll have to add a section for the lights and to the battery. Also I made a hidden battery box that will house our charge controller, combiner and battery for our solar power system. I probably shouldn’t share the location of that, even though I doubt the thieves are reading this….

Check out the video below, Nate is a character…

Hammering door to make it close better

Well it’s the time of year again, spring is here and all 3 owners are going to the cabin/shack to see how the Winter and theives treated it. The snow is long gone since it’s April.  It snowed last night and the temps here have been -15 colder than normal. So it’s a good thing we got this wood stove out of Aaron’s basement since it’s going to be really cold at night. It was used as a trash burner and has some sweet art deco style, says it’s from Sears.

You may have seen from my last cabin post that we installed the chimney but our old stove was too badly damaged to use again. On closer inspection it was cracked in 4 places. So I think we’ll be getting it installed asap we get there on Friday since we don’t want to freeze our asses off!

Things to do this weekend:
- Install wood stove
- chop wood
- wire light
- have fun
- install some insulation
- put up some paneling
- have fun

This week has been a great Craigslist week. Last week I scored some free spruce and cedar floor boards that we’re going to use as interior paneling or siding. It was a big score all we had to do was take it down out of and old house from the 50′s. It was a lot of labor since we had to take it down, take out the nails, then cut off the damaged tongues but well worth it as we couldn’t afford paneling otherwise. I also scored 3 sheets of cement board to use as a heat shield. I love me some craigslist.

Wish me luck, I’ll post the fruits of our labor.

Wood on ceiling before taken down

Excerpt From Lloyd Khan’s Blog:

Made from a Honda Windshield Motor and arm assembly. A couple pieces of scrap sheet metal, make a turn table, and you’re ready to wash clothes in your home made poor mans machine. Great for shop rags!

John Well’s beautiful blue human-powered Bike O Worsher lays down some smooth soapy suds in the following video. Definitely check out John’s Field Lab and his best cow Benita.

Solar Burrito Blog just got a Facebook Page!

Become a fan of the Solar Burrito Blog on Facebook! So you can get all the links and watch all the videos and not to mention comment easier. I know lots of my readers don’t have a WordPress id so they can’t comment as easy as they could on Facebook.

Area 241 - Mike Basich - Stone house at night

Mike Basich is a badass and snowboarding legend. We should all aspire to strike out on our own like he has. Below is the quote that appeared in the October issue of TransWorld and the full-length interview that it was pulled from. He’s recently hand built a house out of stone on Donner Summit at 7100 feet! I’m assuming that’s around where the Donner party got stuck. I really wish I had mike’s life he does all the cool stuff and has truly figured out how to juggle living off the grid with running a business and not to mention having alot of fun! He calls his 40 acres in the mountains Area 241 and bought it with snowboarding untouched powder in mind. It’s his personal fun zone and you can tell he enjoys doing things himself. The quote below sums up a typical day for Mike… jealous!

“Yesterday I woke up to a bear trying to eat the grease tank on my truck, mixed 25 bags of cement and drove my solar golf cart down to the lake, worked on my snow cat, had some mice chew up some wires and hiked an hour down the creek to find the perfect flat smooth rock to finish one of the steps for my new hot tub” – Quote about Mike’s day.

What is area 241?
AREA-241 is a playground for me and my clothing company Two For One (241-USA.com) to explore new ideas. Living in the mountains like this has been a child hood dream for me. I am finally doing it after traveling the world I have landed in Donner Summit, on 40 acres at 7,100 feet. Over the last 24 years I have been traveling to find places to explore, I finally decided to bring those things to my home instead of going out and chasing them. This is really what I was after. Now I get to do this in my own yard, from photos to coming up with new product ideas, I really get to test this stuff out in a real snow world. As a child I wanted to live off the land so my cabin has been a learning experience of how to build with what you have to work with. My land is mostly granite so my cabin became a granite cabin, and from the electrical to learning how to build a tow rope, it has made me more aware of things at home and where ever I go now. For sure makes you do things different when you get out there and do it yourself.

Mike Basich - stone cabin interior

I never learned much when I was in school, I learned what I know from going out there and doing it.

When did you decide to carve out this little corner of the earth for yourself? And why?
It was just time. When I look back now when I bought this place I realized I was in a place in my life that I was feeling it was time to stand on my own two feet.

Break down your daily routine at Area-241?
Man, every day is different. Well. Yesterday I woke up to a bear trying to get into my grease tank on my truck, mixed 25 bags of cement to do some rock work around my hot tub. Drove my little solar golf cart to the lake by my house for a swim. Worked on my snowcat, had some mice chew up some wires. And went on an hour hike down my creek to find the perfect smooth rock to finish one of the steps into my hot tub. Hope to finish the hot tub in the next couple days. Now winter at Area-241 is a different world. And yes it has been very different every day. Sometimes it takes me ten minutes to sled to my house, sometimes it has taken me five hours. On the big storms of course that is when I make sure I am there, they are the funniest but you can’t be in a hurry. Sometimes I will sled to Sugarbowl to go ride on the big days. Sledding to the bar is always fun to, I added a full resort groomer to Area-241 this last fall, and that has made my world up here a lot easier to get around and building jumps will never be the same.

Over the last 24 years I have been traveling to find places to explore, I finally decided to bring those things to my home instead of going out and chasing them.

How do you power the place?
Right now I have solar panels. My cabin is pretty simple. I wired it a lot like my van, it’s all 12 volts with inverters when I need them. Most of the things in daily life are 12 volt, cell phone, computer. Cameras. It’s nice to not have utility bills anymore.

How much time do you spend up there?
Right now I am spending 50 percent of my time there. I hope by next winter I will be there full time. I have internet now which helps take care of stuff without leaving, but with my clothing company I go to my warehouse at times to ship stuff out. I still do all that stuff myself so it’s a bit of time, it’s only 45 minutes from my house but snowmobiling three miles to my car to drive to my warehouse is always a task in the middle of a snow storm. So if you’re going to order a 241 product, please don’t order it during a snow storm. Or if you do, you now know that is took a snowmobile or a split board, to car to ship your order.

I don’t get lonely really. My days are normally pretty full of stuff to do.

How often do you have visitors?
I actually have quite a bit. Seems everyone is always excited to go experience something new, so people seem to want to make the truck up on their split board, sled, snowshoes whatever it may be, to come up and ride the homemade tow rope, or just hang out in the hot tub. In the summer there is a bike trail near my house so I get friends stopping by often during their ride.

Do you get lonely? What do you do to pass the time, besides snowboarding?
I don’t get lonely really. My days are normally pretty full of stuff to do. So it takes a lot for me to get lonely. I can be in Truckee within 20 minutes though if I feel the need to connect more with people. But I get a lot of people coming up here.

How did you build this home? How long did it take? Who helped?
Two weeks before I started to build my place I decided to build it out of rocks instead of wood. Simply cause I realized rocks survive a lot better in the weather I deal with here. But it added a couple years of extra work. This next October I will be done with my cabin and it will be four years. My house has been built with approximately 175 ton of granite moved by hand, my mom has been my number one worker. I tried to hire friends to go find rocks on my property and bring them back, but there is nothing like family. My cabin is built under the golden ratio and if you want to know more about what I am up to here, I am making a movie to share the world this coming fall. I be listing it on my website 241-usa.com. It’s still taking shape but it will be a bit of my younger life and finding snowboarding and what it has done for me in life.

List off all the “toys” you’ve got up there?
My latest is a 1997 275 Bombardier snow cat. Got a nice tiller on the back, snowmobiles, my moms old Passport with homemade snow tracks, saw mill to mill wood for my snowboards, my split board and some nice good old four-foot snowshoes when all else fails.

My house has been built with approximately 175 ton of granite moved by hand, my mom has been my number one worker.

A six month journey along the 2,200 mile long Appalachian Trail, condensed and reinterpreted into five minutes of stop-motion.
A full quality version is available for purchase on DVD. http://anothergallagher.com

Music: smtgltd.bigcartel.com – Stephen Vitiello: Soundtracks.

Unofficial trailer for “The Bus,” a feature-length documentary film currently in production. “The Bus” is a celebration of the most iconic and beloved vehicle ever produced. It explores the history, culture and evolution of the Volkswagen Transporter from its Nazi heritage to its modern-day cult-like following and status, the film celebrates the 60th anniversary of the VW Bus and its vibrant and resonant place in modern culture. The film will be released in late 2011.

Cabin On a Hill

From the builder: This is one of the few spots that I can build a log cabin on the upper section of this land so it seems like a challenge to me. As you may have noticed from the video, this is a one man construction project, hence the size of the log cabin but it’s nice that I get to make all of the creative decisions on the cabin design;) Though, the downfall of that being that I can really only move up to a certain sized log by myself, and if anything is to be carried up to the cabin (it’s quite a hike up the mountainside) It’s on my back. So far I’ve put about 13 weekends into this cabin as well as $140 in spikes, rebar, nails, morter and plumbing parts as well as 9 trees and about 17 sapplings and a burned out old cedar stump (used for the shake roof). What’s interesting is that it’s actually quite therapeutic for me to just be out in the forest working on this log cabin project. I tend to find myself feeling very refreshed after a weekend of doing this sort of thing, I think maybe that I like the creative outlet that this project provides to me, dunno for sure. Though I have to admit that there are times when I really think that building a log cabin is a challenge to anyones limits of perserverance. So since it’s snowing now at this elevation and it’s really hard to work with frozen logs and cold fingers, I’ve decided to stop working untill things warm up a bit. I guess I’ll just go back to my regular therapist until then.

First Cabin he built to gain skills

From the builder: I know this log cabin is small, but it was more of an experiment in remote shelter building for me than anything else. It took about 3 months of weekends to build this log cabin, which was about 100 hours in total. All materials used were found on site or packed in on my back up a small winding foot trail. It took 5 fir trees and a handfull of sapplings plus a bag of screws, a few bags of morter, various concrete blocks and some thick poly for the window and a zinc strip on the roof ridge. The log cabin has had 6 feet of snow last year and the cedar roof held together nicely. This log cabin sits on 4 large rocks, one at each corner of the log cabin and the floor is made of dirt. The wood heater/stove doesn’t actually work all that well, but hey it was my first attempt. I think the notching is called a half notch, and it was chosen for it’s simplicity since this was my first attempt at this sort of thing. The notches require a hand saw an axe and a few sharp bangs from a mallet to make, they were very simple and quick compared with a saddle notch style, though the downside of this style is that they had to be spiked at each corner to keep them secure. Sorry for the lack of tunes, it’s my first vid or should I say slide show.

Notching logs for cabin with saw and ax