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The Plan

IN MARCH, 2010 (exact date to be determined), we will drive from Boston to FAR west Texas, in Big Bill Fromzy (a 92 Chevy S-10 pick up truck), which will be towing the CROWLEY MONITOR 2 COMMAND CENTER, a 1975 Moniter 2 travel trailer. We may (hopefully) have another vehicle by then, or have a few other non-migratory folk heading down with us to help out for any period of time from a week to a month.

WE PLAN ON LIVING IN THE TRANS-PECOS REGION OF THE CHUHUAHUAN DESERT FOR A MINIMUM OF ONE YEAR. It is entirely possible that some or all of us will have created a life for ourselves down there, and may remain for longer, possibly much longer. Possibly forever. This sort of thing is impossible to tell at this point.

Herein this page, I will attempt to outline the basic plan once we arrive. This is only a write up of things that are necessary, to create the infrastructure which will allow us to thrive as the independent, creative, artistic and productive Homo sapiens which we believe ourselves to be. This specific node will not describe our broader goals, our personal interests and projects, or collaborative ideas and concepts. This is the raw plan, without add ons.

It must be noted that this has been unilaterally written by Gene, to simply get it out there, but since this text has not been a collaborative effort, it is certainly subject to change. I am basing this off of the conversations and planning meetings that have already taken place.

Before hand, there is a good amount of work that has to be accomplished.

  • Getting the land surveyed. This is the final hurtle we have besides actually going down and living there. This should be done in the next few months. This will cost under a thousand dollars. It is something we have considered doing ourselves, but after giving it our best shot last summer, it really is not as easy as you think it is. It turns out, you cannot just show up in the middle of the desert with google earth, a few area maps and an $80 gps device from amazon and expect to survey land. You need professional equipment and know-how, and with a project like this, we don't want to accidentally overstep into property that is not ours.
  • Raising as much money as possible, we want to start out with as much initial capital as humanly possible. Outside of this webpage, we'll be looking into grants and other types of non-commercial sponsorship.
  • Trying to find a second free or dirt cheap car or vehicle.
  • Souping up Big Bill Fromzy and the Crowley Monitor 2 Command Center, Big Bill will require additional leaf springs, struts, and a tune up, while the command center needs to be sterilized from it's previous owners' admitted sexing, and turned into the most bad ass command center ever known to exist. Additionally, sway bars will need to be installed for smoother towing.
  • Acquire huge amounts of non-perishable food items, such as canned vegetables, and rice, pasta and beans, among others.
  • Ongoing research, knowledge collection. We plan to show up with as much literature and bindered printouts as can possibly be justified.

When we first arrive, the land will be already surveyed, and we will pick a corridor to drive our vehicles onto the land, which will be used as our drive way for the duration of our stay. Once plotted, we will find the most elevated spot on the property (so that when it does rain, there will be less of a chance of flooding), and park the CROWLEY MONITOR 2 COMMAND CENTER, finding a permanent resting place. We will have to spend a good deal of time clearing out brush, making a clearing to set up shop when we first arrive, so we can install the following initial components over the course of a couple of months (give or take a month).

COMPONENTS:

  • CROWLEY MONITOR 2. Our travel trailer command center. Now, we're not going to sleep in this thing. We're not doing all of this work to just go down to a piece of land in Texas and just be people living in a trailer on a piece of land. There's nothing wrong with that, but it is not exactly what we're trying to achieve. But such a travel trailer can serve many purposes as a command center;
    • STORAGE. This is where we can store food and sensitive equipment where the elements and critters cannot easily penetrate.
    • WATER. Although we will be getting a gigantic 1200 gallon water tank, this already has a large 50 gallon water tank, and water could be routed through this pre-existing system of plumbing fairly easily. 
    • ELECTRICAL. This is already set up to work with a generator, it already has a large inverter, and would be a safe place to keep our battery bank when we set up a windpower or solar station.
    • FOOD PREPERATION. Although we envision cooking outside more often, it has a three burner stove, an oven, and hook ups for a fridge or freezer, perfect for cooking if there is  a dust storm.
    • AN OFFICE. With electricity, and a table that seats four, this will be where we edit and create and write most of the content for this site, among other projects.
    • OBSERVATION DECK. WE CAN CLIMB ON TOP OF IT FOR ALL OF OUR NEFARIOUS, ELEVATED PURPOSES.


    although already fairly bad ass looking, it will transform

  • COMMUNICATIONS. We will, absolutely, need to have the ability, at the very least, to be able to call emergency services in the event of an emergency. 
    • CELL PHONES. Reception is spotty, but it is around. It seems the best reception can be found around dead animals; perhaps the methane being released is a natural reception booster, who knows. We can acquire cell phone signal boosters, which enhance cell phone reception.
    • CB RADIO. This also has an emergency channel, which can be used in emergencies, if cell phone fails.
    • WALKIE TALKIES. Each person should have one on to the same channel, but to be used sparingly, in the cases of "OMG COME MEET ME I FOUND SOMETHING AWESOME" or "OMG A SNAKE JUST BIT OFF MY LEG".
    • SATELLITE INTERNET. There has been much debate among us for a while about whether we should have the internet or not down there. As great as it is, one of the things we are trying to get away from is being victims of convenience, an aspect of which is lazing around, being cradled by the internet. Ultimately though, we have decided that it is necessary, to continue bringing you content, and to try to create revenue. It will be invaluable for further research and communication with people who really know what they're doing. It will also be a much, much easier process to fill internet orders for parts or things we need not available in our area. Our internet connection down there, will be different from what we experience up here in normal Bostony civilization though. Satellite internet is not cheap. Satellite internet ranges from $40 - $80 a month, with limits on how much can be downloaded and uploaded. On the cheaper end, we would have to ration our video and content uploads, in fear of exceeding our limits each month. That could be ok though. It may depend on you, our viewers, and your contributions and store purchases, to keep our internet going. The point is though, the internet would no longer just be something we could laze our days away with, we would have no wireless, we would have to be in our COMMAND CENTER, laptops physically plugged in, while being aware of our bandwith limitations. We wouldn't really just be able to fuck around on facebook and youtube like we once were. Strictly business.
  • PAVILION. This is a key structure we are going to build. A large, 20 foot by 50 foot rooftop, the command center supporting one end. This will provide a great deal of shade, a garden along the area that recieves sunlight for a only a portion of each day (which will mean plants will have a chance to get GREEN), and an assortment of camping chairs. This is also pivotal for our rain catchment system, which will be described below.
  • RAINHARVESTING. This gets a little complicated. There are two facets of this. Later, these will be more fleshed out in a rainharvesting section of the site.
    • RAINWATER CATCHMENT SYSTEM. The pavillion is an integral part of this. A roof that is 20 feet by 50 feet equals, 1000 square feet. For every inch of water that falls from the sky, 600 gallons will fall in this area. Annually, it rains (on average) 11 inches each year in Lobo Valley, which equals 6600 gallons of potential water which will fall, for free, from the sky, on our pavillion. A good rain catchment system should be able to capture ~550 gallons of this water per inch of rainfall. The purpose for this, of course, is potable water. This system needs a few basic things to work;
      • GUTTERS. The reason for this is clear, to collect the rainwater running off of the roof.
      • FIRST FLUSH SYSTEM. This is a system that collects and dumps the first 5 or 10 gallons of water, which contains whatever nasties and dust particles that have collected on the roof.
      • FILTERS. The first filter is just to try and filter out any dust and random particles that may try to get into our tank of water. The second filter, is undecided upon. This my be a uv radiating filter, or a simple carbon filter, or a reverse osmosis filter. It could be that we have a constant flow plumping system to filter our water, or it could be that we filter water in large batches. It is unclear at this point exactly what we will use.
      • WATER TANK. Giant 1200 gallon water tank to house the water. When we first arrive on our land, we will hire a water company to come and fill it halfway, so that we will instantly have potable water to work from.
      • WATER PUMP. Whether electric or manual, we will need one.

        an example of a rain catchment system, image borrowed from thefarm.org
    • LANDSCAPE RAINHARVESTING. This is an age old process of transforming a landscape, so that rainwater doesn't just run off, and instead permeates your landscape. As I mentioned before, an inch of rain on a 20 foot by 50 foot structure (1000 square feet) equals 600 gallons of water. If this is true, then imagine the amount of rain that would fall on a five acre piece of land, with 11 inches of rain annually! There are many methods to capturing this free resource. I will list a few of the basic principles;
      • PUNCTURING THE LANDSCAPE. With a spiked rolly bar towed behind a truck, it is possible to puncture 5 - 10 inch holes all over an area of land, which water will fall into, permeating the landscape.
      • DEPRESSIONS. One easy example of this I can give you, is what we plan to do with the mesquite trees which dot our land. If you dig a depression around each tree that extends a few feet from the width of the branch cover, and lay down mulch (random debris), water will trickle in, and give this tree a lot more water then if this depression hadn't been created. Mesquite trees, given the right amount of water, can grow up to six feet a year. This can be used for any number of plants, with depressions of all sizes. Interconnected slides and tunnels of water, leading from depression to depression on an incline, can produce a lot of growth.
      • DAMS. If you climb up any rock face, you can easily notice that along each rock outcropping that water would be forced to hit and divert around, there is plant growth. This basic, natural principle can be introduced into any landscape.
  • POWER GENERATORS. We will need electricty, at the very very minimum, to power our cell phones, walkie talkies and cb radio. The CROWLEY MONITOR 2 COMMAND CENTER will be able to process our energy output, with a battery bank, it's power inverter, and it's pre-existing electrical system.
    • WIND POWER. There is an ample supply of wind, and wind generators are cheap(ish). If we wanted to buy a system, we could have a 400 watt wind tower set up for about $500. We could make our own for $200 - $300.
    • SOLAR POWER. This is a bit pricier then wind power per watt. HOWEVER, it would be nice to have an arsenal of all types of energy, if one fails, then we'll have the other (without having to resort to running our decayed dinosaur fossil fueled vehicles).
    • VEHICLES. We can hook up our vehicles to the battery bank as generators, and charge them up by idling our batteries. This isn't ideal, but a good back up.
    • GAS GENERATOR. I only list this because we do, in fact, own a gas generator. It is noisy, dirty, smelly, not efficient, and so pollutive it is not even approved by the environmental protection agency under Bush's administration. It is the least ideal thing to use, but it will be there, just in case.

THIS IS IT! THIS IS DEFINITELY IT! THE BASE PLAN. It is not set in stone, we may discover different approaches, or scrap entire aspects all together. BUT WE ARE GOING TO GIVE IT OUR BEST SHOT. Continue on to the next section to learn more about our project.