July 17^th

Serious palapa progress. We’ve moved onto the third side of the roof and made great headway. We’ve started going for just green fauns. No more dry leaves. They take about 3 days to dry out in the heat and they also get flattened out by the rains so it works quite well. We’ve also started getting really big leaves and having too much fun between work. Per the pictures.

July 8^th
We bought some little ball lights to go around the inside of the palapa. I think they make us feel like it’s almost done.

July 10^th

We’ve learned that dried out leaves are not what we want. We want semi dead leaves on their way out. This new info helps a lot.

Will, Megan, and I drove about today to some ‘sites’ that we had found in Tucson and plucked from the trees their dying leaves. We got a number of good car loads. Jon arrived and we had a teams of workers. Two folks putting leaves up and two looking for more. It worked really well. We’ve almost got two sides done.

While sitting in the hammocks at the end of the day it occurs to us that we’ve finished the sides that get the least sun during the day. Though they are both the sides that are visible to us. So we feel good about it.

July 6^th

Will came over to work on the roof with me and we drove about his place looking for some fauns we had scouted out We filled my car before dark and then Megan came by and we started putting them up. We saw how the first few leaves went up and Megan has taken charge of getting the rest them up properly while Will and I remove the spikes from the dried leaves we’ve collected from scattered places around town.

Wednesday, July 5 – I am back in Tucson.

I was a little discouraged from our last attempt.. but I had some leaves to toy with. I tried nailing them up but they just pulled the nails out and spun about them. The nails also bounced off the flimsy cross pieces and simply caused me a headache in the half our I worked on it. I came back inside and examined my pictures to see how exactly they were done in Ecuador.

It was then quite evident.. all they did was bend them around the beams. Easily enough I broke 5 fauns in half. Then I reexamined my technique. I then found that breaking via one side produces a thin strip of fibers that keep their strength while breaking the other way causes all the fibers to deterorate. I was quickly on a roll and out of palm leaves. Now I knew how to do it, I just needed more. MORE.

June 21^st. I got back from my time all over California and was ready to work on this palapa! I just worked, no plan, nothing. I cut and nailed and by the end of the day I had something I felt like I could work with. It wasn’t fancy, but it was the beginnings of what looked like a patio cover. Again a ‘project point.’ I’d be okay with just a patio cover.. nothing too fancy. I didn’t need palm leaves.. though it would be nice.
The following day I called Jon up and we finalized the cross pieces for the roof and then started on the month long journey to find palm fauns to cover the roof, a task I had no idea how to complete. So we started at square one. Asking people. I sent out a freecycle message and got a number of replies within the hour. We’d be gone tomorrow for Las Vegas so we had to work tonight. Excited to get started we drove toward one house who claimed to have some low lying palms we could ravage.

A mile from my house the storm broke over head and the wind pushed from the south. Push so hard that rain would enter Jon’s window and hit me driving, but if my window was open I didn’t get wet at all, save the splash from the passing vehicles. We got to the house that claimed to have trees and saw none, so we pulled up to a neighbor’s house, asked them if we could trim their tree in the thunder storm and got to it. Unfortunately I hadn’t brought all my tools. Expecting a saw to do the trick nicely we hacked and hacked at the dry leaves hanging down from the tree and soon resorted to simply breaking them off while trying to avoid the piercing thorns from the branches. The storm grew more fierce with every minute and soon Jon and I were standing at the back of my car under the tail gate waiting it out until we finally said “Fuck It!” and grabbed our tools threw them into the wagon and drove away with a handful of dry palm leaves in the back.

Though the car smelled like dates, the windows were fogged and I couldn’t see anything. After driving through the residential streets for some time without any ability to see where I was going besides light and dark spots I stopped to clean the window. To my amazement I had stopped at the stop sign denoting the major busy cross street. I marked that into my lucky book right next to not getting struck by lightening minutes earlier while standing atop a ladder waving a 10 foot tall tree trimming pole.

Jon and I retreated back to the house feeling half defeated. Tomorrow we’d be gone and the project would have to wait.

At this point I had also received a replacement camera so I could start taking gigs upon gigs of pictures of the work. This time they are not so fancy.