Almost Mobile

The radiator's in. The wiring almost done. And see those wheels? I cleaned those suckers myself...my fingers were all swollen with trying to get in between the spokes to shine them up right. Conner says that keeping our fingers crossed, we might have the car running by the end of the weekend.  

And in other news...I saw this art installation over at the Design For Mankind blog by artist dawn ng... 

Naming Of Saints

The ’54 is starting to look like a car again.  And now that it’s looking more like a bonafide automobile, we’ve all started batting around potential names for it.  After putting on the visor I think it looks like a Dick Tracy—total gangster car.

C and D say that no, that’s absolutely sacrilege to name a car after a dude.  According to them, a car is "complicated, you never know exactly what's going on inside of them, and if you don't treat them right then they're difficult but if you treat them right then they'll do what you want=just liike a woman."  If that's the case then maybe we could name it after Dick's girlfriend played by Madonna in the 1990 Warren Beatty film.  Breathless Mahoney is her name.  Or maybe Bonnie, after Bonnie and Clyde?  Or possibly Maude?  We need a good prohibition era name for a female.

Colorado Boating

Behold Colorado Boating!

Someone told me about Colorado Boating a couple weeks ago and the other day I stepped out of the shop to find Jesse doing precisely that.  It's when you hook up your boat to a car and have someone else drive you around the parking lot...to emulate the rush of wind in your hair, I suppose.  Haha, it was good for a short laugh.

Running Out

Nick Mogden and Conner

I never expected this undertaking to be easy.  I expected that it would throw me into lots of situations where I was outside of my comfort zone, force us to all be creative and resourceful, and I looked forward to spend lots of frustrating hours trying to figure out how to edit footage for short online videos.

It's almost the end of May and despite our best efforts we're still not done with the car and we've nearly run out of all the money we saved up before leaving Austin.  And we still haven't even gotten on the road.  How depressing is that?

I heard the boys bemoaning our states of affairs late Saturday night after I had already gone to bed.  The next day we were all the biggest sad saps ever.  So now we're brainstorming ways to make money to keep this thing going because come hell or high water we've damn well finishing this project despite the obstacles...even if we have to push the damn car across the country because we don't have enough gas money.

If anyone has ideas on how to make gas money as we go...please do holler.

Rockabilly Band In The Making

C and D said they would teach me to sing on this trip and that once I felt confident we could form a Rockabilly band and hit up all the classic car shows.  This would be awesome!  I can't express how much I adore the whole Rockabilly aesthetic and sound--pure love.

Now, I don't think I'm total shit in the vocal chord department, I just don't have much confidence and I'll tell you why.  When I was in 7th grade we went on a field trip to the coast of North Carolina.  I had on my headphones and was singing along to Aerosmith's song, Pink.  As this was in the pre-sound canceling headphones era, I could still hear the people around me and I heard one girl say, "Geez, I wish she would stop cuz she sure can't sing." Sting.  Haha, 7th grade sucks.  Ever since then I haven't really sung in front of anyone.  It's high time I get over that and in preparation I've been listening to some of the songs below for inspiration.

Punctured Lungs

The other day I had a dream that I fell and cracked a rib that punctured a lung.  The ambulance came and I kept waving them away saying, “No!  I don’t have insurance!”  Apparently I’m a little paranoid about not having insurance.

Surface injuries I’m not worried about on account of C & D because of an incident that happened Christmas 2006.  They were living outside of Austin with the other two members of their now defunct band, Liquid Revolution.  They had begun partying on Christmas Eve and promptly drank through all their booze that night.  Already pretty toasted Dan and their guitarist, Gavin, decided to run to the gas station for more beer before it closed for Xmas day.  With Dan riding his BMX bike, and Gavin on his skateboard, they filled their backpacks up to the brim.  For some reason, on the ride back Dan ended crashing his bike and instead of falling on his back and crushing all the beer cans, he flipped over and fell flat on his chin.  He split his chin pretty good and Conner ended up sewing him up with 10 lbs fishing line and big old needle they had at the house.  Surprisingly enough for a wasted pseudo-surgeon, Conner sewed Dan up damn well and it didn’t leave a bad scar at all. 

This is precisely why I’m not worried about cutting myself.  It’s the broken bones and punctured lungs that I lose sleep over.

Sanding Party

We had a sanding party the other day. Took the car from this to the stripped look below--and all by hand!  There's still the roof and the hood of the car to do as well.  I'm excited about the roof because Conner promised he would suspend the lucky sander up from the lift like Peter Pan...I'm on a semi-subtle marketing scheme to be the chosen Pan.  Kat was going to be the one, but sadly she started driving back to Texas this morning...so I'm hoping to be the next in line.

L to R: Conner, Rachel, Nick, Kat, & Dan

We had other Sanding Party members but they left before we could whip out the camera...Sandra & Josh

We are all so ridiculously dirty.   Blue dust is absolutely everywhere and turned us all into rather unattractive smurfs.  

Hope For Agoldensummer

When I was in college several years ago I saw this band in a very small rec center on campus.  The Athens, Georgia band, Hope For Agoldensummer, rocked my world and I bought their cd that night.  I'm sure they've produced many more albums in the six years since, but I Bought A Heart Made Of Art In The Deep, Deep South has still got to be one of my all-time favorites.

My favorite song on the album:
Download 12 Laying Down The Gun.m4a from FileFactory.com

Musical Gypsy Wagon

With the help from many of the musician/carpenters in the Arboles, CO area Denny has made these portable and self-contained musical stages modeled after old Gypsy Wagons.  They're beautifully done in custom woodwork and stained glass.  There are more photos and specs here.

We're aiming to be done with our travels and back in Austin for SXSW next March.  It'd be wonderful to connect with someone who organizes some of the musical showcases during the festival...concerts pop up in the most random places around town (mostly in vacant lots) and instead of rigging up a stage for a couple days, it'd be way easier to just set this guy up.  If anyone has any idea who we should get in touch with, please do pass it along.

For the 2nd Sunday Jam Session that Melody and Denny host on their property each month, they whipped out the gypsy wagon and built a dance floor in front.  It really seems like musician/carpenter is the profession of choice out here in southern Colorado; like Conner, or Denny, or the bassist behind Dan, although I never did catch his name.

Don Weber

Jam Sessions

Getting together to play music is a huge part of the Finn lifestyle.  There are the Wednesday Night Jam Sessions, the Friday Night Jam Sessions, and the 2nd Sunday Jam Sessions...

Conner and Dan's older brother, Josh

 Conner

 Dan

Jesse Horton

The Art Of Taking Off

As we were gearing up in Austin for the trip, we seemed to get two reactions about this endeavor.  The most common response was, “Wow, that sounds awesome!  Good luck with that.  Wish I could go traveling like that…”  I really wanted to say, “Well, let me tell you how: You decide on a date.  Start saving and don’t make plans that extend past that date so there are no excuses for backing out.  Oh, and watch SurfWise and read Vagabonding, those will help too.”

I think that not making long-term plans was the hardest thing for me.  Whenever I would get stressed out that we weren’t saving enough money, I would look in the employment ads.  That was just a waste of time though because I didn’t want to apply for some kick-ass job that would be an excuse for flaking out on the trip.  I also told everyone I knew about this thing in an attempt to make sure I followed through; one of the things I absolutely hate to do is explain why I flaked out on something…the more people I tell, I figure, the more pressure I put on myself to follow through.

The least frequent response—usually given by well-meaning family members—would be, “Why are you doing that?  What about your careers?  Why just put everything on hold while you go gallivanting around?”  But right now seems like the best time to do this sort of thing since none of us had any real responsibilities, nor anything that we couldn’t easily reclaim in a year. 

It seems like there are several people doing some epic adventure at the moment.  The other day Dan and I went into Durango for some errands and we ran into this behemoth of a vehicle at the gas station.  The guy said that he and his wife were driving around the world in this huge thing.  They started in Michigan and we’re driving south to the tip of South America to take a ferry across to South Africa; the ferry ride alone would take them several weeks.  They are keeping up a blog called EcoRoamer.

Kurt from EcoRoamer

Another friend of a friend, Charlie Faye, is traveling across the US for a year doing a music project in which she’s creating a new band in 10 different cities.  I don’t believe she has a blog in order to keep up with her, but she is planning to record an entire album out of her travels.

Apparently, now is the time to travel… 

Colorado Landscape

Conner took me on a walk around the 21-acre Finn property, which they call El Rancho De Bonehead.

There’s the bus they used to live in that Denny modified to be able to stand up in—beautiful wood and glasswork.

The renovated airstream trailer decorated in kitschy cowboy décor that they call the Cowboy Hilton and the “junkyard”.

All of it is super cute and an endless source of stories about the old days…but one of the things that I got the biggest kick out of was the deer poop. I’ve never seen it before! I started kicking this pile of what I thought was dried berries and Conner said, “Oh yeah, that’s deer shit.” Like what’s the big deal? But really, I’ve never seen it before! They shoot out like bee-bees when the deer gets frightened. Crazy stuff out here in Colorado.

Brew Time

C and D’s older brother Josh, who has to be one of the nicest and most patient people ever, has been totally re-hauling the ’54 to get it road worthy ever since the Finn family was able to dig it out of the Colorado snow. Josh has taken the whole frame apart and painted it, put in a new drive shaft, and even took the engine and the gas tank from a ’97 Suburban and stuck in the ’54 so we won’t have to fill it up that often.

 Conner and Josh

At one point or another the whole family has worked for the San Juan Timberwrights carpentry shop making timber frame houses.  Luckily the owners, Tammy & Mike, are super cool and have let us all use their shop to work on the car.  We came up this month to help finish it and then get on the road to Taos.  I’ll eventually help reupholster the interior but in the meantime I just crash in on bro-time a lot and hang out. 

Speaking of bro-time: evidently the San Juan Timberwrights is a large part of the Arboles community and every day at 4:30pm the shop shuts down and they all have “brew-time”.  Men come out of the woodwork to have a cold beer from the Durango Ska brewery and shoot the shit for a minute.  It seems such a romantic aspect of small town life to me since we never did that back home, and it happens every day like clockwork.

L to R: Brian, Jesse, Josh, Dan, Denny, and Conner

The beer comes out of a “kegerator”—a freaking brilliant idea!  They modified an old fridge to accommodate a keg and they attached a tap to the side for easy access refills.  Beer mugs are kept iced in the freezer and every month they all chip in and get a new keg.  Brilliant, I do say.

First Stop: Arboles, CO

After a 20-hour drive completed in 2 days, we’ve arrived in Arboles, Colorado-population 289: 157 males/132 females, a population density 55 people per sq mile, and no registered sex offenders.

I’ve experienced culture shock before but it’s always been in some foreign country where I don’t speak the language.  It’s never happened in the States before but in the first couple days I felt it in full force. 

Conner and Dan had described where they’re from a hundred times but honestly, I thought they were just being dramatic.  Arboles is very small and very spread out.  There are no stoplights, the closest grocery store is 20 miles away, and there is one convenience store and one bar in town; the bar used to be their old house that was renovated into the new business.  Serious culture shock.

Not to mention being thrown into living with Conner, my boyfriend’s parents.  They’re absolutely wonderful and totally sweet—they even lent us their bedroom to sleep in while we’re here which I still feel both immensely grateful and rather bad about—but during the period while I’m getting comfortable with everyone, it’s all a little intimidating.