Making Our Own Magic

(Nina posting...)
In the last post we were waiting to see if MAGIC Camp was a "go" or not.
Not.
The word didn't get out early enough and there wasn't any word-of-mouth carryover from last year because it wasn't held last year either.  HUGE bummer (Huge!).
That meant cancelling airline tickets and getting out of a contract with the transport service and re-directing window orders back to Texas, etc.
We had a few days of no rain...torrential rain that caused heavy flooding and my roof had to wait. The 6mil plastic that was put on it when we last worked on it held up and kept it all dry. PHEW!   We had to wait a few days for the standing water to get absorbed...which was fine because the string of roofers that I had called about decking the roof were now (because of the weather) totally behind schedule and were putting me off because I was a tiny job and they had 3000+sq ft houses waiting. I get it.  I continued my search and was given names by friends Ralph and Dale and one of Dale's guys came through.  I'm using Zip roofing, that should be cool. I also was jazzed because I was able to walk without crutches after 2 stupid weeks of being off my stupid foot sprain. I was walking! Yay!
 and then? Tropical Storm Bill.  My first Tropical Storm.

This was what TSBILL looked like at 7am, noon, 3pm... he just HUNG ON.

It was intense. That morning I was meeting with another guy who will build the reinforced frame for the french doors (it's a big opening so a stout framing will help prevent racking).  I was driving back to Friend Sara's when I hit a strong storm band.  I got a text from BA saying she was about to leave the house and I warned against it. The rain was sideways and the spray coming off of the other cars was cutting visibility AND I had just passed an accident that spanned both sides of the freeway (one side had 4 smashed up cars and the other side had a smashed car and a semi with car parts stuck to the grill). There were no cops on site yet so that accident had JUST happened.  BA checked her traffic app and saw the accidents on the map and opted to stay in. I held the steering wheel tight and steady and was glad to made it back safe. 

I was told (AGAIN) "this never happens in Dallas".  First it was that the amount of rain is "not normal" and then that tropical storms dissipate before they get near Dallas.  Liars! I have been drenched for weeks. WEEKS!  Many of those days BA and I have spent doing physical labor and running errands and just resigned ourselves to being soaked through and then deal with being pruney all day. Sheesh...this weather...

So what's next with BANina since MAGIC Camp ISN'T happening?

Well...we've done a lot of running around type of things but just in the last few days:  Friday picked up my windows and in the evening BA held her last open-house before going to Minnesota for a few months.

Open House (photo credit: Scott Taylor)

Saturday (today) we did some grunt work, shifting of tools to storage of what we need and don't need right away (we had to make room for the homeowner, she needed room in the build-site shed) and we picked up materials and got organized a bit.
Sunday (tomorrow) the roof gets decked and we will apply the housewrap while the roof gets done so that we can leave it dried in and then..
Monday...is the day we are planning to leave for Minnesota.Wait....What? "We" ?
BA had been planning on going to Minnesota all along because
1) she has a 5 day workshop she is putting on and2) that's where she's from and will be staying with family and doing her work there for tiny house world and staying away from the Texas heat.
I hadn't considered going & I thought BA would have a travel partner but those plans didn't pan out. And while BA is uber-capable of doing the drive on her own I have decided to go for two reasons:

1) I worry

2) it's ridiculous fun

One of the things that happened in the past week that solidified my decision is this:

BA came back from her Austin straw bale worship (she had taken her house and lived on site) and we resumed our chaotic fun of our ToDo List. She mentioned that she had started to hear a noise when she turned on the AC. We had dropped off tools at my storage unit and I saw what I earlier thought to be burned straw sticking out from under the engine. (She had straw coming out of her ears after the week-long straw bale build so it wasn't a weird guess). Once again, I found myself getting on the pavement and looking under another of BA's trucks. 

I said that it looked like a frayed electrical wire.  She asked if it looked like it was the AC.  I said no, didn't think so.  We looked at each other...experience told us to pull into the nearest shop to get it checked out. SO GLAD WE DID.  BA popped the hood and the guy shook his head...the belt was not installed properly and was being shredded by the pulleys. The frayed wire that I thought I saw? It was part of the belt! The AC noise was the fan being strangled by pieces of the belt! In some places the belt was down to 1/4 inch thick. 

Engine Belt Spaghetti

She'd driven to Austin and back with that belt getting shredded along the way!  If she'd gone another 50-100miles? SNAP! ...and then an estimated 7K for repairs.  SO GLAD WE STOPPED TO GET IT CHECKED!!!

HOW did this happen? The last people to work on it had been JR Truck Repair (they had worked on the power steering pump and you need to remove the belt to get to it). The mechanics think that when JRs put it back on, it must've not seated correctly and slipped and shredded on her drive to and from Austin 

These mechanics cleaned out all the shredded belt from the engine that they could get to, replaced the belt, checked fluids and tires so that BA was back on the road safely.  They'd given her the shredded belt so that she could take it to JR Truck Repair and say "you owe me 100 bucks". She went there today and they claimed BSD. (The Bart Simpson Defense is "Didn't do it!/Can't prove it!"). 

So...that sealed it for me; I'm going to Minnesota for the road trip and staying for the workshop, then she'll show me a little before I fly back to Dallas. 

I can't prevent or fix truck problems but it's better to laugh through these trials together.

AND SO, stay tuned to the usual places (Twitter, Insta & Facebook) for the shenanigans. 

Twitter:  BA Norrgard or NinaZamudio

Instagram: BANinaBegins (or BANorrgard or TheNinaZamudio)

Facebook: A Bed Over My Head 

#tinyhousetrip is what we usually use when BA is on the move. :)

I haven't seen the route and don't know the stops yet on our way from Dallas to Minnesota and from what we've heard there was a mountain that fell onto a highway somewhere in Oklahoma...  (a mountain "fell"?) I don't know, we haven't looked into that.. BUT if you see us coming through your neck of the woods, TAKE A PICTURE and post it and tag us!