A Power Update

Tuesday, April 1, 2008 -- Springfield, OR

Wow! It's been a while since I sat down and wrote a post to the blog. Consider this short entry a catch-up post.

After little Evan surprised us all with his slightly early arrival, we shared Ryan-watching duties with Duane & Shirleen (Gage's Mom and Dad), and visited Andrea and Evan in the hospital. Evan was born Monday night and by Thursday morning both he and Mom were packing up to go home. They're both doing great. Ryan is handling this new-little-brother thing with aplomb, and Evan is gaining weight the way he should. It's too early to really predict, but based on early returns he's another good natured kid whose doing what he's supposed to be doing... eating, gaining weight, peeing and pooping, and sleeping... lots of sleeping... all with a minimum of fuss. Gage and Andrea make a good pair of parents too. They make it look easy.

With all of that getting back to normal, Dar and I have taken this week to head south to Springfield, OR (near Eugene) to have some solar panels installed on the roof of the camper. The company that's doing it is AM Solar, the leading solar system supplier to the RV industry. We drove down Monday and camped in AM Solar's yard at their new building so we'd be ready to go at 8am Tuesday morning... this morning.

The installation was a little more complicated than initially thought. Adding things like solar systems to existing RV's is rarely easy due to limited space to work and all the existing things that are already crammed into every corner, cabinet and crevice. But the team did a good job working through the issues and we should get it finished up early on Wednesday. I'm chomping at the bit to start making electric power from the sun.

We're staying here at Camp AM Solar again tonight, but hope to be on our way to the coast by mid-day tomorrow. The weather seems like it's going to give us another couple days of sun (which is full of electrical energy, you know). It's been so long since we've been on the Oregon Coast that we're really looking forward to walking with bare feet in that cold surf until we loose all feeling and turn blue. Oh, it'll be great.

T