up. We both arrived rather late on the very first night. We had planned to meet at the park around 8 or 9 pm, but, believe it or not, we both ran late, and it was the better part of 11 before I finally arrived. It being so late, my body wrecked from a condition I've come to call "car butt," and the utter ec
stasy of seeing Alisa after so long, it was hard to have a first impression of the park, and really, of the entire situation. We had hardly finished a hug before I was opening two of the Bully Porters I brought along. Minnesota doesn't sell any booze or beer or nothing past some early GD hour of 8pm or something like that. Not being ones to waste any time, and I, seriously ready to move my body and relieve myself of my "car butt" issue, set off into the dark back half of the property to unload Alisa's truck, beers in hand.
As we were unloading, I was introduced to the work. To keep it short, it's a work of kinetic/human powered sculpture. Imagine a wagon that is moved by a hand crank. The gear ratio is set up (...err, will be set up) so that a lot of human cranking moves the wagon only a tiny little bit. There is also a large salvaged diesel storage tank that is to rotate on the inside of the wagon, geared up to the drive chain.
It was dark, I was getting drunk. Despite these handicaps, it was clear as day that the work had some serious problems to overcome, mainly in the transference of power from gear to gear via a salvaged tractor chain. As it was set 48 hours ago, the chain would have run not only into the rough sawn white oak frame, but also into the very wheel it was to be driving. It felt a bit overwhelming and it was getting cold in the night so we moved it inside and drank more.
Alisa brought out her bottle of Old Crow and I drank some of it. Actually, I drank quite a bit of it. After my inability to stop talking nonsense kept us awake and drinking until 4:30 in the morning, it was agreed by us both that I am now to just stick to beer.
In the morning it was easier to gauge how the place was set up. At left is Alisa's workspace. The basic frame of the 'wagon' is visible along with a detached wheel (salvaged from an old tractor) and the diesel tank is there too on the left. There ar
e several (maybe 6-8?) outdoor gantries that are used by the interns here, on the back side of the property. There are right now about 5 or 6 residents all working on various wood and metal works.
The first morning I was a bit stumbly, not all together, a bit hung over. We spent a lot of time organizing Alisa's pickup truck bed of tools and materials she had brought along. Everything seemed to be taking too long on account of the previous night's sleep deprivation. We struggled to attache a vise to a work table. We dropped bolts that took us what felt like hours to find in the gravel. It was dumb. We were finally getting our functionality on and discussing the piece's mechanical shortcomings when we were visited by John and Jerod(?), who have established a relationship with several residents of the park. John salvages lumber from old barns, and had 6 months ago supplied Alisa with a lot of her white oak. He had stopped by to say hello. We all chatted a little and Alisa started in on what we were working with. As she was talking my head was pounding. This thing was so fucked. I didn't have any good ideas. It was shaping up to be a really long 2 weeks.
John, however, is special, very mechanically inclined, and probably was well rested and not hung over. Very cooly he solved our problems with an extended arm pointing and some really basic common sense. He had two or three very simple quick fixes to our problems that I doubt either Alisa or I would have picked up on, at least not on the first morning.
"You're like a wizard, just blowing in here, and solving our problems," I told John.
"You know what? That's what they call me at pool too...The Wizard."
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