July 8, 2026 | Telluride, Colorado
This might be a boring stretch coming up for those used to my adventures. It’s a necessary time, and it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing. As I cycle from task to task throughout the day I can see all the little things in different areas coming together now. The van has come a long way. It’s in great shape. I’ll keep putting a little time into it each day. The music has come a long way too. There was a development on that front yesterday.
I’ve long struggled with the physical size of my large DJ setup. It just takes up too much space in the van. I thought this window at the yurt would be the perfect opportunity to set it up and put in real mixing time. But it’s too much of a draw on my lithium battery to run everything. I don’t want to be scraping the bottom of the charge on a regular basis. So for now I’m going to use the tiny DJ setup instead. A little controller in a small case, powered off the computer. Simple, small, barely uses any electricity. That’s the way forward for now. I’ll keep the big setup but probably put it in storage for the time being.
I’d expected to spend this window mainly editing videos, but what’s emerging is more music than anticipated. It reminds me of how, when it’s time to move on in the van, I always seem to know where to go the moment it’s time. Now that I’m here in this moment, it feels obvious that music is the thing to work on right now.
We’ve had two mostly cloudy days in a row, which puts me behind on electricity. 39% right now. Today is bright and sunny though, and I should catch up significantly, especially without six pieces of music gear running.
I’ve used Claude to build an app for managing the music I’m creating. It’s keeping track of everything and letting me manage files in a way I’ve never had access to before. I made great progress just simplifying everything these past few days. The single computer, the single music library, the smaller controller. We are moving toward something. I made quite a bit of music yesterday and was up until 2am listening back over headphones. I can see and feel it evolving into something new, something I can picture but haven’t fully arrived at yet.
We had rain storms late yesterday afternoon into the night. First time I’ve left my solar panels out in it. They’re technically water resistant but not waterproof. Those things have taken a severe beating these past six months and they continue to perform.
I used to hear my grandparents talk about keeping their lights off along the New England coast during World War Two. Not to conserve electricity but because ships silhouetted against brightly lit coastal towns made easy targets. Very different situations, but this gives me some idea of what that must have felt like. I’m not running my string lights at night either. It gets pretty dark around here once the sun goes down. I’ve got ships of my own to protect.
My plan is to be in Nashville by September 2nd, then fly to Rhode Island to spend the month with my parents. I’ve visited Rhode Island every single summer of my life. That gives me six full weeks here at the yurt. I want to make sure I get to Aspen for a couple of days to see friends before Nashville. Two possible windows. I could do it a month from now, a 4.5 hour drive each way. Or around August 20th as I begin the route back, which is probably more ideal since I could loop through Denver and Boulder to see friends there too on the way to Tennessee. Things are taking shape.
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