Yes, you're on the right web page, if you're looking for Sindelar Solar. "Taking a Tiny House Off Grid" is just coming out in Home Power, more or less today. For now, everything on this site following this blog post is the story of a long bicycle tour I took last...

A selfie, at a county park on Lopez Island, Washington Along the Big Sur Coast in California   I had published here an earlier draft of this synopsis, but apparently I also managed to inadvertently delete it all... oh well, I guess I can fall back on the excuse...

Each time I have encountered a "ghost bike" memorial along the road I have photographed it and posted it here. To me this is an important, indeed necessary, ritual. Beside honoring the memory of yet another cyclist killed while riding, it serves to remind me that at...

I have lacked a decent New Mexico road map, so leaving Grants I depended on Google Maps' route mapping for cycling, and that turned out to be a mistake. I followed the old Route 66, which paralleled the interstate highway. In the tiny town of San Fidel I stopped to...

I bought a bus ticket to Albuquerque but got off the bus in Gallup. I want these final four or five days of riding to be the roads home across New Mexico, until I roll down the rough dirt road to my home. This will form a final closure to the trip, and help me return...

En route to Barstow I determined that I was more likely to be able to hitchhike out of Las Vegas than Barstow so an extra $20 to the driver landed me in Las Vegas at 9 pm. I found a cheap room, and headed out toward Boulder City and Hoover Dam, figuring that I could...

From San Simeon I continued down the coast through Cambria and Cayucos to Morro Bay State Park. This was another gold-standard park, well-maintained with showers, a large and quiet biker/hiker section and even a golf course. The showers were in operation, too: At...

My last entry was posted from a coffeehouse in Carmel before heading down the Coast Highway through Big Sur. This rugged coastal area has little or no cell service. Three evenings later I'm at San Simeon State Beach, another hiker/biker campground, having ridden...

  From Santa Cruz I rode slowly around Monterey Bay, remembering old haunts from four decades ago. So much remained familiar, just more developed, with more bike lanes but also many more homes and much more traffic. I was close to Watsonville before the homes...

I lived in Santa Cruz in my early twenties, from 1972-1977. I was nowhere near ready to grow up and the town didn't ask it of me. I was immature, self-absorbed, single, countercultural and quite sexually active. Indeed, as I look back on those years, it's likely that...

After riding only about twenty miles, I came to the Pigeon Point Lighthouse and International Hostel. I have been curious about modern hosteling, so decided to stay for a night to see what it's about. For $31, I had a bunk in a shared room. There were two other...

After crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, I rode around Fort Mason in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the Marina, the Fisherman's Wharf tourist area, and the piers to the Embarcadero, where I caught the BART train to the East Bay. I then rode along a very...

California is in the midst of a three year drought, and it shows. The coast has always been lush and green when i have passed through in the past. Water levels in many of the state's reservoirs are at record low levels, and forest fires an take out whole towns, as...

I have not written about travel since I left Fort Bragg Thursday morning. I left around ten with a cloudy but breaking sky. I had a homemade leftover chicken pot pie carefully wrapped in my hydration pack. I rode to Highway One, then hitched to the Manchester KOA to...

Before I became a licensed electrician working in solar PV, I made my living as a carpenter. One of the joys of the trade is assembling a set of tools, especially hand tools. I also did some woodworking and cabinetmaking, so I had collected many tools for the...

The day's riding goal was to be the biker/hiker camp at Manchester Beach State Park. But on arrival, other cyclists and I found that the park had closed for the season just the previous day. A KOA was just up the same road, and so I had my first-ever experience of...

The Climate March turned out to be a Stand, and I was glad to participate. Mainly a group of perhaps 25 old hippies and lefties, coming together for a variety of causes including climate change. George had stood for peace at that location for two hours every Sunday...

On August 23rd I posted this paragraph and photo and paragraph about Ted Gifford of Port Townsend, Washington: On the ferry I met Ted Gifford, a retired physician of "nearly 70" who had ridden to visit his son following a six week tour. He gave me a tour ("my first as...

Today was a ride to remember: 44 miles, starting at the northern terminus of Highway One, California's Pacific Coast Highway. I have more to add to the previous long and wandering post, some of it already written and waiting for upload, but this just needs to be...

  Michael welch is the longtime Senior Editor of Home Power magazine, and the moderator of the RE-Wrenches email technical forum for solar installers, a group in which I have been active for fourteen years. He is also a man with whom I  have found an easy and...

  I stopped to pay my respects at this roadside "ghost bike" descanso (New Mexican for a roadside memorial where someone died) along Highway 101, just north of the state park. My assumption is that John Mello died cycling along this section of highway, most...

  Evening of the same day... Let's see, it's Saturday, September 13th, 2014. Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, between Crescent City and Arcata. 36 miles today, that included one climb of 1,200' and one lesser climb, plus numerous smaller hills. This was my...

I received this message from Paul Schot today: Hi Allan, Great to read your blog! This alternative route looks wonderful. Pity your bike is letting you down but very loyal to keep it and continue bouncing . Didn't you once ride down this coast on a bike with a dog in...

Tomorrow, September 11, has long represented an important anniversary for me. This day thirteen years ago was the first installation day of the first batteryless residential grid-tied PV system, the system type that is now mainstream dominant in the U.S. We were on a...

Oregon has a wonderful state park system. I have never kept count, but I expect that I have passed forty or more state parks of various flavors since I entered the state at Astoria. The Pacific Coast Route maintains an entire series of state parks with biker/hiker...

I have received some wonderful comments recently from old friends and new. I have permission to share a few of them: From my bes' fren' Windy: "Thanks again for "bring us along" on your magnificent and joyful adventure! Keep on chooglin'" --- Windy From one of my...

Russ from Taos wrote me about some hobbit trails north of Florence that he had remembered from years past, so I made a point of seeking them out. He wrote: "I've been to some really cool places on the Oregon coast, but I can't remember where most of them are. One...

The last two days have been filled with tremendous beauty and contrast. I rode from near Newport to a few miles south of Florence, a total distance of only 60 miles over two days. What I first noticed is that the highway traffic dropped way off once leaving Newport....

To complete the bike repair side journey: i had ridden fifteen miles or so from the park to the outskirts of Tillamook, where in fewer than ten minutes I caught a ride to REI with Scott, a custom home builder from Garibaldi. We hit it off well. Like so many, he told...

My iPad, that I bought to blog this trip, is more trouble than joy. It loses things, like draft posts. I write when the chance occurs, which is usually somewhere (like a campground) lacking wifi, and then add photos and upload when passing through a town with good...