A new year… powered by the sun

I woke this morning to slightly colder temps but still well above freezing. Still, my older sleeping bag is all I need (rated to 20 degrees) but I have my zero-degree mummy bag if things start to get real cold.

I must say, since returning to sleeping in the van I have not had a bad night’s sleep. In fact, I would venture to say that I have slept better these past few nights then ANY night in that bed at “home”. I toss and turn less and I wake refreshed… good night!

I finally got to use my new cast-iron pan (bought for $2 a few months ago!) to make a hearty breakfast of egg-sandwiches before taking care of the dirty dishes and then setting up for full solar array of 8-panels. As it turns out, the battery was full by the time I got all 8 panels setup, but that just means I get to charge up all the laptop, flashlight, and camera batteries without worry.

I realized something this morning while I was still half asleep… This is nothing new. I tend to get a lot of thinking, and problem solving, done in that half sleep half awake time after my alarm sounds the first time. Often I solve some pretty mundane problem, but a time or two I have solved some fairly complex software code issue or mathematical problem from the day before, but I digress… Today is the first of the year, but 10 days ago was the first day in which the days will get longer and longer. December 21st (winter solstice, aka “the real X-mas”… for those that believe you are celebrating the “birth of Christ”, you are in fact celebrating the “birth of the new sun” [not son], which happens to be a pagan holiday adopted and renamed by most Christians. Your X-mas is a lie!) marks the darkest day of the year. From here on, at least for half this year, the sun will rise earlier and set later each day giving me more daylight to explore and more sunlight to charge my batteries.

I took a brief walk around the nearby desert and stumbled across an old piano… or at least the remains of an old piano. It is an odd thing to find out in the middle of no-where but here it lies.