Boy am I havin fun! It’s been a perfect week down here. In the water at 7:30 this morning, a shower and now latte and raisin roll and good wi-fi. I wish I had more time to do stuff like this. Idea! I’ll make a little short-run book of the trip. Where’s my clone, anyway?
It’s so easy down here now, and it was so hard 20-30 years ago. My great little Baja bug was under water twice, I had a sketchy relationship with the cunning landlord of the palapa I rented (for $1,000 a year), the place was destroyed in a hurricane of Nov 4 cuatro de Noviembre in the ’90s, and on…
Now there’s a smoothly paved road 12 mi. out to Shipwrecks. Funny, there don’t seem to be many people around at all. Part of that being wealthy people buying (or building) trophy houses that they rarely visit. Summer’s the south-swell surfing season down here and Nov-Dec-Jan are prime times for people fleeing cold climes, but March seems perfect, it’s really comfortable, cool at night and April winds haven’t started. Surprisingly, I found nno mention of the surf online. There’s nothing like checking out the surf in person.
I still love San José del Cabo. Wandering around the quiet streets. Last night at dusk, Chilón and I walked down to the palm grove by the San José river; it was—the perfect Spanish word—tranquillo. Tortillas de nopales in a little roadside shack, with la cocinera patting out fresh tortillas…
My Instagram on the web this morning came out like a poster for the past few days:
https://www.instagram.com/lloyd.kahn/?hl=es
At the yacht harbor in Playita, just east of San José del Cabo. How about the hull design of the top one—I’ll bet that baby moves.
Our new book Small Homes: The Right Size is now available at independent bookstores, and Amazon — as well as from us: www.shelterpub.com/building/small-homes
Shameless Commerce Dept. This is, I think, the best building book we’ve ever done. (Yes, I’m sure I’ve said this before, but it keeps reoccurring to me.) Shelter is everyone’s favorite; it captured the times, it inspired thousands of homes. Builders of the Pacific Coast is in some ways, my best book. It’s an odyssey of discovery where the reader rides shotgun with me over a 2-year period. Cohesive and focused.
BUT Small Homes is so useful to so many people in this era of astronomical home prices and rents, that I think it’s hugely important. It offers alternatives to people looking for rentals on Craigslist or homes on Zillow. Here are 65 very different homes, of different materials, in different parts of the world. The idea, as with all our building books is to use your hands to create your own shelter.
Two things I’ve discovered about this book (after seeing the finished product):
- There are a lot of homes out in middle America – Minnesota, Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, more so than in any of our other books.
- It sparkles. Largely due to Rick’s considerable Photoshop skills, a motley assortment of photos from contributors have been rendered in colorful detail. I was stunned when I saw the first book off the press. The photos draw you in.
Tags: alternative energy, architecture, books, builders, building, carpentry, communication, design, homes, homesteading, natural materials, recycling, small homes, small towns, tiny homes
Monday early evening, March 13, 2017
I’m out in a wonderful thatched-roof domicile about 12 miles east of San José del Cabo; it looks out to the ocean and gets the sea breezes. The surf is up and there was only one surfer out today. Surfing has become too much of a hassle for me lately, crowds and age the main detractors. With skateboarding, there’s no problem getting up, and there are no crowds. The drawbacks are, yes, pavement and cars (and age, que lástima).
So I’ve been swimming. Jeez, if I lived where water was this warm I’d be in it every day. Tonight I bagged it because of the shorebreak – steep beach means you can get handled coming back in – as I did yesterday, rolled around and thoroughly pounded – sand in hair, ears, coating body, I mean I was sanded!
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