Blank Canvas Finally Ready

It's on!  Construction has begun. So here's the first load of metal, thanks to Mike's resourcefulness:

Pallet racks: the perfect mutant ship building material

The long racks are going into the warehouse space, but the shorter ones are 7 feet long and will make up the upper deck area of the ship.  So instead of doing the cab-over framework, the deck will be constructed first, probably next Saturday once some additional materials are purchased since we have only the uprights.  And the next great find: smokestack material!  Magically some large 55 gallon barrel type containers made out of cardboard showed up next to the dumpster.  Painted red with a big white stripe (maybe) and placed on the upper deck, one more detail is figured out.  The advantage of these is that they're super light and that'll help to keep the weight down.  I may have to rig up some kind of framework inside, they're so light.  The next order of business today was to measure the rig.

Ghost view from the side, steeper descent angle.

I'm really starting to enjoy this process, whereas earlier in the year it terrified me.

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.  You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."  – Eleanor Roosevelt

The biggest question I had was if I'd find the time to build it, not if I could do it.  Now I know for sure -- it will be buildable in time for Burning Man.  I spent last weekend at Lightning in a Bottle festival and no longer feel any need to do other camping trips or festivals until August. 5 days of camping and partying will do that. Elesium was canceled. After I got back from LiB, I sold my Electric Daisy Carnival ticket on stubhub and actually made a little money on it.  And now I have every summer weekend free to build stuff!  If I just pick away at little projects, before I know it the whole thing will be finished.  Summer in California is going to be great.

I finally got all the California registration bs finished and got my license plate and stickers.  In case you never knew, the little two digit number stickers on the side of commercial vehicles indicate how much weight the truck and trailer can weigh.  I got "15", which means 15,000 pounds, and actually could have paid an additional $140 to get a "20". I don't figure I'll be pulling a fully loaded 12,000 lb truck with a 6,000 pound trailer, which is the maximum the truck is rated to pull.  If someone needs the truck to pull a heavy trailer like that, by all means they can pay the extra to get the updated registration (or pay the fine).  Thanks to the DMV, I had to learn about weigh stations and pulled into an official California Weighmaster with the truck empty.  It weighs 5,960 lb completely empty, so that means I can load it up with 2.5 tons of stuff.  Anyway, I got my stickers!

So what's next?  More collaboration!  If you love your work, it is supposed to be fun.  I am still trying to figure out how to make that happen at my place of employment, but with this project, it's not work.  I am meeting people that want to contribute in their own way, and want to extend an open invitation to others to help in whatever way they feel like.  This is the vision I had for the project all along.  Everyone wins when everyone does what they feel like doing.  It all comes together so effortlessly.  I'm sure at some point I'll have to do something I don't want to do (like the DMV nonsense), but with an eye on the process and the eventual goal, it'll all get done.  So if you want to build some part of this, or have an idea you want to see become real, talk to me!  I know what I can do; you know what you want to do.  Let's find the happy medium where everything meshes.