So for the last 24 hours the only power I have had access to has been either the POS solar setup or the Cigarette lighter from Trea. I can charge my phone but that’s about it. I haven’t run the laptop in over two days so I have been doing what computing I need either at work or on my smartphone. I still have my portable radio which I use on batteries, so I at least have some music.
The fridge hasn’t been running since like Tuesday which means that everything in there is room temperature. Some stuff will be fine, like: Mayo, Ketchup, processed cheese, soda, and the artificial coffee creamer to name a few.
What will not survive is the milk and/or (what was) frozen meat. I had a few frozen burgers that I was going to BBQ up but never got around to. That has go to, along with perhaps my lunch meat and milk, both of which I just bought.
Most of my food is the dry/canned food variety, so I will not starve. I will pick up some wieners and barbeque some hot dogs out in Banff this weekend. I will make the best of this and just carry on.
It’s funny, most people see going to a campsite as a chance to get away from civilisation, I see it as a chance to get back to a small portion of it: namely in the form of power and water.
While the AC power from the campsite are charging Wanda (I will monitor this), I will be setting up my new 100 Watt solar panel and charge controller to charge up Ace. I will test to make sure that it works and can charge something up, as next week it will be put to work during all daylight hours.
The plan is to have ‘Big Boy’ (my name for the 100 Watt solar panel) charge up Ace while I am at work. Then when I get to where I will be parked for the night, have him charge up Wanda. That should keep her batteries topped up.
I bought a butane powered soldering iron so not only I can make the connections with regards to Big Boy but also so I can inspect the repairs I made to the cable coming from Trea. It is possible that my connection repairs wasn’t done quite right because I was trying to solder 12 Gauge wire with a 25 watt soldering iron. This is not something I recommend, as it does not give off enough heat to compensate for the heat that the thick wire wicks away.
A friend of mine was talking to me via Facebook and text yesterday and reminded me of the Law of Attraction. She warned me of the dangers of focussing too much on debt as that is all that I will attract. IE: Whatever you focus on is what you will get.
I reminded her (and myself) that this journey is and always has been about freedom: financial freedom in the form of needing less cash flow to survive. I want and need to get to a point where I need less cash to live.
What started me on this journey was the realization that my lifestyle was not enjoyable or sustainable. My cash flow sucked or rather my costs were too high. What woke me up and struck fear in me was the thought of what would happen if I lost my job. I would be ruined as I had no savings and bills that were too high to be paid working at McDonalds. That was when I decided that I needed to lower the comfort and cost of my lifestyle to deal with the monkey on my back of debt once and for all.
When the credit cards are dealt with and I have a small nest egg in the bank, then I can do what I want to do. I know now that given favourable temperatures I could live in Wanda indefinitely. I want to be able to work in the film industry, not in my current job. My current target to start do to this is April 1, 2016.
I know that life can and will toss me a curve ball. In a year or two I may find myself in some wildly different situation than I am now or ever imagined. That’s the fun of life isn’t it; you never really know what is going to come your way. All you can do is just roll with it, deal with it, and move on.
No comments:
Post a Comment