Just Chillin

[senorsalvia]

Ha!!!   A friend of mine offered me a glance at the paper this morning (which I declined)  as this communitys paper is pathetic...  He smirked and said "look on the front page"  I grabbed the rag and Lo and behold; another aticle on the 'plight' of the homeless...  Yeah, yeah, blah, blah...  They do this every year around the holidays and cold season...   But,,,,  this was really funny... Seems the local shelter facility is way overcrowded, has 50-75 peeps a night sleepin outside on concrete with thin mats, a sleeping bag...So, the powers that be asked the local rehab place if they could utilize their unused 50 or so beds....  Seems the detox facility won't allow homeless folks to be there because they are city chartered to provide one security staffer for every 25 residents and they don't have the monies to provide security...  So this one homeless advocate decides to rent a big party tent, set it up on the detox grounds and accomodate the 50 or so overflow homeless from the local shelter....  He then decides to show his solidarity toward the homies by sleeping out in the tent with them....  now, hears what cracked me up...  The guy checked himself into the hospital the next morning and asked to be treated for hyperthermia....   Now, I guess its sorrowful that the guy had hyperthemia and all, but yours truly is sleepin under the foundation of an abandoned house with a comforter I drug out of a dumpster and I manage to stay reasonably comfortable.....Guess 'comfort' is a relative concept eh :lol:

[judih]

glad you're comfortable with your current shelter - sounds like living for real is far different than trying it out for a night. Wonder what that particular dude's next gesture might be. Perhaps something that'll keep him warm enough to survive a night.

glad you're okay, senor.
we are so much what we get through our DNA but a lot of how we're raised (some say 50/50 - some argue with that and say that DNA is a lot less important than environment)

one thing's for sure - we can only deal with what we got to deal with - and hopefully get better at it

[laughingwillow]

Dang, sal... That's roughing it, bruddah. Stay warm.

lw

[JRL]

Sal, you are tougher than me, old buddy.

Judih, meeting TJ's birth family has been an exercise in nature vs. nuture. DNA is powerful!

[senorsalvia]

---  Nah man, it's really not that hard..  I mean, sure it gets depressing and abjectly boring at times; what without a radio etc, but then there are those times when hearing gunshots a block away, sirens going off, people screaming , glass breaking; hey now, how can one get too bored :wink: ----  About that homeless advocate..  He has vowed to make it his mission to buy a few portable heaters to offer to the homeless coalition...  I think that's pretty cool really..  I just can't help grinning about the guy feeling so cold....  :roll:

[Avery L. Breath]

Yeah, what do yah do.  I always thought if I was ever homeless again, I'd try my hand at a carboard construction geodesic dome.  I figured if they could withstand all the rain and wind at burningman with just a coat of paint on em, it'd be better then nothing.

http://www.fetchaphrase.com/dome/index.html

[dendro]

Stay warm, senor...

I built a comfy tent big enough for the whole family with a wide blade bush knife and giant bamboo, founded on leveled rocks, two long rails and cross flooring lashed down, corner posts beamed together, with cross braced end walls and a ridge beam. Roof and floor 8 recycled fridge boxes, with extra rafters and lashings of recycled phone cable. More cardboard tacked to the frame makes walls. The whole thing covered with the only cash expense, a large sheet of black plastic draped to the ground and weighted with rocks. Not needed, but add any recycled doors and windows you can find for the ends.

Dry, sturdy, wind and rain proof, easy to ventilate and close up with end flaps, clean, roomy. Insta Fale (Polynesian house), Takes about three days to move in, including time for finding and hauling the recycled materials. Yeah a car is needed for this type of thing. Can be built in a day.

Made another out of tree trunks instead of bamboo, post butts can be placed on rocks or sunk into dirt. Recycled pallets covered with recycled doors topped with fridge boxes made a floor, with some recycled mattresses for comfort. 10' wide by say 15' long. Fast, cheap, weather and critter proof shelter, no power tools needed.

I'm no stranger to extended car camping, kids and all. Squatted in coffee land shacks in the sixties and seventies, worked the nuts and berries and birds (mac nuts, coffee berries and chicken farm). But Hawaii is pretty warm, and we were young then. Couldn't do it today, of course.

[Amomynous]

Dendro, pictures please!

[laughingwillow]

amom: Photos of den? You should check out his backyard, mon. Heaven on eoith.......

sal: I hear what you are saying concerning the advocates ability to take the cold. I grew up sleeping in a bedroom on the nw corner of a house that had no heat source in that particular room. The window next to my bed usually had about 1/3 inch of ice on the INSIDE of the glass during the winter and I would shut my door at night. Nothing like jumping into a cold bed and feeling the process of your body taking over and warming up that space. I still definitely sleep better in a cool room, although mrs lw is the opposite. So I end up sweating under a sheet on one side of the bed while she burrows under a blanket and comforter and shivers..

lw

[senorsalvia]

Great to hear you've constructed a few of your own dwellings Dendro, brah..  The way you describe it, is much like I've envisioned doing..  The only problem I see as per my own situation, is that I can't find a place that is off the beaten path enough to actually allow me to squat on the land and throw up such a dwelling...  I'm inching towards moving to somewhere in the southwest, as I would assume In such 'wide open spaces', I could in fact get away with erecting such a cool domocile...  That, and, uhhh, the fact that alot of the western states have opted for allowing Med MJ, seems to be a locale I'd be interested in :smoke:3 -----Hey Willah,,,  I've seen that deo-dome link before..  Pretty cool huh?  It's really amazing what can be done with such minimal material if one chooses to forego living in the western burbs sort of mentality and dependence on all the materialistic trappings eh??....Ah yeah, where's  that Thoreau fella when 'ya need him!!!----

[dendro]

This is the first one I made. Forgot that I even used recycled plastic on this one, thus part black/part clear. Clear can be good if you want more light inside for any reason, just move some cardboard, window! This one has a bamboo/cardboard floor.

Three years later I made a better one on Kauai, but sadly no pics-we moved quickly to a shack on a river near a beach.

Senor, it is true that location is a big issue with this sort of thing. Both places, I had permission from friends to build, the one in the pics is in a mac nut orchard. And I had access to forest materials and town junk. The Kauai one was in an old unused pasture in which I had purchased an acre.

In the SW, there is a lot of desert. Can be a harsh climate. But you might find a place just off the radar, if you look around. Lotta migrants crawling everywhere in CA and the border states, so Nevada or Utah might be a good choice. I would build a modified hogan type structure, dug into the earth. Better yet, find and improve a cave.

I read recently of a guy who lives without cash in a cave near Moab (I think) Utah. He scavenges the town, eats and drinks from the wild, never touches money. Just find a cave near a spring .  :mrgreen:

If you have a little cash and the inclination, there is always the old standby: old camper truck. The west is big!  :e_biggrin:

[dendro]

[judih]

imagining the images - but truth is, there's no image, dendro

senor sal, i'm glad to see you - heard about the earthquake over at naples, florida and wondered if you'd been shaken.

[dendro]

Hmmm, judih, images are there for me, but maybe because they are .png files instead of jpeg, they are not visible to all? --I will switch them to jpeg, and they should be thumbnailed too, unlike these .png's.

[SvenZ]

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Maybe try hosting them at a 3rd party site? tinypic.com  or imageshack.us