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

This place is 10′ wide, set in between 2 larger buildings. There are 14 stools at the counter. Good food, good vibes. I met my new friend Todd there this snowy cold morning.

A few days ago, I got an email from Irene Tukuafu, artist, musician, musical instrument maker, and kindred spirit, now living in Illinois. Here’s her email and my reply:

On 12/23/16 at 9:15 PM -0600, Irene Tukuafu wrote in a message entitled

Fwd: Washtub bass:

Dear Lloyd, I just finished this last night.  Well, I have some more fun painting I’m going to do on this, but thought you’d like to see it.  I did some research on the different kinds of washtub bass’s and when a gal let me play her one that had the handle of an axe….that worked better and can control the sound pitch better.  At least it did when I played her one.

Sooooooooo I’m in the market to find a better string.  Living is just wonderful when filled with fun stuffs to do.  My next musical instrument will be a TENNESSEE MUSIC BOX.  It’s a dulcimer that was used more for the dance hall, so had to be bigger.  Not much to look at………..soooooo I’m making mine to Look at too. ha.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO THE MAX to you and all.

aloha, irene

Irene online:

https://irenetukuafu.blogspot.com/

https://harp4you.blogspot.com/

***

Read More …

We got the proofs back last week, and I almost cried when I went through it page by page. Sounds dumb, I know, but it was overwhelming to see all the pages, in collated order, full size, 4-color for the first time — after a couple of years working on it. I’d only seen rather low-quality, reduced size printouts up until now. And you know what, it’s ahem, a beautiful book.

People, home builders from all walks of life, a great variety of designs, materials, locales. It may very well be the most useful book we’ve ever done. Tiny homes are great for some people, but too small for most. Here are 65 or so homes in all, a cornucopia of ideas for people who can’t afford high rents and bank mortgages, and want to build or remodel (or contract out) their own homes.

Check out the “sneak previews” on TheShelterBlog:

https://www.theshelterblog.com/?s=sneak+preview

Book due out April, 2017. More details to follow here.