In spite of all the shit going on the planet right now, it’s a beautiful California morning, a bunch of poppies are exuberantly blooming, oblivious of world misery, we have (two days ago) finished the year-long stressful job of putting together Rolling Homes: Shelter on Wheels, covering 75 nomadic homes and I feel wonderfully free and ready first for a celebratory 4×4 trip to Baja, then to come back and get to work on my semi-autobiography, Live from California.

(From about mid-April on, I’ll be blogging from the road — a lot more regular posting when I’m away from office tasks.)

Just now listening to this (and watching Billy’s expressions). Rare communication between musicians, it’s like they’ve blended their art and skills into one.

To anyone receiving this for the first time, I send these newsletters out every few months. They’re different from social media — old school in a way — in that they go to a select audience (over 5,000 people now), rather than blasting out into the internetosphere.

If you’re not signed up on the list to receive it, you can sign up for email delivery of the Gimme Shelter newsletter here.

This is my first newsletter in 6 months, no less. Boy, how time has flown. So I’m afraid it’s gonna be a long one.

Rolling Homes

Rick and I have been working on this book for maybe 4 months. Our modus operandi: I write (or edit) text, print out photos, use a color copy machine (a workhorse Brother MFC-371DCW) to resize photos, then paste down text and photos with removable Scotch Tape. These then go to Rick, who uses Photoshop and InDesign to prepare files for printers. As we go along, he makes PDFs so I can print out pages to see how they look. An analog/digital process. We’ve got about 150 (out of 256) pages done.

I never know what a book will be like until we are well underway in production. We start with a theme — here, homes on wheels — and put it together 2 pages at a time, and the book reveals itself as we proceed.

And this one — good golly Miss Molly! — is turning out to be amazing. I’m sure you’re aware of the explosion of nomadic vehicles in recent years. Our book is composed of primarily do-it-yourselfers — the theme running through all our building books — and the designs, ingenuity, and craftsmanship are stunning.

One thing I just realized: there are a lot of surfers in this book — female and male. Below is Yasha Hetzel, who went 120,000 miles in Australia in a Citroën Berlingo van, here surfing at South Point:

BTW, we don’t seem to have any of the so-called “vanlife” rigs here — the young attractive couples with photos of sunsets and the minutiae of their daily lives. It wasn’t a conscious decision; it’s just is turning out that our rigs and people are more real, more hands-on than the “influencers.”

Shelter Books Exhibited at the Biennale Architettura in Venice

This is the big news around here right now. According to Wikipedia, the Biennale Architettura is “…an International exhibition held every other year in Venice, Italy, in which architecture from nations around the world is presented.”

The two architects responsible for the exhibit, Leopold Banchini and Lukas Feireiss, visited here last year, interviewed me, shot photos, and in conjunction with the exhibit, produced a book titled Shelter Cookbook. They have arranged for my flights to and from Venice, and a place to stay there, and after three flight cancellations and rescheduling and Covid preparations, I’m set to leave here on October 6th. I am excited!

The Shelter part of the exhibit consists of three of our books: Domebook One, Domebook 2, and Shelter, which are on display, as well as stick models of buildings shown in these books.

Stick models of buildings in Shelter and Domebook 2. A lot of work went into making these!

The exhibit is in the Arsenale di Venezia, a huge complex of shipyards and buildings built in the 1100s and used for building Venice’s ships.

I’ll be in Venice October 9–11; and on the 13th, I’ll be doing a slide presentation called “60 Years of Natural Building” at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, a school of architecture in Italian-speaking Switzerland. Then to Florence, then (maybe train ride) to Sicily where I’ll spend a week exploring (and swimming). Back home and back to book production end of October.

I’m really excited to be going back to Italy (and seeing Venice and Sicily for the first time). I love the people, the sea, the countryside, the food, the gardens — the Italian way of life — my cup of tea — er, espresso.

I’m going as lightweight as possible this trip, with a Cotopaxi Allpa 35 travel pack with compression bags (fits easily into overhead bin) and my regular daily Dakine backpack for MacBook Air, glasses, pens, etc. Trying something new this trip: the only camera — my iPhone 11 Pro Max. Not taking my Olympus OM-D EM-1 camera and lenses saves a lot of weight, and the iPhone is pretty darn capable.
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My Baja Bug* from the ’90s. A “pre-runner,” used back then to run the Baja 1000 race course before the race. Fiberglass fenders and hood, shocks came up and tied into roll bar, 15-gal. gas tank behind rear seat. Rocket Box on roof, with solar panel that charged 2nd battery. There was a 12′ by 14′ flea market tarp inside box that I would set up for shade.

I kept it at La Mañana Hotel in San José del Cabo, would fly down, pick it up, and drive 15 miles on dirt roads out to an arroyo, then let air out of tires and go about 2 miles on the sand to a spot called “Roosterfish Cove.” I’d set up the tarp (shade is critical in Baja camping), and spend 3-4 days solo on the beach, surfing at “Destilladeras,” a short paddle from my camping spot. Since I was still a competitive runner, I’d run along the beach when it was cool enough.

It was my camping vehicle until it ended up under water in a flood from Hurricane Henriette in Los Cabos in 1995 (26″ rain in 24 hours).

The idea of a sequel to our book Tiny Homes on the Move has been kicking around here for a while. There are some really good books on nomadics out there now, such as Van Life, by Foster Huntington (who coined the term/hashtag #vanlife), Van Life Diaries by Morton, Dustow and Melrose, and Hit the Road by Robert Klanten and Maximilian Funk.

But after talking to Foster, who encouraged me to go ahead, and starting to gather material, I’m excited. We’ve discovered a lot of different and new rigs; this book will be different. The Sprinter vans are super, true, but there are a lot more lower-cost and/or homemade options to the +100K van.

If you know of any such vehicles, please contact me at lloyd@shelterpub.com

*How ironic that the “people’s car,” or “folks’ wagon,” developed in Germany by Ferdinand Porsche on orders from Adolf Hitler in 1938, would go on to become not only the most popular car in history, but the go-to car for desert rats.

Backing Away from “Social Media”

I spent a lot of time blogging 10-15 years ago. For example, here’s a post from 2005: 2400 words, 10 photos — how did I find the time?

These days, right now — spring, 2019 — my relationships with blogging and especially Instagram, are weakening. Instagram, a brilliant idea, is now being run by Zuckerberg and Sheryl. Does anyone trust these two? The ads are increasingly frequent and intrusive. The book Zucked by Roger McNamee is good. How “…a noted tech venture capitalist, an early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg and investor in his company, woke up to the serious damage Facebook was doing to our society…”

You know the expression, “The old is new again?” Well, I think it’s more that the old is being reexamined in light of a couple of decades of digitalia. Email newsletters? Well, yeah. I’m back into doing them. I promise not to overdo it, maximum once a month.

You can sign up for email delivery of the Gimme Shelter newsletter here:

Handmade: The Half-Acre Homestead

I’m rolling along with layout. The book really feels good. Looking back at what we’ve done on this piece of land over the last 45+ years, digging up photos, and getting a fresh perspective on it all. Working with hands.

The book varies from the aesthetics: flowers, quilts, landscaping, to the practical: housebuilding, gardening, raising chickens, to delight: butterflies, spiderwebs, visiting foxes.

The chicken coop

In 1971, our land was $6500, the building permit $200. I was my own architect and engineer. No mortgage, no rent — ever — what a difference that has made in our lives.

Could you do anything like this now? Stay tuned.

A Day in Santa Cruz

I was a Santa Cruz beach lifeguard in the ’50s, so visiting there is like going home again. I did a slide show on Driftwood Shacks at Bookshop Santa Cruz, visited friends, watched surfers, shot photos:

Mia Mickey and her 4×4 diesel bus/home. She’s a registered nurse, works three months, then takes six months off to travel. She’ll be featured in our forthcoming book, Hit the Road, Jack: Adventure Vehicles. Contact us if you know of any cool homes on wheels.

Alan Quinn AKA “The Mighty Quinn” and his rolling home. The license plate at top, center, says “MAKE MY DAY.”

The ultimate Baja bug

Starting to Run Again

After a 10-year layoff, I’m starting to run, encouraged by Jeff Galloway’s run-walk-run methodology. Rediscovering Mt. Tamalpais, a holy mountain even though only 2500 feet tall. Hundreds of miles of trails, streams, creeks, waterfalls, meadows, hand-crafted and rustic steps and bridges, manzanita bushes and mushrooms, deer and bobcats.

If the book you want isn’t here, then you’re in the:

Support your local bookstores!

Over and out on a sunny day after rain and rain. It’s gonna be a spectacular Spring!

Ryan and Casey Higginbotham, lifeguards from Pismo Beach, California, have just set out on an 1100 mile paddleboard trip from Tijuana to Cabo San Lucas. A year ago, they paddled 2,200 miles, from Alaska to Tijuana — 7 months on the water. They are now continuing their southward voyage. After reaching Cabo, they’ll rest, then paddle across the Sea of Cortez, heading for South America. Total badasses!

They visited us here a few months ago and went through my library of Baja books. I have a detailed out-of-print Baja atlas, which they copied and are using for navigation.

You can follow them at: www.pikbee.com/byhandproject.

Here’s a recent posting:

We failed to do a little research and showed up at Border Field State Park to a locked gate. After walking everything out Casey got cleaned up on the first surf entry. The biggest challenge is adjusting to all the weight on the boards again. We each rolled atleast a dozen times. At the end of the day it really didn’t matter. We made it to Rosarito and it feels good to be back on the water. The body is going to take some time to adjust to this on the daily. It’s a 19 miler to La Fonda tomorrow and we’re stoked to see what day 2 has in store, nothing bad has happened yet!