There has been this reoccurring conversation at work lately about having a bunch of little things that need to be done outside of the normal scope of work. You know those tasks that take 15-30 minutes? But what happens when you have a dozen or more of them? Finding time, 6+ hours of time, to get those multitude of tasks done is hard. There is always more piling up behind them, some competing for top priority. Well, not only has my work life been that way lately, so has life outside of work. Hence the complete lack of writing anything here since my little vacation in Bend back in February!

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I ended up volunteering at Echo Red to Red mountain bike race in March. I was going to be in the area for a gravel race (ride) on Sunday so figured it was the right thing to do and give back to a race I have done quite a few times since moving to Oregon.

The Real West gravel race (ride) was the next day and it was decent, not horrible, not great. The course was not anything spectacular and I really don’t think it was worth the $120 entry fee, for that much I want a bit more pizzaz to a course. This one was just okay.

Lately I’ve done a few unplanned/not necessarily needed projects to Clifford the Big Red Van too. I added solar panels to help charge our house battery system. It wasn’t exactly something we needed to do, but I had a bunch of Amazon bucks built up, so the panels cost me nothing. We only use 10-15% of our capacity a day on a standard trip. Our standard trips are only 3-4 days. The solar panels just give us an additional option to keep the battery topped off.

I made the mistake of setting up the panels in series vs parallel at first. Turns out my charge controller can only handle up to twenty five volts of solar and when setup in series I was pushing well over that when I had full sun. Needless to say that wasn’t going to work. After ordering a few more parts and climbing on the roof of the van for what felt like the 100th time in a week I had everything all set up. The little solar panel indicator on my charge controller lit up so I am happy.

On of the summer projects I had planned (one of those multitude of tasks) was to build a smaller version of the Wayfarer Vans wheelie box on the passenger side of the van. We bought the driver side box not long after acquiring the van and loved the storage options it gave us. It was also the inspiration for building out my house battery system.

There is a Facebook page for Wayfarer Vans Fans and people do everything from give tips and tricks to sell vans or parts of their build kits. I was lucky enough that a woman from just 9 miles away didn’t need one of her wheelie boxes anymore. I scored it for about half of what a box from Wayfarer Vans sells it for. Totally not planned but saves me a project later this summer!

As I sit down to write this out (knocking another 30 minute task off the list) I just spent the day also picking off a bunch of small home/bike/yard projects. It felt good to whittle down the list today. There is definitely more to do, and plenty more coming, but for now……I actually feel like I got some shit done!

Thanks for reading,

-Pete