Day One
October 2, 2023
first tire i did on my own. took about an hour. weighs about 300 lbs.
a lot of work, but pretty cool
there were around 30 of us in total. the earthship crew is 6-8, and there are about 20 of us ‘students’. a lot of people had just finished the academy class work recently. it’s split pretty evenly between men and women, there are a number of people from foreign countries. i may be the oldest one of all (but i ain’t tellin’ no one).
of the students, most are camping on site. the site is behind a beat up trailer park (about 10 structures). not very nice, really. and some of the locals warned us that there had been trouble with some meth addicts, so camping in one area was a bad idea. they created a space far away from there for better camping. [note to john lavarway - i’m glad i didn’t bring your teardrop camper down here!]
to answer some questions i’ve already had via texts …
it’s about 80 degrees, which can feel hot. but it’s supposed to cool off by the end of the week. it’s a very cool vibe. nobody is pushing you to work harder. they encourage knowing and staying within your own limits. they tell us to have conversations, take breaks, drink water. there’s always music playing. on this very first day i had to take care of something from work and needed to leave for about an hour. they were fine with it, telling me to just take care of what i needed to do.
i spent the first couple hours helping to sort something like 600 tires. we grouped them by size, then stacked them 5 high for easy counting. we might need a few more, but we’re right on target for ten courses of 60 tires per course.
here’s a quick CAD animation that’ll show you how they’re built.
