#rolling homes

[golden-west]

[pam3pr]

Rolling Homes: Handmade Houses on Wheels by Jane Lidz

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[danismm]

“Rolling homes”, 1952

[thisobscuredesireforbeauty]

Rolling homes. September, 1934 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics. Source  

[golden-west]

[danismm]

Rolling Homes, 1952

[parkwellproject]

FARISTA, CO

we started having some weird electrical problems on the way south. the bus would lose all power for a couple seconds before turning back on. it kinda freaked us out, when it happened we wouldn’t have power steering. not that cool for curvy mountain roads. there was also the chance the power would not come back after shutting off, which would completely strand us without any hazard lights on a road with no shoulder. deadly.

we checked the rear electrical box. previously, we had a fuse wiggle itself loose on a bumpy road just south of detroit. but everything was tight.

about 80 miles from the dunes, we turned off the main hwy onto a rural road with basically nothing on it and had another power drop 5 miles later. looking at the map, there were no sources of help on that stretch of road. no gas stations, service centers, mechanics, places to buy parts. the problem was getting more and more consistent. feeling like we were really setting ourselves up to get stranded in the middle of nowhere (which, with a gremlin electrical problem, usually equates to an insanely expensive towing bill) we doubled back and parked in the farista gas station where we’d left the main hwy.

originally thinking we’d just leave the bus there for the weekend and have one of our friends pick us up - we changed our minds when we saw the hoard of lurkers at the gas station. a dozen strung out junkies stared the bus down like it was from another planet. we’ve parked in many “sketchy” places before without worry, but never before had we felt such a wave of impending theft. everyone looked so desperate and fucked up. locking the bus up and leaving it alone while all the lurkers watched just seemed like a recipe for disaster...we have everything we own on the bus.

it was now getting dark. our new plan was that troy would get picked up and head to the dunes with our friend kendra (coming in from aspen) while I watched over the bus that night. the next morning I’d figure out a safe place to park the bus and hitchhike to the dunes...

[parkwellproject]

DENVER, CO

we were a little nervous about getting wood in colorado. pretty much everyone has pine out there, which burns fast and hot. It’s great for getting your burner raging, but you need to have a ton of it since it goes so quick. we needed to store all of our wood IN the bus. if we were forced to stock pine, we were pretty positive we wouldn’t make it through the winter without orchestrating some sort of parking lot wood drop off, which probably wouldn’t be cheap.

luckily we found ricardo in denver. he worked at a furniture shop, and we made a good deal for a cord of hardwood offcuts. mostly black walnut, oak, ash and elm. and since it was wood meant for furniture, it was well dried. score. we arranged for him to swing by the bus early the next morning and drop it off. what we did not know was that 1/4 of the wood still needed to be split into manageable chunks, which ricardo started doing in the neighbors yard immediately after his arrival at 8AM. chainsaws ripping, sledge hammers blasting splitting wedges. here we were, a random bus parked on a residential street in SW denver, making a ton of noise and taking over someones front yard in the early morning. we couldn’t help but laugh, the neighbors had to be so confused...

we had a god system goin, loading the wood in through the window with buckets. it took about an hour. everything went onto a tarp in the back and we’d organize it once we’d planted roots somewhere. in total, i think we added about 2,500lbs of weight in wood that morning. 

we hit I-70 as soon as the job was done. weather was perfect. it was a slow an steady chug through the mountains, and we undoubtedly pissed off a lotta cars with our snail pace. not an uncommon situation for us. copper mountain was in reach and our season passes were burnin holes in our jacket pockets. we were beyond excited to be on some snow the next morning....