Thursday, April 28, 2011 - Sewemup Mesa Canyon, Gateway CO
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Boondocked, Sewemup Mesa, Gateway CO, April 28, 2011
I'm Losing it
Broken Generator Mount, April 28, 2011
Hoo boy, this looks like trouble. I noticed a new creak as I went over a bump pulling into a roadside Point of Interest back in Uravan CO. The pan the generator mounts to cracked and is threatening to drop it on the road. Nineteen years and 130,000 miles have revealed a weak spot in design of the pan. Behind the break is a large rectangular hole for the cooler (that thing you see hanging below the pan to the left of the break) that extends almost to the turned up and now broken lip of the pan.
I can't see any reasonably simple way to stabilize this break out here in the boonies. I need a welding shop - or failing to find one, maybe with some hardware from a Home Depot or Lowes I can jury-rig a temporary fix. In the mean time I don't think a complete drop-the-generator-in-the-road failure is imminent. I hope not. It's 90 miles from Uravan to Grand Junction - with some luck I'll find a welding shop enroute.
Night camp
Boondocked - Sewemup Mesa Canyon, Gateway CO
- Verizon cell phone and EVDO service - no signal
- Locate Sewemup Mesa Canyon on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Disaster and the Failure of Authority
Disasters are almost by definition about the failure of authority, in part because the powers that be are supposed to protect us from them, in part also because the thousand dispersed needs of a disaster overwhelm even the best governments, and because the government version of governing often arrives at the point of a gun. But the authorities don't usually fail so spectacularly. Failure at this level requires sustained effort. The deepening of the divide between the haves and have nots, the stripping away of social services, the defunding of the infrastructure, mean that this disaster—not of weather but of policy—has been more or less what was intended to happen, if not so starkly in plain sight.
The Uses of Disaster Rebecca Solnit, Harpers.org, September 9, 2005