Solar Adventure: Day 1 Recap

Today was the first and very long day of a five day solar/road trip for myself and Anton. We have made it to our motel in Barstow, CA, by what must have been an act of God. The day was full of unexpected twists and turns. It is a tale that must be told in full, so I shall start from the beginning.

Our day began at 9:38PM, EDT in Colmar, PA. We took the train down to Philadelphia (transferring to the last train to the airport, getting there at just before midnight) for a 5:25AM flight, finding ourselves hard-pressed to find an hour of napping in the meantime. We boarded the flight without issue, and transferred in Charlotte, NC, stuck to one of the more cancerous and degenerate men we've ever met. That was not so bad. We believed our lack of sleep would be the greatest peril we faced this trip.

But then, we landed in Vegas. Ready with an already-reserved car, we went to Budget to get the keys. While punching in the numbers, the clerk stopped, horrified. "...you're 22?" She asked. Yes. Well, apparently that's not fucking good enough for Budget. We took 90 minutes, running around to every damned car rental company in the area, to find someone who was willing to find a loophole to not only let me rent, but let me (dare I say it) drop off the car in Los Angeles. It happened to be Dollar, for what it's worth, but we still paid through the nose, and we still have to drop off at LAX and then use mass transit to make our way to LGB to fly to San Francisco. We did, though, have the pleasure of renting a Dodge Charger for the road trip portion of the adventure, although the accelerator response is a little weak. We also have the car for a bit less time than we had originally planned with budget, so our time is a bit crunched. But we left with the belief that we had overcome the greatest challenge of the trip.

Anton's Happy

But it drove fine. We went to the Hoover Dam!







And from there, we went to Nevada Solar One. Apparently they don't like visitors, so we ended up taking off pretty early, but we got an idea of the size of the project and the kinds of facilities a normal plant has. We ended this mumbo-jumbo around 2:30PM, PDT.





We then took off for Barstow, CA; 168 miles from Vegas. The trip was awesome. The desert was amazing, we both got to push the Charger to over 100 mph, and we saw great rock formations.







Additionally, we pulled into a general store run by a hardcore libertarian Ron Paulite, who had billboards and everything (though for a Paulite he was extremely laid back). Along with the radio programs, we realized that the Mojave area was full of "leave me alone, I'll leave you alone" sorts of folks, who Anton and I decided we quite appreciate.







We finally made it to Yermo (after me dozing off for half an hour, finally), and found it to be a creepy ghost town. Though The Solar Project (which we are actually invited to visit during its decommission) was visible, and we grew excited.






But. A moving train blocked our most obvious paved road, so we took a dirt road around. And, in a bout of incredible foolishness, I managed to navigate us right into a giant pile of sand, which happened to be a few miles away from any known locations with humans. And, of course, we were stuck, 150 feet into the soft stuff. After brief optimism, followed by brief panic, we got to work on un-stucking ourselves, including trying to use the mats for traction. The time was 6PM, PDT.






We found after a long while that the mats were not working, and we were just digging ourselves deeper. In fact, we realized that the chassis was sitting on the sand, and we were really in trouble. Though many would have called for help, we were paranoid of incredible costs, as well as on-the-record problems with rental companies. Plus, who could we call besides the police? We insisted on continuing to work on fixing it ourselves.

But the sun began to set. Our eyes filled with sand, as well as everything else we knew, including phones, wallets, clothes; everything outside. We dug by hand, by stick. We scouted for wooden planks (luckily, we were next to a train track) and started using those to try and give the damned car traction.







We kept a good, if panicked, attitude towards trying to get ourselves out. But the splinters and blisters started to add up, and we were making precious few inches if movement with every use of digging and planking. But our methods improved as the hours dragged on--even if our moods plummeted to desperation and terror. The sun finally set on us and Solar Two, so close nearby, as we continued to fight desperately with nature to try and free ourselves.





During this time, the sun set on Solar Two, and we resigned to visiting quickly during the morning. Our morale was also crushed by time, frustration, hard work, and a great deal of pain: we almost considered making a call out to get help. But we stuck with it, and finally, as we perfected our escape system, we emerged from the muck at 9:45, PDT--3 hours and 45 minutes of non-stop agony after we had gotten ourselves into it. Needless to say, we are tired, miserable, and behind-schedule. But, we emerged victorious--our resiliency, stubbornness, and ingenuity were able to defeat the seemingly insurmountable forces brought to bear by our own stupidity.

And now, we are in Barstow. Our eyes and fingers hurt a great deal; we are massively sleep-depped, and we have to wash the heck out of this car tomorrow morning lest our rentors start to catch on what the car's been through. But, luckily for us, things are just beginning. Tonight we will be short on sleep to make up for our previous errors; hopefully, we will be tired enough to catch up on shut-eye at the airport/airplane.

More to come later.