Date:         Sun, 30 Jun 2019 22:10:08 -0700
Reply-To:     Jack Elliott <pdaxe2gto@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jack Elliott <pdaxe2gto@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Trip Report
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Actually an adventure report. On Friday I drove up to Pine Mountain,
located about 30 miles away, Forest Service land and where Oregon State
University has an observatory, and set up camp next to the fenced-in radio
transmitter site where our local community radio station's transmitter and
antenna are located. KPOV, in Bend, Oregon. I was up there because a real
professional broadcast engineer and I -- I volunteer at the station in a
technical capacity -- had some work to do in the transmitter building. He
and his wife arrived later that day, in a small SUV full of tools with a
small trailer behind, and set up camp nearby. We were there to install new
firmware into the transmitter, clean up some wiring messes, R&R the cooling
fan in our microwave studio-transmitter link, that sort of thing.

Anyway, my '84 Westy made the climb in cool weather up the corrugated dirt
road from Highway 20 in fine paint-shaker style. I parked with the driver
side facing the prevailing wind, the slider side facing southwest with a
magnificent view of the Cascade Mountains some 50 miles away with cumulus
clouds filling the sky, some dark enough to shower rain to the ground,
less-gloomy ones with only virga underneath, and some brilliant white.

Solar panels set up, top popped, bed made, and a can of chile on the
stovetop, it was a cold night, nearing freezing, that night, but I was warm
under a down comforter reading "The Rest Is Noise" by Alex Ross, a book
about 20th century music.

We did the work we needed to to on Saturday, spending most of the day
inside the transmitter building, but every time I came out -- to fetch a
sandwich, a soldering iron, a call of nature -- I took in the view, the
cool crisp air, and the view of my little Westy with its little pop top up,
camping table outside the slider, 107,000 miles on the clock . . . and
smiled. They say it thunderstormed down in Bend, but we saw only sky and
clouds.

I was up at 5:30 this morning; I don't sleep in much these days. By 7:30 I
had broken camp, eaten a small breakfast with two cups of coffee, and was
trundling down the dirt road, back to home in Bend. Not much of a trip, in
terms of miles or time spent, so as a trip report this sort of sucks, but
it neatly summarizes what pleasure my van brings into my life.