Get Along Junior, Ash is Starting to Fall.
Camping in Ashland for the last month has been absolutely nothing like camping another places on this journey.  Then again, no place has been like any other place.
When I rented the site that Maxi and Minnie and I have occupied since July 1, I had the same pie-eyed optimism I brought to every other campsite.  The site I thought I was renting turned out not to be the site that the property manager thought I was renting so we had to move after six days to a really different location. Right out into the full day sun, with no shade whatsoever.
On the one hand I was just horrified because I had just spent a long time in the desert where there was no possibility of shade. I was really looking forward to living with the trees the way I had prior to the Alameda wildfire.
So, I did my best to create an outdoor patio environment after my guys up at Jackson RV fixed the clips that made Maxi’s awning work. For a couple of weeks, despite the heat, the afternoon breeze and the awning made being outside really quite pleasant.
There is a hook up at this site but I wasn’t using the electricity from the pole unless I needed to turn on the air conditioner for a couple of hours in the afternoon. I was feeling great about being able to use the solar investment that had been such a wonderful learning process and inexpensive camping power source.
And then, four days ago, another searing heat dome descended on Oregon, actually worse than I experienced last year before we took off on our cross-country trip last August 1. We’ve just been through six days of temperatures in excess of 104°. Yesterday, it was 116 here in the Rogue Valley.
The first day of the heat dome, Maxi’s AC broke and, as we learned over the next few days, so did the 3000 watt inverter. Just too damn hot sitting out here in the blazing sun with all these electrical components having to work together without overheating.
The first day the AC just cut off all of a sudden and so did everything else. I had a USB fan that was already charged that I could blow on me while I tried to follow directions from the tech guys at Jackson RV and then at Magnum, the manufacturer of the inverter. I was so fucking hot that I couldn’t think or even breathe after about an hour because inside Maxi with no AC it was way way more than 104°. In about 90 minutes, I had to break camp and drive up to Medford and surrender Maxi to the techs.
It was so unsafe for me to be driving when my brain was cooked to the temperature it was raised to trying to be part of fixing the situation in place. Thank God Maxi’ s truck air conditioning cooled me down enough to get to Medford and I am so fucking grateful I didn’t make any awful driving mistakes in the state I was in. 
My dear friend, John - who sheltered me last spring at his home while a small group of friends got Maxi renovated and setup for a long road trip - picked me up in the 106° heat and brought me back to his house where I had a great shower and got to sleep in the air-conditioning for the next three days. That’s what it took to solve the problems with temperature control in Maxi, my motorhome. My only home.
The problems triggered by the electrical breakdown have taken Maxi, Minnie and me in a whole new direction. We have to be plugged into a power pole now just to support my physical life because I cannot make it without air conditioning when it’s 116 outside, as it was yesterday. The inverter is out of the picture right now because it’s not passing power from the pole to the batteries and from the batteries to the rig. So we are back in “regular“ RV land. I’m grateful to be able to sleep tonight in the rig and feed myself and have a place of my own.
But taking solar power out of the mix of sustainable energy use in my life I s just not going to work for me in the long run.
And it’s not going to work for any of the rest of us either.
Solar energy needs to be woven into the everyday lives of every person living on the earth right now.
I’m so disappointed that I can’t continue to use the solar system right now and I have a lot to consider about how I add it back into the mix. At this point, I either need to send the inverter in for repairs (for which there is a three-year backlog of warranty repairs) or buy another one. I can’t do that and live in Maxi …and just don’t have the money to shell out to buy another one.
I’m spending the time telling this story because I am certainly not the only adventurer on this journey of living full out while learning about the every day process of blending solar power with standard electrical power generated by fossil fuels to power our lives.
I’m not giving up on working through how I can take care of myself without continuing to blindly suck off the tit of fossil fuels. And, at the same time, I just encountered a breakdown that could have killed me at this age of 72. Older people just can’t manage heat the way younger people can… I simply can’t make it through the next two months of climate-wielded northwestern summer without air conditioning.
There is a beautiful young family camping where I am who are trying to live without air conditioning with two adults and a 12-year-old child in a relatively small trailer. Everyone is suffering heavily. They’re spending a lot of time in a kiddie pool. And they are leaving their home and going other places in the middle of the day so they don’t expire. But this is not sustainable living. This is coping with chaos. 
The story continues… And, as I’m making this post, big fat black chunks of ash are falling from the sky this evening, blown by the wind from fires that ignited around us yesterday when grass fires and forest fires began in the 116 degree heat…
One inch or larger chunks of ash have been falling from the sky all afternoon here in Ashland - including the time when I was watching a mother turkey and her baby scouting for food less than 25 yards from where Maxi, Minnie and I are parked.  
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