What do you do on cloudy days? The question I get asked so often. Two nice guys in a pickup truck at a quick stop where I just bought..... Fr Apr 16....

What do you do on cloudy days? The question I get asked so often. Two nice guys in a pickup truck at a quick stop where I just bought some bananas and bread peanut butter. Truly nice guys with some level of Wonder and awe toward the vehicle. I said, friend, I am absolutely not trying to belittle your question. What do you do when you drive away from the gas pump. I could see him thinking. I use gas from my tanks. And I use electrons that I stored in batteries on sunny days to power me at night and on cloudy days. I went on to share that obviously our politicians are either f****** idiots or are absolutely lying to us. Jeff Flake, congressman from Arizona or someplace like that, just the other day told his constituents in a meeting, I can't promote solar energy because people need electricity at night. This guy should be locked up for life for either criminal negligence or criminal lying. It was a very pleasant conversation

Not quite sure how this 65 year old body does it. Maybe it's nothing significant. From pretty much a standing start, yesterday was 30 miles.... M

Not quite sure how this 65 year old body does it. Maybe it's nothing significant. From pretty much a standing start, yesterday was 30 miles and today was another 30. my knees are bothering me a bit. unlike my Sprint to Standing Rock from North Carolina, this time I am using the vehicle as a bike assisted by the Sun. I'm really quite amazed and delighted. In addition to me there is a 250 pound payload, the vehicle and what I carry. I'm amazed that on gentle terrain such as this part of the country traveling at 9 miles an hour on a overcast, zero Sun, day like today, I leave with a full battery and I arrive with a full battery. I'm doing about half the work according to my torque sensor, About 15 watt per mile, and the Sun and motor are doing about the same. 5 solar panels, 500 watts , is just about right. On sunny days it will provide enough energy that instead of averaging 9 miles an hour I can stay battery neutral at probably 12 miles an hour. I was a bit worried about carrying a 4th panel on the trailer because that made it longer but so far my concern seems to be unfounded. the strong suggestion from me is that others need to start pulling solar trailers behind their electrified bicycles to encourage renewable energy for others and for the fun of it.

In a couple more days it will be ready to roll. Major progress.....

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In a couple more days it will be ready to roll. Major progress on the punch list again all day today. The notion of a solar trailer is pretty significant. This is a second generation of the trailer. Some important upgrade features are noted in the photographs below and a description of each photograph. The challenges include lightweight, low cost, reliability even in moderate wind conditions, the ability to tie down in the event of extreme winds. The ability to angle the panel left or right to catch full sun. The ability to have panels extended Way Beyond the vehicle so that if the vehicle is casting Shadows at least some of the panels will still be generating electricity. And on and on.  I suggest that if you are really interested in promoting renewable energy that you do something like I have even if you don't extremely need it. As it sits here this vehicle is about $12,000, but it is only a third of that or less and functional parts, $3 to 4000. and then it's basically free except for $120 in tires every thousand miles ( quite standard on a bike)  and  $0.10 a mile  for the depletion of lithium ion batteries.  And in another couple of years it'll be less than that simply because there will be places to rebuild the batteries which is very inexpensive. The stylish cab from Organic Transit, don't buy it unless you want zero, zero, zero, support, the stylish cab is needed or beneficial for the full-time campaign I wage. It is 80% of the cost. It could easily be an under $500 Schwinn tricycle with a $600 motor. Or it could be a more sophisticated two thousand-dollar motorized trike. Or most likely still it could simply be  a  motorized bicycle  with just one or two panels.  If you can commute around a city like I did around Washington DC with a motorized bike and a panel you wouldn't plug your batteries in anytime within a year most likely. Why aren't you doing something like this? If you're serious about getting people to think about renewable energy, in time for it to matter, you'll seriously consider this and some of you will do it. Oh, and the American flags you wonder? Yes, I detest with every cell in my body the America that behaves as it does today and for most of its existence. But I refuse to surrender what I was told it stood for when I was in kindergarten, freedom and justice for all, give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to be free. I refuse to surrender that.

Exploration for life, to plant seeds, to Kindle Fires, will resume soon. Another.....

### Exploration for life, to plant seeds, to Kindle Fires, will resume soon. Another two full days of repair work and the vehicle should be almost ready but departure cannot resume until after Friday when a very expensive battery arrives that was used up on the Sprint from North Carolina to Standing Rock last fall. If you have recommendations of folks who would like to provide a night's lodging,  (traveling in the Midwest region for the next several months), or folks that should receive a visit, please let me know and I'll begin to put things on maps. Departure is from Bemidji Minnesota. Directions will be determined by you, in part,  which of you reply with what suggestions. He wept, wiped tears from his eyes, the nice, large, late forties man in his big white pickup truck, as he heard the story of the vehicle, the journey, the quest. He was deeply moved by my rhetorical question, what are we leaving our kids and grandkids? His heart was most definitely stirred. The one thing required, the only thing required, for a decent future for all creation is stirred Hearts. Sometimes this journey does that. Also, donations are welcome and needed at my email address start underscore loving at yahoo.com. (Those of you that watch this journey but never help, if the words, voyeurism, freeloader, do not fit, please don't wear them.)

Another all-day attack on the repair and upgrade of the vehicle prior to resumption of the search for life in the United States begun.....

Another all-day attack on the repair and upgrade of the vehicle prior to resumption of the search for life in the United States begun last September 2nd and resuming this weekend I expect. Major progress on the punch list. Major dapl repairs now complete. Many minor enhancements done and some left to go. Thank you mr. Credit card.

$2,300 GoFundThis. Water protector James Mcginley recovering, repairing, resuming Fight for creation. Dapple Unleashed $1,100 violence on my solar fueled bicycle car, and my possessions February 23rd......

$2,300 GoFundThis. {{{Canceled due to total lack of interest. 1 donation, $100. Mission will resume anyway on credit card debt only. This is what I expected.}}. Water protector James McGinley recovering, repairing, resuming Fight for creation.

Donations to this GoFundThis as of today, Wedsday, $100.

Dapple Unleashed $1,100 violence on my solar fueled bicycle car, and my possessions February 23rd before during and after arresting the 48 of us, of the earlier 12000, that remained and stood that last day. This the price the State exacted for my decision to stand with Grandma Regina Brave of Oglala tribe rather than leave the camp as had been my plan the night before. I had stayed for months to stand with my native sisters and brothers for their human rights as indigenous people, and when I learned that she had remained in camp the 23rd the decision for me was clear and I spent the day chronicling her talk, her arrest, and then the events of the day with one video receiving more than 80,000 views. I would make the same decision every time.

As a consequence of that decision thousands of dollars of possessions, pretty much everything that I had, was destroyed because I decided to Chronicle her rather than get the stuff safely out of the camp as I had an option to do. I would make the same decision every time. Oh, and yes,  like the rest of the 48 I face what I understand to be $5,000 in fines and a year in prison to be decided later this year or early next.

This week I am replacing way less than half of what was destroyed so that I can resume the journey that I interrupted for Standing Rock, a mission across the country to try and massage the hearts of as many Souls as I can encounter per day stimulating their hearts with this solar fueled bicycle car and it's messages about waging love, indigenous rights, and starving the corporate snake.

As of tonight the credit card debt is beyond $1,000,  to replace basic possessions including a second change of clothes, to repairing  the broken roof of the vehicle .  Plus another $400 for the dental work required because I refused to leave camp in January when teeth became damaged.

By week's end another $700 to replace the lithium ion battery that I pretty well exhausted in the 2 month 1700 mile Journey from North Carolina to Standing Rock that was completed in a 4 day sprint ending two hours before the snowstorm in late November. And then there's the $25 per day (1st month) to fuel that journey going forward across the country speaking to people in convenience stores, gas stations, churches, intentional communities, camps, about radical Brotherhood, putting our lives on the line for the next Generations, starving the corporate snake, well possibly modeling the same with my life.

With your help this work can resume in a healthy fashion. PayPal start_loving@yahoo.com. Without your support it will be ground to dust pretty quickly under this heavy credit card debt. This mission is not to be confused with the Oceti construction crew  ( Joe Britt Jr., Val Armstrong, Eric Wallace-senft ) with whom I've been traveling and providing what little support I can. They are  conducting their own fundraising and please watch and support them.

Collaboration needed: High-effectiveness solar trailer... Potential funding, collaboration need. Thanks......

Collaboration needed: High-effectiveness solar trailer... Potential funding, collaboration need. Thanks to the savagery of the police state on February 23rd and a series of disasters that resulted , the solar trailer on my bike, and some of my bike, are pretty well destroyed. Although some of my affection for solar panels has greatly diminished, it is not entirely gone and the most important part of that vehicle for stimulating people's thinking about renewable energy is the trailer because the solar panels are so obvious. As many as half of the people in this country that could and should be switching from fossil fuels to  renewable energy, solar panels,  are prevented from doing so  by the fact that they rent and don't own their own property.  But as I did when I was in an apartment in Washington DC,  they could easily  pull a solar trailer behind their car or bicycle  charging batteries all day  and use those to power the appliances in their apartment. It may be sooner than later that I should resume my cross-country travel with that vehicle and it may well be soon that I should invest in the next generation of that trailer. I have learned a lot about the needs , including the need to be able to very very easily and quickly angle it toward the Sun, the need to protect the trailer from destruction from Midwest crosswinds and or the Winds of an occasional extreme storm. Needs that include quick and easy access to storage space underneath. Needs that include the ability to shift the solar panels three or four feet aft of the vehicle when traveling south so that multiple panels are not blocked by the sun midday and to solve the fishtailing problem that shifting such weight rearward can cause . Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera.. I am pretty well prepared now through many months of painful learning to detail and prioritize key requirements. I suspect that a complete redesign is necessary. I suspect that  a quick prototype implementation which I would use would cost between 2 and $4,000 and I would be open to trying to raise and Supply such funds. I suspect that aluminum would be a key material and therefore someone that is able to work in aluminum. Please if you know of any persons that would be interested in collaborating on this project seriously with funds and or dollars please let me know. I have and never will have any commercial interest in this other than I would love to see it become commercially viable in itself or to stimulate products for others. Who ever collaborated would be welcome to any commercial interest. I don't know if this is a project that I will never devote myself to or if it is something that I will devote myself to very very very soon. As Eisenhower said, plans are worthless, but planning is everything, and I think I should be doing some immediate planning on this.  Mike Cobb Rex Mark Lucas  ( photos are moments before the state savagery was Unleashed.)