Mary Panttaja

It’s gently snowing here again this morning. It is supposed to be warmer and sunny. Well, we’ll see. Slept fine because we have 110 electricity and ran the little electric heater pointed at our bed all night. Not sure what we are going to do today—biking in the snow might be a little dicey for us. It’s started to sit on the pavement.

Research seems to say that my MacBook Pro computer cannot be run off of DC power except on airplanes. Even though I bought an official Apple 12 volt cable for my machine. The issue is supposedly about the mag-safe connector. This would be a real downer and lead to much more troublesome solutions (like generators). Not that we’ve got the solar thing to work yet. There are some hacks posted, so we’ll see.

Jim and I are working on some collaboration tools. After some research (not extensive) we are setting up shared calendars and notebooks on Google. I haven’t been able to make Google Apps work yet. We’ll see how these work for us. We’re looking for something really light-weight and easy.

PS. It’s really snowing here. My goodness.

Well, it was too hot in Death Valley—and then there was the sand storm. So we thought to leave and head north up 395. (The 4 day dearth of power for my computer was another deciding factor—though we found one booth in the cafe at Furnace Creek that had an outlet. We were able to snag it once.)

Turns out that the weather has shifted out from under us and it is a delightful 78 in Death Valley today and in Mammoth it has been lightly snowing all morning and into the afternoon. It has just stopped as I type. Okay, the sun is partly out, but it’s in the forties and snow and light sleet have been the norm so far. It should improve tomorrow.

Meanwhile, we have enjoyed having power the last day.  (We stayed last night in Bishop, and would have stayed but they had a full booking of campers for the weekend—two swap sales and the second weekend of the trout fishing season.) I have posted several times and caught up on some email. I’m also researching if it is at all possible to power my computer with solar. (Seems like maybe not—that’s grim.) Jim has been catching up on something.

Hopefully we’ll get out on a bike ride though we’ll really have to bundle up.

I wanted to write about how I use and keep my travel notes. Of course, not all travel is noteworthy or note-requiring, and I don’t always keep notes. But this trip, as many others, is also about research—being in a place that my characters are going, or finding subjects/stories/illustrations for other writing. Here, as previously noted, we are following my characters John and Sara to a places that I haven’t been or places that I haven’t been in a while.

I take notes in a variety of formats:

• I type when I can, as now when we are driving and I have power. I’m known to pull the computer out and type three sentences and put it away.
• I write in a notebook when I can’t have power, as in my trek in Nepal or our raft trip in the Arctic. I have a medium size one and a tiny one depending on how much weight I want to carry. These notes are fun because you can discern my travel modality by the quality of my script. Driving in a car in Nepal gives one level of readability; riding an elephant through the jungle gives another. I love the physical visceralness of the marks on the page. I always smile at the notes I took riding the elephant Santi.
• Often writing is impractical and so when it’s a vision or an object I want to note I’ll take a picture with my digital camera. I can usually recreate my thoughts from the image. I have a couple of photographs of a wonderful girl in Kagbeni and some experiences of her life and how she might/will relate to Sarah’s coming trek. (Next book.) The photograph is all I need to pull it all back.
• I have been known to call home and leave myself a message. I own a digital recorder, but can’t find it. I would really want a system that transcribed it, for when I did a lot of dictation the transcribing part was too tedious to make it worthwhile. This is an area that would be useful to research as the technology is changing.
• Some moments all I can do is try to remember. This works about half the time; the other half of the time I lose whatever it was. Sometimes I make little numbered lists of thoughts to remember, hoping that a structure will help. Again, it only works sometimes. But sometimes you just have to trust that if the idea was useful, it will come again.

What’s the point of being anal about capturing notes? There is the obvious answer—so I don’t forget things that I have considered. But it feels a even more organic than that to me. I feel like it is part of the process of nuturing the updraft. All those ideas and images that are flowing to me are a part of something being created. Attention on my part is necessary. My part in the process is to bring these ideas and inspirations into form and the form they take, in this case, are words. I find that the more I work this edge of flowing ideas by being present and attentive, the more it flows. And forming them into words or images is the beginning of my work with them.

(I’ll add links when I have better connectivity.)
Jim grew up in the desert and we both tolerate/like heat so we come as often as we can. The last time we were in Death Valley was the one trip we ever took with Jonathan and not Erin. (She stayed to work at school that summer.) He had been ill with a mono-like virus most of the summer and we were car camping around in an easy fashion—on our way to or from the Las Vegas waterslide park.

• Most interesting fact for me at Scotty’s Castle was that Bessie, the woman of the house, was in the first freshman class at Stanford University and then transfered to Cornell where she met Albert Johnson. That was pre-1900. The Howard’s were Puritans.
• In a serious wind and sandstorm the popup trailer feels a little vulnerable so we opted to protect it by shutting it down and getting a room. Baths, air conditioning, and power to charge my computer were other benefits; though the swimming pool didn’t look so glamorous in 60 mile per hour winds. Trouble is that in a big windstorm, power is an iffy thing. Off and on, and off again.
• We don’t have the power thing figured out. We can keep the camper battery charged with the solar panel, but the regulator we have never thinks it has any extra for the computers—-a problem we need to solve. But we have to figure out whether our battery is weak-hearted, or the controller is overly cautious, or what. That’s an important ingredient in our being able to be offline—power independence. The campsites that are not powered are SO much better and to our liking. And we know how to take care of all of our needs except the power for the electronics. We have been short of connectivity in some of our campsites; Death Valley is general free of cell service as best we can tell. So that is another challenge, but not as limiting to continued work as the lack of power for the computers.
• I realize how important the ever-present-keyboard has come to my flow of work. When things are coming I really need the keyboard (and, of course, its computer) to be working and its become hard for me to cope with the flow of ideas without it. So the power thing is really crucial.
• I did find some new material, locations, and experiences for John and Sarah while they were here. Their experiences here are a crucial turning point and now I can make them more real. Noted in a paper notebook though.

Cycling Notes

• Monday rode from Lone Pine Campground to Movie Flats in The Alabama Hills. 10 minutes. Rode around Movie Flats for about 30 minutes in the sand and gravel. Then road back up to camp–90 minutes. For all the world, it looks relatively moderate. I was crushed-tired and close to needing a rescue. (Last half mile included leg cramps and a spontaeous asthma attack.)
• A Swedish traveler stopped to admire our bikes and turned us on the Magura Brakes—easier to work for the extra long downhills that European mountain cycling requires. Also these desert, basin and range rides.
• Today, Wednesday, rode up a similar but not so steep grade to Zabriski Point—an hour up and 15 minutes back. Much easier—today we went from -200 feet sea level. Monday we were at 6000 feet. Aha!
• Wind is at least as much trouble as hills. Together they are a formidable foe.
• At Furnace Creek (lowest spot in the Western Hemisphere) morning low today was 80 degrees but it didn’t get to 90 until after 10, leaving a good four hours of riding time if we wanted. Evenings are either too hot or too windy.