The world according to Doyt

I drove back to Houston from Mission for New Year's.  Danny works 4 days on and 4 days off, some alternating nights and days, so I tend to return to Houston when he has to go back to work.  It's about a seven hour drive to Houston, unless you speed a lot, then it's about six. 

This lets you catch up on things like Cormac McCarthy books-on-tape (like The Road, which is a particularly harsh book to hear while while driving through the hours of desolate, flat brush country that is South Texas), or thinking about people you haven't seen in too long, or places you've been or are going to, or things you should have done but didn't (insert yourself here).
 
 Doyt shared a couple of keepers while we are building the float.  First, he owned that the manufacturer of the tires on the trailers (which keep going flat and we keep airing back up) is, he guesses, a company called Mayblo.

Second, after listening to me go about how I'm in charge and they all ought to just do what I say, he provided a helpful fable:

A brain and a heart and a sphincter were working on a job but they all argued about who was in charge.  The brain said "I'm the smartest of us, so I'll be in charge."  The heart said, "Without me, ain't nothing gonna happen.  I'm in charge."  The sphincter said, "but I'm never the boss and I think it's my turn."  The other two laughed at him, so the sphincter said, "Fine.  I'll stop working for a while and we'll see if you change your mind."  After a couple of days, the brain was swollen and woozy and the heart was beating so hard it couldn't even think.  Finally, they gave in.  The Moral:  You don't need a brain or a heart to be the boss.  You just need to be an asshole.

I would like to thank Doyt for his wisdom.

So this is where it stands now:  Two trailers, the carpentry on both close to being done.  The one with the 4 foot circle on it will be the engine.  The one to the right and a little behind is the car. 

Here's a side view of the engine as it sits today.  Four of these four foot disks will represent the steam boiler.  Behind that will be a cabin for about 6 people to stand or sit in, where the engineer would be.  Off the front of the platform will be a cowcatcher made with the roughest left over wood we have, hopefully 4x4 or larger.  We need the weight on the front since it's going to be so heavy in the rear.

 I thought it was important to show that I actually have done some physical labor, so I asked Judd to photograph me with my iPhone while I held a  disc in place. 

The drive wheels, the 3 foot wheels on the back of the engine, will turn with electric motors.  The smaller, 2 foot wheels, in the front, will to.  They will all turn at the same speed, though each of the wheels will have its own motor.  In this photo, they are just there to make everyone understand the layout.  The whole engine will be pretty tall.  The platform on top of the bed of the trailer is three feet off the ground.  So the whole thing will be over 9 feet tall, from the BED of the trailer, or about 13 feet tall from the ground.

 This material is 36" wide and 36 feet long, and is made for building outdoor swimming pools.  It's going to be the skin on the boiler.  After it's in place, we'll wrap it with a black mesh called Grout-Stopper and paint it so it is round and looks like a steam engine.

 The earlier plan was to use these clear plastic pipes as an armature, holding the 4 foot discs in place for the engine.  Let's just say that didn't work.

 When we put these 12 foot screws through the first four foot disc, it became clear we could finish this float around August 22, 2011.  So we're holding the discs together now with 2x4 boards.  Once we conceded that this was a better way, it was time for dinner.  At El Patio.  Where one does not order the Caldo de Res. 

 During dinner, one of Danny's grandkids stopped talking long enough to emote in a non-lingual fashion.

While we were working on the float, an old friend of Danny's was hunting.  He sent a short video of what would soon be dinner.  

So, the Upper Valley Art League has agreed to have a show in February we're going  call Portrait of Mission.  This has little to do with the parade, other than that's where I'm going to distribute 100 more free cameras.  the UVAL exhibit will be something like 2,000 4x6 snapshots by Mission residents and I'm going to serve a quasi-curatorial function and select 10 of the best of these to print and present as "art photographs."  The others will be displayed in a grid on 5 large temporary walls in the gallery.  Last years' video portrait of Mission from the Conjunto Float will also likely be shown, maybe as a projection on a wall, maybe on a tv screen.  Some of my less controversial Mission photos may be framed and shown as well, probably landscapes.  Tomorrow, I'm going to start looking through all of last years public parade photos and trying to winnow it down to the top ten to scan and print.

I've also written lyrics for a song called "Four Banditos," slightly mirroring the four pinatas that are supposed to be mounted on the cow-catcher.  I'm hoping we can get the intro done by Gloria Jean on conjunto-style accordion.  If all goes well, Jane will finish writing music to go along with it and the band can perform it during the parade.

 As usual, law work must still be done, and my return to Mission is likely delayed while I spend a day thinking about a plan of reorganization, a disclosure statement, and a motion to establish voting procedures for a case in San Francisco.