You're so metal....

You may or may not know this about my husband, but he gets a little OCD when it comes to building things. This is a good thing. It's just a little shocking to me, the woman who has to collect the empty glasses intermixed with the piles of comic books around his bedside table.

I'm not saying I'm particularly organized. My desk at work regularly looks like it has been blessed by the Paper Fairy- she's a bitch by the way. She's the fairy who drops piles of equivocal lab work on a doctors desk right before that doctor is supposed to leave for the day. I would happily perform any number of arcane rituals to keep her away.  Anyway, I digress... as I wandered by our kitchen table this morning I found a spread sheet. A spread sheet generated by my husband with types and styles of metal, lengths and gauges, amounts and weights. It wouldn't be out of place in a factory setting. Sitting next to the two day old cheese tray left since our weekly dinner party on Sunday it seemed a bit out of place.

I was too shocked to photograph the spreadsheet. I will endeavor to do so tonight.

We had a big debate this weekend amongst the build team. Steel vs aluminum vs. plastic. There are very valid concerns about weight. We are not athletes, and riding a bike on the playa when you are just hauling your own body weight around can be a workout, much less 100lbs of art. We are going to try some plastic panels in place of some of the internal bits and we're sourcing a tandem bike to double the pulling power. I've been pleasantly surprised at the cost of a new tandem on amazon (about $300.00) and equally horrified at the price of a used one in the Bay area (about $1500). Before a fixie wielding fanatic attacks me, I will state that I'm sure there is a difference in quality, blah blah blah. But this is a playa bike. It's going to get destroyed. I hate to even pay $300 for it, but realistically I don't think we'll find a used one for cheaper than that. I'm willing to be proven wrong though, so if you know of one let me know.

Suffice to say, we are ordering the metal today:

1 20' piece of steel square tube 0.75"

1 20' piece of angle steel 0.75"

2 4'x8' sheets of 26 guage steel

Chris and I probably need to start working out on a bike... that means outdoors and exercise, so I may need to bring some animal tranqs home for Chris.... hmm....

Update!

We've made some progress this week!

I showed you the grill in box. Here is the grill out of box! I love the grill. It looks awesome, all metal construction- which is good because we are probably going to weld it in place, or maybe bolt... we haven't decided that detail yet. It also nice wind (or in this case dust) screens.

Chris fiddles with griddle. In the foreground is Monkey. Monkey is not the brightest animal.  Note the vacant stare.  It requires his full mental capacity to keep breathing every day.

We also got the bike trailer and got that all put together. 

Doesn't Chris look thrilled that I'm photographing him? Positively bursting with excitement. 

Most importantly, we completed the build specs. 

Color me impressed at Chris' new found skills in Google SketchUp. That looks downright proooofesional. The separate piece is the foldout table.

Oh, and of course you know it's burn season when you start dropping several hundred dollars at Target on a regular basis. I found some table cloths for color inspiration. Do you guys have a preference?

Thank god 50's kitch is in style. Makes life easier when sourcing this stuff. 

We're ordering the metal for the cart tomorrow. We elected steel instead of aluminum. Certainly aluminum is lighter, but harder to weld per the people who know these things. Then the fabrication will begin in earnest.

We also got a lot of pieces for the costumes, but that shall get it's very own post later.

The first of the packages arrived today... it's like Christmas!! But better! No stupid sweaters from grandma, just delish grilled cheese!


What's in the box Dante? Oh, I didn't introduce Dante. He's my faithful canine assistant. His full title is Dante, best dog in the entirety of the world. I'm somewhat of an authority on this. Trust me.   Note that the cat in the background doesn't give a shit. He only cares about boxes when they are empty and he can sit in them.

It's our grill!! hurrrraaayyyyy!

Pardon the cruddy phone pics. 
I'm only slightly disappointed... I kind of wanted it to be the bike trailer... cause I wanted to build it in my living room while I was slightly drunk. The brilliant kids at the bar down the street invented something called "El Diablo". It's yummy and contains not a small amount of tequila. I recommend them enough to have several on a school night. Perhaps I should go lie down before my husband finds me sleeping on the floor again. xoxo C.

So, as most things- it starts small. A couple of friends who met at a burn a million years ago sitting around a table with a bottle of wine, talking about making something. Then dreams got big. We had grand plans, buying a car, and making it in to a boat. A boat that breath fire and has a programmable LED display and serves liquor and has a stripper pole.... and then we remembered that we don't have anywhere to put a car... nor do we really know how to make it breath fire.. and then we started to calculate how much it would all cost... and then our dream got much more reasonable.

Then disaster struck- our plan got derailed when not a single member of our group got tickets. We were deflated, defeated and started to plan on just a little camping trip, but then it happened- one of us got a STEP ticket, and then another and another. And things took off quickly. What was this dream you ask?

Well I outlined it in a post on eplaya when I was still begging for tickets:

Title: I want to make you a grilled cheese sandwich.
I'm a woman who has a dream.
In this dream, I'm wearing my yellow 50's apron, you know- the one
with the gnomes on it. I have rollers in my hair and a top that's cut
a little too low to be strictly proper on a Thursday morning. I pull
up in front of your camp on my bike which is pulling a wagon. I set a
camp chair down with a flourish and announce "Come here hun, You look
like you need a sammie". The back of the wagon folds out to a table
with a gingham table cloth and even a little plastic daisy in a vase.
As you peer closer, you marvel at my wagon and marvel you should
because its a miraculous invention- it runs a griddle off a battery,
and has a cooler storage area filled with delicious cheeses and butter
and yumminess.
And then I proceed to make you the most glorious grilled cheese
sandwich you have ever had. Glorious because of the delicious
ingredients. Glorious because all you've been eating for three days is
trail mix and Cool Ranch Doritos out of the back of your tent.
Glorious because it might be you had a tad too much to drink last
night/this morning/five minutes ago. Glorious because its made with
dusty sweet love (but contains only minor amounts of actual dust) by a
crazy person wearing an apron and curlers in the desert.

Bad news is.. this is only a dream. A dream because I don't have
tickets. My husband, the metal worker and engineer who is making this
cart, doesn't have a ticket. I, the chef with the awesome gnome apron,
don't have a ticket. We need two tickets to make this happen.

You could make that dream a reality. I'll even put a little framed
picture of you on my cart if you like. I'm offering face value- like
any good burner should- along with a heaping of good will.

Thanks 'hun for reading my message.
xoxo 'Snarf.

That was a couple of weeks ago. The universe has seen it fit to give me tickets and building has begun in earnest.  This should get interesting quickly.

So I'll introduce you to our build team:

We have Hunter: Engineer, enthusiast of all things electrical and computer. Lover of arduinos and maker of things.  He's on the left. Next to him is Grandma Dan- Dan would help us build if he didn't still live in Atlanta. We love him anyway. One day we will tempt him to move to the superior coast.
 

We have Glen: Actress, crafter and seamstress.  She's in the middle in the purple dress with the long red hair. The couple on the end are Juju and Rutledge- hopefully the ticket gods will smile on them, and they will be joining us in the dust.

I stole this photo from a mutual friend's wedding album. Their photographer rocked. dreamtimeimages.com

Then there's me, Carrie: sculptor, sometimes seamstress, team medic, and chef and my husband Chris- computer nerd, metal working enthusiast and general rock star.
.

The pic is from 2010, where http://bentang.smugmug.com was taking portraits of people on the playa. A pretty awesome gift indeed. I don't even look dusty- not sure how he managed that... 

 

 

 

 

Materials were ordered this weekend. They should be arriving any day now. I'll start posting updates as soon as they arrive.