Check out these pictures of my cool new (1982) VW Vanagon diesel camper! I got it from my friend Raphael, in trade for my 1/2 of the sailboat and my Nissan truck. It will serve me much better than either of those vehicles for my long trip `cross country.

Saturday I decided it seemed like the right time of year to be brewing beer. There is a relatively new supplier in town called Hoggetowne Ale Works, and so I went by and purchased the ingredients for a Weissebier (Wheat Beer). Sunday I brewed it up on my turkey freyer and got it into the carboy. I decided for this batch to do a single fermentation in the glass carboy to get the beer finished sooner. It will have more sediment on the bottom, but that is traditional anyway. Hopefully in 3-4 weeks, there will be 48 bottles of beer on the wall! Everyone is welcome to come and sample.

Yesterday I visited the 20th Annual Hoggetowne Medieval Faire at the Gainesville Fairgrounds with Raphael, Stephanie, and Noah Sioux. We showed up an hour before closing, and so enjoyed free admission and a free meal with all the exhibitors. I think it was more fun than if we had gone earlier in the day with all the crowds.

Linked to this very kool school bus I found at the faire is a slideshow. The owner of the bus has lived in it for 20 years, and has travelled all over the U.S. and South America.

Little Noah Sioux is now 7 months old! He’s starting to become quite mobile at this age, and likes to get into whatever he can. He’s almost bearable to babysit now too!

I made a cool slideshow page for all the pictures I took in Jax. You can access it by clicking on the picture below:

Well, 3 posts in a day must be a record for me. I found another picture I had taken a few nights ago, and wanted to share it.

Keith finally broke down today and agreed to sell me his 1985 Yamaha Maxim 700 that I’ve wanted for years (it’s his wife’s birthday, and he needed cash!). So, now I have some cheap transportation for around town, and something fun for the weekends. I’m not sure where Oscar and Anna will ride yet.

Don’t think just because I’m in Florida it can’t feel like Maine! It was 26 degF this morning, and we had a heavy frost overnight. The pups were prancing about with their usual cold weather spunk. I’ve been staying warm with electric heat since my return from Maine. I’ve given up on using unvented propane heaters inside. The amount of water vapor is too much to deal with, especially in Florida where it can lead to mold. I think I’ll switch to the vented diesel heater that I wanted in the first place.

I took this picture this morning with one of the advanced settings on my new camera. The old olympus would never have focused on something so close to the lens. I’m still very pleased with this camera, both in its physical construction and quality of photos.

Today I spent most of the day revamping the solar power system in my bus. This morning I disconnected the batteries, and pulled most of the equipment out. My plan is to move all the equipment to the center of the bus. This will shorten the wire run from the panels to the batteries, and place the equipment in an area that is under-utilized, freeing up space in the front of the bus. I started out with a box I salvaged from work when our fire system was updated.

I cut holes in the box for fuses, circuit breakers, charge controllers, switches, and data logger. Then I sanded the red finish and repainted with a cream color. I’ve run out of day to finish, but it should be in early this week. I have to run off the electric grid until I get it finished, so that’s my inspiration. Here’s a view of the new box:

The new panel has 2 Prostar 30M PWM charge controllers with load control, a TriMetric 2020 battery/system monitor, 6 Condura rocker type switches to control fans, lights, etc., and 4 25A circuit breakers for solar and load protection. The shunt for the TriMetric will mount down near the batteries, along with a 125A fuse and the 1500 Xantrex XPower inverter. At some point I’ll get a Samlex True sine wave inverter to run more sensitive equipment like battery chargers.