Moonlight over Middleton (California) last night.
I got a 24-hour camping pass to Harbin Hot Springs yesterday and this was on my way into Middletown last night to hang out at the town saloon and get a great Mexican meal.
In my next post I’ll describe the pros and cons of Harbin, which has been slowly and surely rebuilding after the disastrous fire of 2015.
Spoiler alert: The pools are still fantastic.
So far, my bike falls have been at very low speeds. This one was on a steep downhill with loose rocks and I was fiddling with the seat lowering lever and tipped over. Need to set up the lever so I can activate it while still squeezing on brake pedal.
Brings to mind the idea of propulsion: those of us who love to propel selves through space — cycling, surfing, skating, snowboarding, running. An important part of our lives. Falling is gonna happen. Surfing has the huge advantage of not falling on a hard surface.
I wear knee guards, and in closing barn door after horse has bolted mode, I just ordered elbow guards.
I continue to love my Specialized Turbo Levo pedal-assist bike. It never fails to be a thrill when I take my first pedal stroke and the bike jumps ahead as if I have super powers.
And bow-wow to you too…
And we thought Hound Dog was an Elvis song!
First, turn off the intrusive sound track.
By Chiara Fiorillo News Reporter
16 Sep 2023
A hermit may have lived in a precarious house perched on the side of a cliff in California for the past 10 years — but nobody seems to know who the man actually is.
A dilapidated three-storey structure, made of driftwood, was first spotted at Devil’s Slide in the San Francisco Bay Area in December 2022, when it was filmed by a drone. Stunned onlookers said the intriguing home was partially destroyed during the rainstorms that hit the Bay Area earlier this year but has since been rebuilt.
Drone operator @ParallaxEffect, who posted footage of the driftwood shack on YouTube, said he was hiking along the California coast with some friends when they noticed the property, which he described as “one of the most incredible human structures I’ve ever seen”.
The shack appears to have several rooms and is located on the steep San Mateo County rock face. The video shows wood and ropes in the structure as well as a boxing punching bag, several buoys, some old signs, and what appears to be a fully enclosed room.
On Google Earth, the shack appears to have a rope rising from it, which is linked to the Devil’s Slide trail above — and it may possibly be used as a means of entry and exit. A Google Maps satellite image also seems to show the structure intact as waves crash onto the rocks beneath it.
www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/mystery-hermit-living-cliffside-shack-30955761
If you look at the left, there appears to be a cave or tunnel. When blown up, there appears to be a pathway of rocks leading into it.???
In my years of photographing driftwood shacks for the book: Driftwood Shacks: Anonymous Architecture Along the California Coast, I never saw anything faintly resembling this.
Wow!!
Thanks to Jeff Sinder and Ruth Kneass
My friends Jonathan and Dobree Greene sent me photos of these magnificent art works:
“BOOTHBAY, Maine — Something wicked has taken over the woods at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens… something wicked awesome!
Five mythical trolls have taken up residence in the forest at the Botanical Gardens—tucked in the woods and hidden on paths that force visitors to go hunting for the friendly giants just to catch a glimpse of them all.
The father of the trolls is a Danish artist, Thomas Dambo, who considers himself a recycled art activist. Dambo spent the last several weeks creating five, 20-foot-tall sculptures made completely from recycled materials, most of which were found nearby Boothbay.
“I like to think that I write modern folklore stories about the current issues of the world,” explained Dambo, who is trying to share a message of conservation.
For him, they represent the yin and yang of nature.
“If you don’t treat nature nice, then nature will stand up and roar and blow your house over. But if you’re treating nature really, really good, it will provide everything you need,” Dambo said.
He has made a career creating trolls made of trash all around the world.
–Beth McEvoy (NEWS CENTER Maine)”
Got Doug to shoot this because I want to see if I can improve my form.
Any suggestions from swimmers?
Getting into a beautiful body of water like this makes me want to reverse the aquatic-to-terrestrial transition from water to land of 300 million years ago and go back to living in the water.
There are still places available for this ambitious internship, building a 20m2 dome. Registrations must be in by June 30.
This will be the only course this year.
Cordially,
Jean Soum
Details: alphazomes.org/stages.html
Photo by Nin Solis – Living Inside
Article by Anna Bisazza
Deep in the Mexican countryside of Valle de Bravo — a lush escape about two hours’ drive from Mexico City — Emiliano Garcia and Helene Carlo found the perfect spot to build an eco home. Partners in life and in ASPJ, a Mexican architecture and landscape design studio, the couple had a burning question: can we build more sustainably and cheaper, and in a way that can be widely copied?
The main structural element is a concrete cube that supports the rest of the house.
“It was important for us to prove its feasibility and to be able to make our structure replicable, not only a one-of-a-kind,” says Garcia. The couple are keen for this type of building to become the rule rather than the exception.
La Lomita is named for its hilltop position, from where it looks out on to the picturesque surrounding mountains from its secluded spot, and is accessed by a small dirt road. The structure is distinguished by an unusual single arched roof and an open facade with corrugated metal finishing that loosely evokes the image of an aircraft hangar, but there are many other experimental features meticulously planned by Garcia and Carlo that are not immediately obvious.
“Being able to take weight off the building, bringing it to half of what it would normally be in a conventional build, was a really successful outcome,” says Garcia. The main structural element is a concrete cube that encloses two bathrooms and the staircase. It supports the rest of the house, which is built primarily in wood. “This means we’re not intervening heavily in the foundation by digging deep into the ground and building concrete slab layers. Here, we managed to separate the house from the ground, only attaching it to the necessary structural points.”
A second critical aspect for Garcia and Carlo was the traceability of materials and controlling as much as possible their impact on the environment. To build the columns, floors and walls — which amounts to 70% of the house — they used recycled laminated wood made from boxes for the transport of car parts in Volkswagen and Audi factories. “This is FSC-certified wood from Europe and we’re giving it a second use as OSB [oriented strand board], a material that is gaining popularity these days.”
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jun/25/ready-to-soar-inside-a-dramatic-eco-home-in-mexico
This just popped up in Google Alerts. My review of the original catalog.