Froala

EARTH to Sky: The Hootenanny Begins

Monday, November 24, 2008 3:12 AM

We finally started!  Kate, Eli, and I had been down here for 5 days, staying at the HideAWay, and catching up with the locals and meeting new ones.  Our building team, led by Ricardo, consists of maestro Isidro, his son Ganzago, and two helpers Felipe and Arturo.  They arrived in the morning, and I shared with them the unfortunate reality that our site plan, developed by Jenille, had assumed the bathroom was free-floating.  But the bathroom actually installed by Jose Martin and his crew was quite fixed onto earth. So, after a couple days of consultation with Jenille about ways we could alter the site plan, we simply decided to move the bathroom. I was amazed, the crew took to the task, and within hours we’d up-rooted the bathroom, moved it 11 feet west.  We were able to lay foundation for the outside bathroom and improve its design with Ricardo’s input.  Then, we got the center points laid out for the Sunrise dome (no easy task - that requires skill, thank goodness Ricardo and Isidro have done this before), prepare bag and wire rolls for easy of use, get the water pump hooked up, connect to electricity from a neighbor (classic mexican solution of simply ‘tieing in’ to the neighbor’s meter - thanks Dave Moreland) and we were up and running - on our first day.   Dome layouts, water, power, and bathroom foundation done.  All in a day’s work!