July 26th – Almost 4 months later. Today I yet again received a call from Will regarding campus palm trimmings and beat feet over to campus. It took me a while but I found them hidden in the Library walk way, trimming away. They recognized me and were friendly. I parked on the sidewalk and…

July 21st and 22nd My car is in the shop so I can’t get the leaves, but I spent all day looking at the palapa. Will came over and we hung in the hammocks wishing it was done. Friday Megan took me to the hardware store and helped me get some things to work on…

July 19th Will and I go to the hardware store and pick up some tubing and a pile of pieces for setting up misters. We first attached a whole slew of them to the perimeter of the palapa, but the misters are kind of cheap so they didn’t work well, they just soaked you in…

July 18th Free palapa roof at school! Will calls me up today and says dude they’re trimming the palm trees at school you’ve got to get over here and get them. So I drive over and ask the workers if I can take their green palm leaves. “Sure.” They don’t seem to be too put…

July 17th 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…

July 8th 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 10th 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,…

July 6th 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…

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…

June 21st. 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…

June 1st, Asa and I spent some time trying to figure out how to fasten the cross pieces for the roof. We bought wood and sealed it. Then after a few hours of experimental tests we gave up and went swimming at Wills. Tomorrow we’d leave for the Grand Canyon and then California. I’d be…