Around the world... at a cost

It's amazing how fast things change... or perhaps I mean to say that it's amazing how fast one gets used to changed circumstances.

Our time in Europe fades away in the rear-view mirror. Well, not really... in some regards. We still consciously and unconsciously use it as a point of reference, and the idea of returning there one day lives on. But day-to-day life is what commands one's attention, and wow... it commands a lot of attention these days. In fact, in those last few weeks in Europe, I found myself wondering: "Will I continue blogging when I return? I'm afraid my life will be so boring there, by comparison, that I won't feel the urge."  In a certain sense, I couldn't have been more wrong. The main reason I find myself not blogging is that there is always so much to do here; I am often too tired in my free time to do anything but drink a beer or sit in the hot tub.

In my recap of this last month (a month which was dominated by Burning Man), I am going to start at the end. Because it was a crazy end to the month, and because it is pretty fresh in my memory. 

Money has been tight (more on that later) and so I decided at the last minute to truck my project back from Burning Man myself rather than pay a professional trucker to do it for me. When I say "myself," what I mean is that I drove my truck (AKA Atlas) hauling a trailer, and my friend Mike Ferguson (AKA Fergie) helped me out by also driving his truck hauling a second trailer. Our good friend Peter Kolshorn came along, because it's always better to have more drivers.

I didn't really want to do it this way. It's a lot of work, it's barely legal, and it's stressful. But I didn't really have a choice.

On the Monday that Burning Man is over, my team and I are usually overcome with a desire to get the hell out of there. This year was no different, so after a week-long party of Herculean proportions, we mounted a similarly Herculean effort to break down camp and break down the sculpture and Leave No Trace and get loaded and get out of there. The drive from Black Rock City (the temporary city which is Burning Man) to Fernley, Nevada, which should normally take about 1.5 hours, took 4 hours. The road was embarrassingly strewn with trash. Other than that it was pretty uneventful.

The next morning the fun began. Peter and I were shouting at each other (the normal mode of having a conversation in my loud truck) when suddenly a HUGE noise totally drowned us out. I quickly determined that the noise was proportional to the turbo pressure, so when we stopped I was totally focused on the turbo, thinking it had died, when Peter pointed out that the exhaust had completely come apart. 

A few hours, a few hose clamps, and some surprisingly good pizza later and we were back on the road.

About 10 minutes after getting onto the freeway I heard another similar sound, but this time my turbo pressure dropped to zero, along with the truck's power, and I knew that I had lost a hose clamp in the turbo system. I don't much like stopping on the shoulder of a freeway because it's dangerous, but there wasn't much choice. Fortunately I carry a bunch of spare hose clamps and we were on our way again soon. 

When Christina and Kodiak and I moved into our apartment in Zehlendorf (Berlin), we were sort of forced into buying a bunch of furniture from the previous tenant. When it was time to leave we decided that, since we were sending the sculpture home in a shipping container anyway, we might as well bring some of the furniture. In particular, we decided to bring a pretty nice couch... well it's not spectacular, but it's nicer than the tired old couch we've had in Taos for all these years. So, that couch went to Burning Man and at this point in the story the couch is wrapped in bubble wrap, strapped on top of my big trailer on the way home to New Mexico. After fixing the turbo we were rolling down the highway again when I noticed that the tail of the strap holding one of the couch pieces had come unwrapped and was flapping in the wind. I didn't want to make another dangerous shoulder stop so I kept an eye on it and carried on. In the process of keeping an eye on it, I happened to be looking in the rear-view mirror at just the moment when the tail caught under the tire of the trailer, pulled violently and broke the strap, thereby allowing the couch to start shifting slowly towards actually falling off the trailer. So... another stop on the shoulder to address that.

In the morning of day three of our journey we were descending a long, steep hill in Utah when suddenly the truck started beeping loudly. Hearing that loud sound in the cab which is telling you that you are running out of compressed air, which is necessary for proper braking, is kind of scary. Fortunately I knew this was a possibility, and I had come prepared. We pulled over (in a rather "emergency" style), and proceeded to fire up a generator that we were carrying on the back of the truck, in order to power a small compressor that we were carrying on the back of the truck, which we had to plumb into the air system of the truck in order to supply enough air to the braking system of the truck so that we could safely continue our descent. All this, because the truck's onboard compressor  (which I installed brand new just before we left for Barcelona) is failing. Even though it sat for 2 years unused, it's still out of warranty. Pain in the ass.

Later that day, after leaving Moab, Utah, Fergie somehow managed to let his truck run out of gas. We stopped and siphoned 5 gallons of diesel out of Atlas, 

which got him going just enough for his sleeping bag to fly out of the back of his truck! I radioed Fergie and told him I would go back for the sleeping bag and that he should carry on to the next town and fill up with diesel. I then proceeded to make (2) 3-point U-turns in my 60-foot long rig (an adventure in itself) just to get the sleeping bag. And then... we found Fergie only another mile up the road, again pulled over on the shoulder. The 5 gallons hadn't been enough, his truck was running lean (and hot!) and he needed more fuel. So as the sun was setting, we made several ill-fated attempts to siphon more fuel, Fergie and I both getting mouthfuls of diesel, before we gave up. Just then, a fellow Burner stopped to help, and generously gave us a proper siphon. Only after he drove off did we figure out the siphon was broken! So finally we gave up on all that and I drove ahead to the next town, filled fuel cans, and brought them back. The extra fuel did the trick and we were moving again. We had hoped to make it home that night, but the delays in getting Fergie fueled up again meant we only made it as far as Durango, Colorado, before bedding down for the night.

At several points along the journey we traded trailers, for various reasons. 

Here we are trading trailers along a roadside in Colorado...

The next morning we hit the road again, and were confronted almost immediately with a "pop-up" weigh station. I dread weigh stations, as they are always a chance for the police to give you a hard time, but we got lucky. Fergie flew past, while Peter and I got in line to be inspected. Fortunately we got the older, friendly cop. They always want to know if you are a "commercial" driver, and so he asked me questions about what we were doing, if we were getting paid, etc. I kept referring to the "festival" in Nevada where we had installed the sculpture. Finally he asked "Is this kind of like a Burning Man thing?" and I replied "Yes this is exactly like a Burning Man thing. I'm a veteran paid artist at Burning Man." He said "Well that's cool. Congratulations." He made us put a few more straps onto our load and we carried on. 

We made it home later that day, approximately 68 hours after departing Burning Man. Luckily my truck waited until after we returned to have some sort of weak-battery problem! It's currently not starting. 

In the end, the whole thing had a comical flavor, due to the fact that it was a series of small mishaps, rather than big ones. It's appropriate to count our blessings, such as the fact that we had no serious mechanical failures, no flat tires, no difficult interactions with law enforcement, we did not have to perform any repairs in the rain or snow, and no one got hurt. 

And I want to thank Fergie and Peter for being such level-headed and competent partners in this ridiculous adventure. It makes a big difference when doing difficult and crazy tasks such as this to be with good people.

And, crazily enough... that damn couch which we lugged from Zehlendorf to Oberschöneweide, shipped to Burning Man and then trucked 1000 miles across the American West doesn't fit in our house! After all that. Tomorrow we are reinstalling the tired old couch we've had for years and I guess we will try to sell our fancy imported European couch (if we can ever find the legs for it!)

So... why did I have to truck the sculpture back from Burning Man myself, instead of leisurely driving in a passenger car while some professional trucker did the hard work for me? Because of money. In short, the shipping of the sculpture from Berlin to Black Rock City was the worst shipping experience I've ever had, with the costs ballooning to more than 3 times the original estimate. If I had had to pay a trucker to bring the sculpture home, our family wouldn't be eating.

I budgeted about $12,000 to get the sculpture shipped from Berlin to BRC, and back to Taos (breaking down to approximately $8000 from Berlin to BRC, and $4000 from BRC to Taos). This budget was not just a guess, but rather was based on good precedents.

I've worked in the past with a shipping company out of the UK (let's call them Company A) with whom I've had good experiences, and so I went to them first. I was told that they would not go directly to Black Rock City because of negative experiences they'd had in the past with Burning Man (the first red flag!), but that they could get the sculpture to Reno, NV, for about $12,500. Youch! That was more than my total shipping budget, and didn't even get the sculpture all the way to the festival, so I got another recommendation for a shipping company in Germany (let's call them Company B) who bid the job at $6500. Sounds good. About a week before the shipment was due to be picked up, I called to sign the contract and was told that there would be an additional $3500 in contingency fees (port fees, taxes, etc.) AND an additional $10,000 to cover Trump's new tariffs on steel and aluminum, bringing the total to about $21,000... and it had to be paid immediately! A few hours later I was able to demonstrate to them that only raw materials are subject to such tariffs, NOT finished products like sculpture, and so they backed off of the $10,000 Trump tax. However, I realized that they were either 1) incompetent with regard to the tariff issue, or 2) trying to pull a fast one on me and make a quick $10,000, and either way I did not want to work with them. So with only a week to go before the ship date, Christina called Company A again and they put things into fast motion, getting the sculpture picked up on time. So at this point, I am into the shipping for about $12,500.

A few weeks after the pickup, I was informed that the ship which was supposed to take the sculpture from Hamburg, Germany to Oakland, CA had been cancelled, and that in order to make the delivery date the sculpture was cross-loaded (meaning unloaded from the first shipping container and loaded into a different container) while still in Berlin, so that it could be put onto a different ship going to NYC. The reason for the cross-load was that the containers themselves are owned by the shipping lines, and the shipping line that goes to Oakland is not the same one that goes to New York. All the extra labor and port fees associated with the cross load meant that the cost of getting it to NYC was about the same as getting it to Oakland. Once it landed in New York, I was informed that Company A could arrange cross-country trucking to Reno, but that 1) the container would need to stay in New York, meaning another cross-load (another $1000), and that 2) if they arranged the trucking it would be very expensive. I was advised to arrange my own trucking! Lots of stress and emailing and phone calling later, I did in fact arrange a trucker for another $6800. So my shipping costs are now at about $20,300.

In order to find this trucker I was actually dealing with a trucking broker who has access to a wide pool of truckers, AND who specializes in moving big art... and he could not find a single trucker willing to go to Black Rock City (Burning Man is doing something wrong when no professional truckers will go there). The best he could do was Reno. So I contacted the people at Burning Man who connected me with a Reno guy who specializes in moving things from Reno to BRC... at a steep premium. Another $1500 for those 115 miles. Now I'm at $21,800. I was told by this latest trucker that he would have no labor present in Reno to do the (third!!!) cross-load, so I would have to be there. OK, no problem, I would show up on the agreed-upon date and perform the cross-load myself, with my crew. Then... next crisis: The cross-country truck shows up 4 days earlier than the agreed-upon date, and I am still in Taos! Lots of frantic phone calls and emails and another $800, and somehow some local labor is found to do the cross-load. Now my total is $22,600.

The shipping quotes I received to get the load back to New Mexico from Burning Man ranged from $4500 to $7500. Can you see why I had to do the damn load myself?

It was really the worst shipping experience I've ever had. Normally the load is never cross-loaded; in other words I personally close the doors of the shipping container... and 6 weeks later, at the destination, I personally open them again.  This time the load was cross-loaded 3 (!!) times, by persons unknown, at great cost to me. I don't really know how this could have been managed better, other than to ask for a LOT more money for shipping in the future. Or compel the festival to handle the shipping. It was a nightmare. 

In the short- to medium- term, this is a problem for our family, as it really impacts us financially. But in the long-term, it will all be gradually forgotten and what will remain is the fact that we built a kick-ass sculpture that I am very proud of, and I know Christina is too. Against tall odds, we shipped it across the world and debuted it in a ridiculously inhospitable environment (yes, Burning Man can be a very challenging environment), receiving an outstandingly positive reaction. And we got the sculpture and ourselves home safely.

I will follow this blog post pretty quickly with another, in which I will talk more about Burning Man itself. We had a lot of fun adventures, so I promise that that post will be lighter reading, and it will feature a lot more photography. There were lots of great pictures taken by our great little camp, most notably by my brother, the very talented professional photographer Themistocles Lambridis (AKA Cles).

So I will leave you with this great picture taken by Cles on the first night of the week, when we were fortunate enough to have a spectacular full moon....

Until next time... (and again, I promise an easier read!)
-C

Getting back into it...

I think this will be a different kind of blog post from recent ones.
We have slipped back into a different kind of life than what we had in Europe, so perhaps that makes sense.

For one thing, I can't really imagine posting any pictures in this post.
Everything in Europe was so new, so novel, so different. It all deserved to be photographed and uploaded to the internet.
Everything here feels familiar, kind of the same as it always was. I find I have taken basically no pictures at all since returning.
I guess it might be appropriate to remember that many potential readers of this blog don't know exactly what our little slice of desert paradise is all about, and so maybe some pictures might actually be appropriate. But they will come later. I haven't taken any.

Two topics present themselves, compelling me to write.
1) Cultural differences between Europe (especially Germany) and America as reflected through vehicles.
2) Old familiar traps of being in New Mexico, activities which make me feel productive but which might just be wastes of time.

Vehicles
It's often said that Europe has a WE culture, and America has a ME culture, and I find that driving etiquette presents perhaps the best example (or maybe one of the easiest to perceive) of this disparity.

In Germany there is a huge importance placed on courteousness while driving. If you misjudged your freeway exit and are in danger of missing it, you don't swerve wildly across three lanes to make the exit; instead you carry on to the next exit and retrace your steps. It would be discourteous to those around you to do otherwise. You yield for pedestrians and bicyclists and left turners. Accidents are rare and police presence is minimal. Granted, Berlin had a fair amount of police on the streets but they never seemed to be doing anything.

I feel that I became a better, more courteous, and more conscientious driver during our year in Berlin.

Freeways in America still feel like the Wild West. People will swerve in front of you to get to their exit, pass you on any side that suits them, and seem blissfully unaware that the left lane is for faster cars. And all this unregulated driving-madness apparently demands police. In the first hour of our time in America last week, driving a rental car on Colorado's highways, we saw more flashing lights and emergency vehicles than we had seen in our entire time in Germany. Seriously.

Another funny thing struck me a few days ago while waiting at the Department of Motor Vehicles. A typical Taos hippie type came in and, seeing a friend of his, proceeded to talk about how all his vehicles (and his mother's vehicles) were breaking down, but he was sort of still driving them anyway. Later that day I saw a guy driving a truck with a completely smashed front end. In Germany, vehicles have to pass a rigorous inspection once a year (even a ripped seat will cause a car to fail the inspection!). If the vehicle passes, it gets its sticker for the year and can be driven. All the cars look new. There are no police stopping you for a broken tail-light, because there are no broken tail-lights, and very few police. On the autobahns where there are no speed-limits, there are literally no police. None. 

In some ways these differences in the culture of vehicles parallel the differences between socialism and capitalism we see in these places. Sure, Germany is nominally a capitalist country, but everyone there has good state-run healthcare, is compelled to have their car inspected annually, and drives as if they are one small stitch in a large social fabric.* In capitalist America it is every man for himself, in socio-economic terms and on the road. OK, maybe I am simplifying things to make a point but there is a kernel of truth in it.

*In the interest of honesty, I should point out that even in Germany there were a handful of entitled and rude drivers. They were always the ones in the black expensive cars. To me, this is just an example of the 1% acting like the 1% usually does. Look at this link. The other 99% of drivers in Germany were polite socialists, as noted above.

Productivity Traps
Before we left Taos two years ago to move to Barcelona, I was in a slump. This was largely because I was under the threat of being sued by a former friend. That was a shitty situation which has since been resolved, thank Jeez, and one day I still might write a blog post about it. But in any case, I was in a slump and I wasn't really doing anything creative. But I was keeping plenty busy. I was rather obsessed with motorcycles and my Datsun 240Z and building / decorating my office (or, embarrassingly, my "man cave"). And there is always plenty to do around here, from maintaining all the other vehicles to maintaining / improving the house, landscaping, re-organizing the workshop and the shipping containers, etc etc.

It's very easy to fall into these traps, in part because to a large degree it is all (or almost all) legitimate work that needs to be done. But I guess there's an issue of priorities here. All these activities that chew up the hours, days, weeks take time away from creativity and creative productivity. I guess that when one is home-steading, one needs to consciously carve out time for creativity, because home-steading is labor-intensive. Creativity doesn't happen by itself. You need to work... to carve out time for that kind of work.

I guess it comes down to that old and slippery idea of balance. Right now we are overwhelmed with very legitimate logistical tasks, primarily associated with getting vehicles up and running and getting the house up and running. I am also inspired by my time working at BBK to get a lot of the clutter out of the workshop and make more room for a few new tools (plate roller is #1 on the list!). Decluttering the shop will be a fair amount of work. I think the trick will be to know when enough is enough, to not putter around endlessly with tinkering on things that don't need tinkering.

The last few days have been really focused on the cars. Suddenly, a reason to take some pictures!
Our main car, a Honda CRV, became home to a healthy colony of mice. This is now the second time we've disassembled the interior of the car trying to get the mouse poop and piss and smell out of the car. 

In New Mexico there is the ever-present danger of the very scary Hanta Virus, so one has to be careful. 

The Datsun ...

mercifully escaped a mouse infestation. I had it up on jack-stands for those 2 years to save the suspension from sagging, but I think that was the reason the mice did not move in. I guess mice can't climb jack-stands.

The Scout needed, and still needs, some work. 

3 tires were flat and the mice made a hotel in this car as well. Here is the engine:

I did not hate mice before moving to New Mexico, but now I do.

My big crane truck had a fair amount of mouse activity, but not overwhelming. Amazingly, the engine started. In fact I've been able to get most of the vehicles started up again without much trouble. Some of the motorcycles needed new batteries, brake-bleeding, and carb cleaning. The forklift needed a new hydraulic hose.

We had dinner last night with our friends Kate and Sam, and Kate referred to all this work as "unglamorous." I agree.

But hey, a sunrise hot-tub every day of the week is nothing to complain about.

Goodbye, Europe

A few weeks ago I wrote an entire blog post on the metro in Berlin, and then used the personal hotspot feature of my phone to publish it. “What will they think of next?” I pondered.

Well, if all goes well I will be writing this entire post and uploading it from 24,000 feet above the Atlantic, on IcelandAir flight IF673.

The last few weeks have somehow been both relaxing and full, and a bit melancholy, as we have known all along that our departure from Europe was looming ever closer. And now it is here; we are on a non-stop from Reykjavík to Denver, landing in about 7 hours. I think I’m just going to let the pictures guide this post... I have more pictures right now than narrative. Maybe a narrative will emerge...

On one of our last days in Berlin I arrived home from a day of errands to find that I had lost my hand-made glasses case, along with the nice pair of glasses inside. I mentally retraced my steps and decided I had likely left it at IKEA or perhaps BAUHAUS, a hardware store. So the next day Kodiak and I drove all over town running even more errands, which included visiting IKEA and BAUHAUS again to search for the case, but no luck... it seemed they were lost. So at the end of a day of driving, mostly at freeway speeds, I parked the car... and happened to look on the roof. And what do you think I noticed?

Yes, that's my glasses case. It's tempting to think it was wedged under the roof rack, but it was actually just sort of lightly sitting there, all day long, at 120 km/h. Crazy.

(Well, the wifi connection on the plane is pretty bad. It took about 5 minutes to upload that last picture, and chewed up 4% of my battery life. So it's looking unlikely that I will be able to complete the post I'd imagined, with 25 pictures. I've got plenty of hours, but my battery ain't gonna make it.)

On our last day in Berlin I challenged myself to take 100 pictures. I failed miserably in that challenge, but I took more photos than I normally would have...

Here, Kodiak ponders whether this is actually art, or....

You don't see a lot of cars like this in Berlin.

From day one in Berlin, I loved the symbol of the city: the Berlin Bear. Here we see a Polynesian interpretation of the ubiquitous ursine; I would be surprised if this design hasn't already been tattooed a few times.

We lived a few blocks from this weird sculpture and I always wanted to stop by and check it out... but I only managed to do so on our last day.

Goodbye Berliner Dom and Fernsehturm. I will miss you.

Goodbye S-Bahn.

One of our last pictures in Berlin, sitting in Mitte in front of the Naturkunde Museum (Natural History Museum, home of the holotype of the Archaeopteryx!)

Well after the craziness of the last few weeks in Berlin, it was a welcome reprieve to land in Sweden, which for us has always been mostly about relaxation, and swimming. We stayed on Lidingö, an island that makes up part of greater Stockholm. We were right near a lovely lake in which we swam once or twice a day.

We also visited Millesgården, the spectacular home and workshop of Carl Milles, favorite sculptor of Stockholm. 

The setting really is amazing. It's got to be at least a few acres set on a cliff overlooking the water that separates Lidingö from the main part of Stockholm.

Even though he fights us every time we try to take him to a gallery or museum, Kodiak usually ends up liking it. He's gotten quite the cultural education in these two years.

Naturally my favorites were the nudes...

Big surprise.

After a lovely week in Sweden we headed for an all-too-brief 2 days in my favorite place in the world, Iceland.

The highlight of our trip was hiking an hour up to Reykjadalur...

where you can find.....

wait for it......

A HOT RIVER

Yes, really. That's Kodiak and I sitting in a hot river. It was awesome. Lucky for us, Christina joined us in the river just after taking this picture.

One of my other favorite things in Iceland is Dead Gallery. Located on Laugavegur, the main shopping street in Reykjavík, this gallery is wonderfully out of place with the increasingly homogenous tourist/trinket shops and high-end clothing stores.

The gallery is basically the showcase for one guy's art.

Everything he makes is about death in one way or another. 

Even though he was a bit grumpy when Kodiak and I stopped in this time, I really do love his work, and... maybe even more than that... I love it that he is so blatantly out of step with the rest of Laugavegur and the image that Reykjavík presents of itself.

On our last day in Europe, Kodiak and I also visited Sundhöll Reykjavíkur, a public swimming pool and bathhouse in the middle of Reykjavík. Several months ago, I complained on this blog that Berliners could not get the hot tub thing right. Well, Icelanders do. The tubs at Sundhöll are hot, the way they should be. Plus, I always have good conversations with strangers there. No pictures allowed there, naturally.

And here, my friends, is the last picture I took of Europe. That is the edge of the Reykjanes peninsula, receding into the distance below.

Bittersweet.

Now we are off on our way back to our true home (for now), New Mexico.

And guess what? As you might have guessed from the 25* pictures, my battery did not last. I completed less than half of this blog post on the airplane, and I write these words now from our home on the mesa, just west of Taos, New Mexico. In fact, when we arrived home there was such an overwhelmingly large amount of work to be done getting back into our old lives, that we've been here almost a week and only now am I finding the time to sit down and write this post, the "last one from Europe."

*(wow, that's crazy! It was exactly 25!)

It's tempting to want to write some profound insights, some sort of perspectivizing eulogy, about our 2 years in Europe... and maybe that awesome perspective will come one of these days. But right now, I think it's too early to know what to say about it. In the last few days, Christina and I keep asking each other "How are you feeling to be back?", and the answer for both of us is invariably "I can't quite tell.... I don't know how I'm feeling." There is good about being back, and there is bad. And for right now, we are too busy to think all that much about it. There is a tremendous amount of unpacking, moving in, getting cars and motorcycles running again, registering and insuring cars and motorcycles again, trying to understand just how bad our health insurance options are, throwing away half of what we thought was precious 2 years ago but now seems totally unnecessary, doing our best to help Kodiak through this transition, getting to know our dogs again, freaking out about Burning Man, and planning for the future.

Do I miss Europe? Yes, some things. I already miss the density of culture, the public transportation, and the lush greens of Berlin, Sweden, and Iceland. I also miss some of the great people we met there. But being here also feels very comfortable, and very good. It's nice to be in a home that is ours and to have no neighbors. It's nice to have our dogs, our hot tub, and our motorcycles. It feels easy to slide back in. Taos seems to actually be more diverse and inclusive than we remembered; there are freaks and artists and gay people everywhere. And everyone here is so damn nice! 

In the long term, I am sure that Europe will be a big part of our lives. Why shouldn't it be? It's awesome there. But Taos is pretty great too. 

With love from the Taos mesa,

Aloha