Solar Mechanics
Getting solar panels to efficiently do what they’re supposed to is a matter of angles. Right angles, to be precise. You want the panels to be at 90 degrees in relation to incoming solar photons. So, when it’s noon and the sun is directly overhead, your panels can be flat on the ground, like mine are here. But when the sun is lower in the sky, to the east or west, you have to angle the panels up to catch more of the photonic goodness and make it into electricity to run your blender so you can make margaritas.
All of which I recalled at about 3:30 this afternoon, after stewing over the fact that even with 65 rated watts of capacity, I still couldn’t run the laptop off the panels without draining its battery. So, I decided to make piles out of the abundant drifts of pine needles around the campsite, and angle the panels that way. But as the sun sank lower in the sky, the shadows of the trees advanced on my little solar array, and each time I moved it I had to drag the panels east a bit, taking care not to yank any important wires out of the Black Box, then make new pine needle piles and find a way to shade the Box and the laptop so that they wouldn’t burst into flames.
If only I had some sort of wheeled device, maybe with some swing arms on it. That way I could angle the panels, and wheel the whole contraption around when shadows encroached.
The solution was, of course, the 40,000-pound trailer I’ve been dragging around with me. I unhitched it from the trike, deployed the PVC-pipe swing arms I had grafted onto its luggage rack, and made cunning use of bungie cords. I discovered that the aluminum luggage rack had another set of notches in it, so I could angle that even farther upwards. The trailer itself provided ample shade for the Black Box and the laptop, and I caught rays until around five thirty, charging the battery to 99% of capacity.
Folks around here wave a lot. If they’re driving by and they catch your eye, they’ll wave. The campsite is right next to a road, separated by a split-rail fence, so all afternoon people were seeing my solar rig by the side of the road, then me at the picnic table, and waving hello. Not the most back-to-nature place (I can see distant traffic on I-95 through my tent’s front screen), but it’s cheap, it has clean shower stalls with doors and benches to sit on, and I got some honest-to-god work done sitting at the picnic table until dusk.
The headlights that occasionally shine into the tent might get annoying…but probably not. I sleep well these days.
Earlier this afternoon, after I had set up camp but before I put the tarp over the trike, a pair of young boys wandered over to check it out. The younger of the two, who had some sort of makeshift upper arm tattoo-thing going on, was enthusiastic about it, pointing out the pedals and making the cool-style noises that kids make. The older boy wasn’t so sure. “So do you just travel around?” he wanted to know. I told him I was headed for California. “On a bicycle?” he blurted, sounding incredulous. It’s a trike, I thought, but I just said yep. “See ya,” he shot back, sounding almost angry, as though I thought he was a dumb kid and I was trying to put one over on him.
Yeah, kid. I’m really riding this thing to California.
And right now, I’m blogging from inside my tent. I said I’d do that, too, and now I’m doing it.
How very, very odd…and yet, in any given moment, it’s often utterly unremarkable. This morning I had Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends on the television at the hotel. Less than six hours later I was trundling a cobbled-together solar array around on a bed of fallen pine needles, chasing the sun’s dying rays with the omnipresent rush of interstate highway noise filling the air. Just solving a problem, that’s all.
Within its own context, it makes all kinds of sense; it’s only when I remember that less than a week ago I was almost physically, not to mention mentally, ill with real-estate induced stress that it becomes odd. And when I recall that a month before that I lived in a house, with a girlfriend, a bedroom painted Whimsical Blue, and two cats, it becomes bizarre and nonsensical. When I unrolled my pack-towel in the shower this evening, a small cascade of sawdust burst from it…because it used to be in the garage, where my power saws were, and that sawdust was probably from wood that I cut to replace the rotted frame of the living room window.
It’s been 98.5 miles since Yorktown, but those miles seem arbitrary compared to the various distances growing between myself, right now, and where I used to be. I haven’t used my iPod yet because the thought of music…an intense soundtrack to accompany my rapidly changing states of mind and soul…is almost too much to bear.
This afternoon, though, I whistled as I rode: Just hear those sleigh bells jingle-ing/Ring ting tingle-ing too/Come on, it's lovely weather/For a sleigh ride together with you. I swear it cooled me off a bit.
It's almost time for bed. Big day tomorrow, a nearly fifty mile push to Mineral, there to (hopefully) camp for free on the grounds of the local volunteer fire department house.
I will leave you with this: a pinecone at sunset. In the background, you can see the mountains of needles I piled up to angle my solar panels.
