The Blue Shelter

After searching and searching for good materials here in India I finally pulled the trigger and ordered some goods from DIYGearSupply and Thru-Hiker.

Bag of goodies

My Goal is to create a 9x9 tarp, a bivy bag, a 32* sleeping bag, and an insulated vest.  The tarp seemed like the biggest and easiest so I started there.

So starting out I needed to decide on a plan.  I primarily based my design and procedures on the instructions found on DIYGearSupply.  I really wanted a catenary cut hex tarp but with the reality of camping mostly on the ground in this neck of India I decided that the square tarp was the most flexible and would work with the hammock, just not as sweet as the hex tarp.  I'm also planning a trip up into the Himalayas sometime this year so the hex tarp's usefulness is further diminished for my current situation.  See ya later sexy, here comes Mr. Utilitarian.

So first what I did was created a layout using the tiles on the ground and some masking tape.  Once I had it all measured out then I marked it with a sharpie.  A not of caution with silnylon, if you mark something, you will be able to see it forever from both sides.  I have a few marks for the tie-out reinforcements that I will be reminded of for perpetuity but as my first big project I'm okay with that.

After laying out the sil I cut out the reinforcement triangles out of the 200D nylon.  Then I got nervous and decided to make a stuff sack.  Electric blue wasn't my initial color selection but they had ran out of grey the day before I ordered and didn't have it until the week after I ordered.  Not very stealthy but as a white guy backpacking in India I'm probably not going to blend in too well anyway.

Tent stake stuff sack with some of the trimmings.

 I had read so much about how slippery the silnylon is and what a pain to sew so I wanted to test out my skilz.  It actually sewed pretty similar to the thin polyester I'm using to make my kids hammocks so it wasn't too bad.  I just had to go slow and pin a lot.  By pin a lot I mean use a lot of binder clips and bobby pins.  The bobby pins were great.  They were light, held the material securely and I didn't have to worry about punching holes in what will hypothetically be my rain cover and a frigid, tempest swept mountain side.

Not perfect but much better than I expected.

After I had marked out my tarp I cut it with my 100 rs soldering iron.  It did a great job at cutting and heat-sealing the fabric but I needed a 3rd hand to do it accurately.  I stayed pretty close to my black line so I'm happy with it.  First I made the hybrid felled/french seam to get the 2 main tarp halves together.  I was very happy with the way the center seam turned out.

Thankfully I have young kids to supply my hem edger.

 Then it was simply just putting the re-enforcement triangles where I wanted my tie outs and hem it up with a rolled hem.  I followed this article in relation to tarp set ups.  I went with 5 tie outs on each side (corner, quarter, mid, quarter, corner).  Once I had that set up I got sick and let the project sit for a week or so.  The next phase was definitely my least favorite.  Taking down the corners and putting the tie-outs down with the included D-rings.  I don't really enjoy repetitive work, which is all this was for that period of time.  Eventually, however, it was over and I had a near completed tarp.  I tied on some guy-lines and my tarp is now practically finished.  I still plan on some tie-outs on the sides and down the ridgeline to give me the most headroom/flexibility/storm worthiness.

Tomorrow on my morning run at the park I'm going to attempt to pitch BS with my trekking poles just because I want to.  I've been super happy how things turned out.  I think we're looking at about 8 hours of layout and sewing but it is hard to tell as it was done over a multitude of days.  Gear construction is a lot like machining.  3/4 of the time is spent laying out, planning, prepping.  Only about a quarter of the time is actually wielding the thread injector.  I'll post some pics if I get a chance to pitch the BS in the near future.  Off the Top Quilt!

Couldn't resist the opportunity for a campout in the living room.

The Art of Adventure

A shortly upcoming blog will focus on my newly arrived bag of goodies from DIY-Gear Supply and Thru-Hiker.  I have all sorts of high-tek insulation and fabrics to construct some wonderful camping goodies.  A 9x9 tarp, bivy sack, quilt, and ultralight vest are on the bill as I prepare for the possibility for a week long trek in the Himalayas later this year.  Adventure has always been a ethereal concept for me.  I love to be outdoors in the piney woods.  I love the hidden life concealed in the chaparral of yuccas and Joshua Trees.  I love the majestic beauty of sand-dunes and the limitless expanse of the ocean at sunset.  I've never, however, been a fan of heights and going anywhere approaching high speeds.  I burned out the brake pads of my bike at least 5 times faster than my friends.  One of our common weekend rituals was to ride down the steepest hills in our neighborhood or the sharp cut terraces of the Southern California landscape being scarred into suburbia.  It is strange how as a kid those hills seemed so steep as you were frantically squeezing the brakes and feeling the panic ride up within you as you tried to look cool and confident screeching down the asphalt decline to road burn hell.  As an adult I have revisited those hills and realized not only are they scary steep and I was too easily influenced by my peers.  My friends loved flying down those hills on their bikes or sitting atop a skateboard doing poor man's street luge.  I was continually horrified and in my panic often bailed at the worst and most painful time.  Knowing the limitations of my impaired coordination and obese pre-adolescent frame adventure to me was humiliating and more often than not physically painful.

During my memorable 5 month stint with the boy scouts I was shocked at how difficult it was to backpack and canoe with the other kids.  Now I am shocked that not only did I fit so much junk in my backpack but that I was able to carry it at all.  I loved being outside, I love being remote, I just don't respond well to dangerous situations.  As I nerd I have decided that education and what I carry between my ears relieves some of those fears and mitigates the opportunity for disaster.  Nothing that I carry in my brain, however, will make jumping out of a helicopter with a set of skis on a remote mountaintop alluring to me.  You let me grow out a beard and hermit in the mountains with a few like-minded people and I am in nerdboy heaven.

I love the idea of loving dangerous adventure.  I watch lots of documentaries, play extremely exiting miniature games, and die horrible gory deaths on violent video games.  I love to vicariously experience danger and mimic that elusive co-existent virtue: courage.  I want to out danger Bear Grills in a Risk Off.  I want to be a man who faces his life, from the adventurous to the mundane, with dignity and courage.  I want to stand firm in the face of the boar of life.  As a nerd in the IT world my cubicle doesn't allow me many opportunities at dangerous adventure.  I think many of us in the professional world have allowed our safe lives to wear down our capacity for courage.  Suddenly our big risks involve office politics and meeting quotas.  Just as living in the 3rd world redefines one's use of the word "poor," particularly in a self-inflected sense, so living without adventure atrophies our sense of personal courage.

Something deep within me has decided that 2014 is the beginning of a more adventurous life.  I will put myself in a place to view nature in all of her exposed beauty.  I will allow for opportunities for catastrophic failure.  I will allow myself the opportunities for real and measurable success.  I'm totally stoked about the chance to go into the highest mountain range in the world.  But I am more exited to live a life that exposes itself to real risk with only the protective hand of God surrounding me.  To lay aside the safe way of life that threatens to not only corrode my sense of courage but to force me into a small life.

I have often thought that relationships are like a diagram of a wave.  If it stays constantly in the middle there is no opportunity for hurt below the line.  But that also forces a limit on the opportunity for love.  The last 10 years of my life I have been married to the world's most wonderful woman.  in the beginning of our relationship it was very difficult for me to transition from a chain of broken hearts in high-school to risking total and utter devastation by becoming involved with a woman that I was falling truly and irrevocably in love with.  It was the greatest risk of my life.  Taking that risk, embracing the pain and insecurity of those early days has lead me to a life of greater fulfillment than I could ever have imagined before I met her.  She has given me 3 beautiful children and raised them to be pretty close to perfect kids.  The greatest risk has lead to the greatest payoff.  Now, on the verge of my 30th year of life, I am finally ready to live life with the same kind of abandon.  To finally step forward into a life that allows for triumphs and defeats.  The same life has left me stressed and seeing my failures as daunting and my obligations overwhelming because there are no balancing victories.  There is very little that I have truly had to battle for.  Nothing that carries the inherent value of a trophy smeared with one's own blood washed clean only be sweat and tears.

Alea iacta est

Or for you nerds out there:

Dovie'andi se tovya sagain

Who is with me?

3rd Times the Charm

For unto me a child is born.  This week my wife delivered child number three.  I was pretty nervous to begin this journey well as I pretty well botched this stage with the other two.  I've never been much of a baby guy.  When my first was born I was somewhat surprised in the days following that she was, in fact, a baby.  I was expecting a small human but a newborn was a shock.  A lot of the dads around me told me their favorite stage of being a dad was holding that newborn sleeping on their chest those first few months.  I didn't get it.

I did not love my daughter on first site.  She was family but it was not the kind of immediate paternal affection I was expecting.  As horrible and selfish as it sounds I did not really begin to really connect to her as a daughter until she could begin doing things for me.  Smile, laugh, call me papa.  I knew it was wrong, I knew it was selfish and shallow so I was going to do it totally different on number 2.  I was going to hold the child, interact with the child, bond with the child.  Then number 2 came.

Number 2 had the cards stacked against him.  I was still not magically transformed into a baby guy.  The same other fathers kept asking me how wonderful it was to hold that little sleeping baby.  I hardly did it so I didn't have a good answer.  It was kind of weird and made me slightly uncomfortable inside?  I felt squirmy and wanted to pass off the baby first chance I had.  At the time I was also dealing with a few back to back concussions and their accompanying migraines.  The pitch of my son's cry was like a wedge splitting my bruised brain in twain.  It was hard to love a little flesh ball that did nothing but hurt my brain and poop.  My daughter took a while when she was in the "mommy" stage, but with the boy something was different.  There was a wall between us as he developed.

As my son grew I began to project on him all of the weaknesses that I saw in myself.  It took our wounded fledgling relationship and killed it.  I was angry at the little guy because he was part me.  I don't know why his masculinity threatened my own but I was afraid that I would raise a son who would end up a semi-man like myself.  I wanted to make him strong so he wouldn't have my weakness and came very close to breaking the bond we should have had as father and son.

When my son was 18 months old I decided that I had to change.  This was my son and I had to take the steps to break down the walls that I had allowed to grow between him and me.  He was a toddler and his interaction with me was a reflection of my interaction with him.  His lack of affection for me had caused me to draw further away and I had a serious paternal emergency on my hands.  I made a conscious decision to commit to love my son.  I had committed to love my wife on our wedding day, I had vowed myself to her.  Maybe I was a compassionless jerk.  Maybe something was broken in me.  That no longer mattered.  I was going to love my son, pour myself into my son, even if he never returned it.  I was not a father so I could be loved.  I was a father so that I could love.  I would seek him out, pursue him, spend time with him even if I never got a smile.  Even if he never gave me a hug.  Even if he never left the "mommy" stage I was going to love him aggressively.  I was going to be the best father I could be independent of how my son interacted with me.

It did not take very long until I had a little shadow.  My little buddy would snuggle up with me when we were watching a movie when before he would have sat at the other side of the couch.  When I went to the store he wanted to come with me.  When I leave for work he runs to the door demanding a hug before I egress.  Now he wants to be a tinker and work with me on my motorcycle.  Our relationship very quickly and dramatically reversed.

This week my third child has come and I have already committed to love him and care for him.  Through sickness and health.  Affection and frustration.  Blessing and pain.  I actually want to hold the little man and I stare into his face with a heart already filled with love.  I can actually feel some of what is reflected on my wife's beautiful face when she gazes at him sleeping.  I know I will not be a perfect father but at least I am starting in the right place this time.

A 50 Post Fence

I sincerely apologize to my loyal fan base for the recent lack of digital output on my part.  I am sure both of you are terribly disappointed.  The primary purpose of this blog has moved significantly further from creating items of literary merit than originally intended and instead I have focused on cathartic writing, really just working things out for myself.  I believe I am one of a large population for whom there is a much greater need to talk things out, if you will, over negative events and circumstances than positive ones.  The end result is that I have instilled in some the idea that most of my time in the last year has been spent in a spiritually and emotionally desolate place.  As true as that may or may not be, since the last few months have been quite wonderful I have had horribly little to write about.

The other source of hesitation on my part was due to the fact that this would be Polymathophilia's 50 post and that felt eerily similar to a substantial milestone and I did not want to squander it.  Unfortunately here I am, squandering away.

Half of Polymathophilia's general readership begged the question, "what has become of Stephen Pottersworth?".  And as a full quorum of the readership has presented the question, they deserve an answer.

Soon.

For those of you who are interested in my more Makeresque pursuits I am about 50% completed with the shell for my glorious swag construct.  Unfortunately about a month ago the tensioning screw on the bobbin case was forever lost, hence rendering my magnificent sewing machine's tensioning capabilities moribund.  This tragedy bound together with my near paralysis to venture into unknown parts of the city to attempt to find what I am looking for has lead to an hiatus of sorts in the production capacity of myself.  "Bobbin case tensioning screw hai?"

Positive news is that after my marathon debacle a few months ago I have the initial steps towards physical health.  A few guys and I have been meeting biweekly to spend time running, exerting ourselves, and encouraging each other towards godly masculinity and prayer.   The near term benefit is that I am nearing tantalizingly close to physical and spiritual health.  Not only do I have a means for health but now a motive as a company of men has invited me to a HimALayan expedition in June.  Of course this does mean that I will have to go through process of acquiring lightweight and warm gear that will  enable me to be safe and comfortable on said expedition.  I am hoping to make or procure a silnylon tarp shelter and a lightweight quilt.

I have some options for an inexpensive pyramid structure tarp tent which I might silicone myself but I will see what is available to find in the nylon and insulation departments.  The fortunate side is that with the trip in June I will be in the US in May, providing the opportunity to purchase gear that I cannot manufacture in the intervening months.

Hopefully I will again be writing more regularly as a friend is working on a book and I have some free time now that I have concluded my entire re-read of the Wheel of Time Series, which did occupy most, if not all, of my free time over the past few months.

I leave you with El Borracho.  Which is not only one of the best sounding Spanish words I've ever heard but also has a wonderful little man to litter your dreams associated with it

The Pursuit of Swag

In 4 days I am going camping with some friends.  We had 2 months to make bedrolls and I thought it would be a walk in the park.  Now we have 4 days, little more intense.  I am going to attempt to make swags that are a shameless knock off of the Wynnchester swags.  We are going on a motorcycle trip and as our local is not hammock friendly one of these behemoths might be just the ticket.  Plus they feel and look very cool which is always worth something.

The gloriful swag

With the help of several friends I have been attempting to break the DIY chains of India and make some stuff.  It has not been easy.  After attempting for months to source things online it was time to just head out into the city.  The first stop was a bazaar which rumor had it held Canvas.  The market was abustle with activity when we arrived and practically packed when we left.  The energy of the place was contagious and I think just going out and doing something refilled my chutzpah quotient.  No one we could find carried canvas or knew where in the bazaar we could buy it.  Fortunately I now have another trustworthy lead if I need canvas in the future.

While at this market we found ourselves on a street of Ayurvedic supplies I thought we should ask about Beeswax.  Low and Behold almost everyplace had it.  Some wanted me to sign away my first child for the stuff but I walked away with 2 kg's for Rs 900.  I know that that is still way more than we could probably negotiate for but I was happy to just get it.  I'm hoping to write another blog on the purification process of the beeswax, which I found to be delightful.  I've said it once and I'll say it again, I was born to keep bees.

So on our long list of needs for the trip we had 1 of them.  We did get a lead from this trip and so a week later we were in Charminar looking for canvas.  We did find a light weight variety that was too expensive but we jumped on it as it was the first canvas like fabric we had found in our search.  Hopefully the other Bazaar will be the land of milk and honey that I am expecting it to be.   Now if anyone wants to someday follow our textile pilgrimage through Hyderabad and is frustrated that I am not documenting the names of the places we went, it is simply because I don't remember what anything was called.  While picking up the canvas we were told by the almost friendly shopkeeper where to buy zippers.  Bulk coil zipper was the one thing that I figured would bring this whole operation to its knees so we figured we would chase down this lead while we  were in the area.  This brought us further from our car, which will carry weight later in the story.

Down the street we go, down a narrow alley that I would never have gone down myself, and we find ourself in as close to a gear maker's paradise as I think Hyderabad holds.  This shop sold supplies for making luggage and I was surrounded by rivets, thread, webbing, buckles, many things that I have wanted in the past.  I wanted to just buy 10 of everything but this project is already getting expensive and "maybe for later" purchases always seem to just collect dust.  There is a solid 10% chance I could find this place again if I had to.

So we bought a nice big spool of polyester thread, 40 meters of zipper and 15 of the "higher quality" zippers.  I would have loved the zippers to have pulls on either side but at this point I was going to grab the goods while they were hot.  While we were paying sprinkles began to drop outside.  By the time we walked out the door the rainfall was, in a word, torrential.  So we sat for 20 to 30 minutes waiting for it to let up.  Mother Nature in all of her wiles relented for at least 5 minutes for us to get back out to the main street.  Withing 14 and a half seconds we were well soaked.  The long walk back to the car gave the rain ample opportunity to find any dry spots on our persons and soak them.  Luckily I was wearing my Chucks so the water that was several inches deep at the shallowest path we could find found a comfortable home soaking my socks.

These delays and the weather helped to ensure that the 40 minute drive to get to Charminar turned into a 3 hour drive to get back.  There were a few places we thought of looking for Linseed oil  (as this is a key ingredient in our waterproofing scheme) but the weather and traffic were so bad, plus us being soaked and freezing in the car, we just skipped the trip.  The good news is that armed with some banner material we have everything we now need to make the swag shell.  I still have dreams of a mosquito net, mattress, and waterproofing but we will have to see what the new day brings.

A sewing machine was supposed to arrive at my door 5 hours ago.  Hopefully it will come tonight and the late night sew-a-thon can commence.  Almost there but not quite.

Last week was the marathon

Love this t-shirt

Some of you know that last week was a half marathon that about 2 months ago I publicly broadcasted that I was going to run.  I did okay doing some training the first week.  Week 2 I was very ill with a stomach deal that lasted, to one degree or another, for the next 3 weeks.  This stomach deal, which I'm 90% sure was worms related, could not have come at a more convenient time.  I lost some of the weight I had picked up during my last visit to the US, my appetite shrunk dramatically (which I have been able to maintain), and I was thrown off my training program in the fetal stage.  One the one hand I was not going to run the half marathon, running a marathon (like fixing up a classic car or motorcycle from the ground up) is on my "Some day I oughta" list.  This list also includes falconing, living in a hobbit hole, working on a ship, and being a shepherd. I thought I would actually run a half and maybe that would not only leverage itself towards being in shape physically, it would be a huge win in a time that I could really use a huge win.

The reason I'm writing at this exact moment is I was perusing the Art of Manliness blog and read this article.  Up until the last week I have really been struggling with my place here in India, my desire to go home and camp whenever I want to, and just the promising career path that is spiraling ahead of me.  One I'm not sure I want to continue on.  I saw this cartoon last week and it resonated more loudly than it should have, which means I'm not really where I should be. There are a lot of things that have contributed to my current state of the doldrums.  I have whined about them enough on other articles.  Today I want to whine about my perceived inability to finish things I start.  I come from a family that has, in many ways, turned starting things into a fine art.  I feel like I have even further magnified this trait.  I'm a dreamer, I get exited about something new on a weekly or daily basis.  I will obsess about planning something up until 5 minutes into the practical application step and then fizzle out.  The marathon, my camping supply company, my motorcycle/cafe shoppe, making bedrolls for the upcoming camping trip, my writing, my music: these are simply the current projects in this nebulous state.  The historical list is stunningly long.  When talking about writing with a friend a few weeks ago she asked if I was afraid of success.  I have no idea what that means.

I have always been afraid of good old fashion failure and it has been my MO in the past to attempt to flee when the opportunity for failure presents itself.  The stronger my hope of success the more quickly and distant I run from the possibility of calamity.  Somehow I scored a super hot wife and wonderful children during the past 10 years, of which I am supremely grateful, but my fear of failure and my flee survival instinct are still very strong when it comes to personal achievements.  Let me spell out a more humiliating example.  I always enjoyed the idea of math.  I was bored by math because it came easily for me, but I really wanted to learn the crazy complex stuff.  Then came 7th grade.  I had a C in math because I never did my homework.  I still tested well but I felt then, and still do to some degree, that homework is for the people that don't understand the concept yet.  So along came our algebra readiness test.  I scored either 2nd highest in my Team (which was a subdivision of teachers for a block of students) or 2nd highest in the school, I don't recall which.  My math teacher, however, would not allow me to move onto algebra because I had a C.  Of course I was afraid of almost everything so I didn't say anything to her but my imaginary conversation went something along the lines of, "Of course I have a C.  Your course is boring, the homework ridiculous, and I don't need to do it."  Being that it was 7th grade there was more colorful language and several profound observations about her ability to teach as well as completely assumed facts about her age and personal life, but that is not necessary for the narrative.  Here I was a science and math junky, planning on going to medical school, and I wrote off mathematics and just assumed I was a history/literature guy.

For the rest of my academic career I was a year behind in math in relation to almost all of my friends. I never worked on math homework outside of class time again, and skated by with C's until I was no longer required to take math.  This prevented me from taking advanced biology, AP physics, Calculus, and all sorts of other classes I would have really enjoyed, because I wasn't a math guy.  Maybe this doesn't resonate with anyone out there but I threw away hours of learning something I would have really enjoyed because one woman made a decision that I was unwilling to contest.  I felt like something was stolen from me and I never fought to get it back.  I don't know what has haunted me the most over the years: the fact that I was academically and personally lazy all those years and I could have achieved so much more (and could continue to achieve much more) if I only changed that; or the fact that it was another addition to the long list of things I wish I had fought for but didn't.  A lot of the things I gave up on probably were for the best.  Had I bounced back with enthusiasm from my knee injury in high school I may have been an even more arrogant bastard than I was already.  Had I actually learned math and aced my SATs I probably would have lived a completely different life than I do now.  Had I not been so afraid of girls and actually dated in High School I may have never ended up with my beautiful wife of almost 10 years, which would not have in any way been worth the ego boost at the time.  But all of these defeats I have allowed to define who I am.

In the AOM article referenced above it talks about people with external and internal locus of control.  I think in a lot of departments of my life I have that internal locus.  I have been driven and successful in the workplace and I have done and seen good things happen in my life.  One of my major weaknesses, however, is that when something becomes important to me I don't complete it.  Not because I lack the ability or personal gumption to see it through (which is usually my excuse de'jour).  Often I do not complete what I put my hands to because I become so emotionally tied to its success that it is easier to walk away and imagine the what ifs than to stay the course and risk the possibility of failure.

I had put the marathon to the back of my mind up until last week and I began to hear about my various friends who had participated in and completed the race.  My usual response is self-abasing sarcasm which unfortunately has been disarmed from me in my current cultural context.  So what does a man do when he is faced with his failure to stick with it, cowboy up, and do something big and yet can't make fun of himself and make a public spectacle of his failure?  I don't know.  All week I haven't known.

In about a month a group of us are going to ride our motorcycles and go on a 1 night camping trip.  Some of us have camped a lot, some not at all, and the weight of everyone's enjoyment and happiness had weighed heavily on my shoulders.  A lot of us need this trip.  Several of us use the outdoors to re-center ourselves and we have been stripped of that by our particular geographical position.  Many of us are here professionally and have very little quality social interaction with other men.  And like I said before, I need a win.  Tents are ridiculously expensive here and as a few of the guys strike me as at least aspiring to be rough-and-tumble, I'm going to try and design and manufacture (or have manufactured) sleeping rolls for the trip.  I need something masculine liked sleeping under the stars in waxed canvas next to a smoldering fire after days of sitting in a cubicle unable to even do the work that I am required to do.  I have spent some significant time obsession over the fine details of the project and now that I am on the verge to proceed with the creation of them, to manifest the dream; every fiber of my being is screaming to just give up and get some blue tarps for the guys.

I have had too many urges to quit the last few months.  I have really struggled to get back in the grove here in Asia after my US trip.  I haven't wanted to write, and what I have written has reinforced my perceptions.  After the Stephen Pottersworth Part II post's dismal reception I almost just shut the blog down, or at least wrote it off as something I'd get back to later.  For better or for worse failure is not currently an option.  I just can't take it emotionally or psychologically.  I'm tired of just calling myself a dreamer because I'm too afraid to risk people hating what I make.  I am writing this blog because I am going to at least attempt to continue even though I don't want to.  And maybe next week I'll even go for a run.

Spaceeba Bolshoei

Noticed that I get more page views from Russia than the US.  So a big thanks to all of moy malchiki i moya dyavutchka ruski.  I hope you can read it because we all know I suck at posting pictures.