community at burning man: a newbie’s perspective

Last week I had the opportunity to participate (for the first time) in Burning Man, wherein I camped out in the desert for a week with 70,000 or so other like-minded folks who collectively instantiated a ‘creative, connected, thriving society,’ if only for a brief moment. Burning Man made a big impression on me because of the sense of community I experienced there, which was unlike anything I’ve encountered before and which has inspired me to dive deeper into community building out here in the ‘default world,’ as burners call it.

Me just before the man burned on Saturday night

If you’ve heard of Burning Man, you might think of it as a music festival, or an art festival, or a bacchanalian orgy of drugs and sex in the desert. Burning Man does contain all these things, but none of them are essential to it. From my perspective as a first-timer, what makes Burning Man go and probably what has sustained it for decades is its radical idea of community, and the commitment of virtually all its participants to that idea.

what is community?

I’ve recently been reading about the power and untapped potential of communities. In particular The Abundant Community by John McKnight and Peter Block lays out a framework of requirements for the creation of communities made of neighborhoods and families that provide a lot of what people have grown accustomed to buying or contracting out in a consumerist society: health, safety, environmental stewardship, food, raising of children, and care for the elderly and marginalized. McKnight and Block describe “universal properties” of abundant or “competent” communities:

  • The giving of gifts – every member of a community has skills or resources to offer to the community, and they share their gifts freely
  • The presence of association – we can amplify gifts from community members by forming associations to support things like parks, schools, music, etc
  • The compassion of hospitality – strangers and the marginalized are welcomed into the community and have access to the benefits of gifts

The authors argue (convincingly, to me) that if a community exhibits these properties then it can replace much of what we buy or obtain from government institutions and at the same time dramatically enhance human connection, self-reliance, and physical, emotional, and environmental health. I have personally experienced this in the community that supports the public elementary school my kids attend, and I am inspired to expand my efforts into the other communities that surround me.

Now, compare these properties and goals with the ten principles of Burning Man:

  1. Radical inclusion
  2. Gifting
  3. Decommodification
  4. Radical self-reliance
  5. Radical self-expression
  6. Communal effort
  7. Civic Responsibility
  8. Leaving no trace
  9. Participation
  10. Immediacy

It’s clear to me that what Burning Man is trying to build is a cultural movement founded on abundant community. What’s truly amazing is how successful they are, at least from my personal experiences over the last week.

burning man’s gift economy really works

Principles 2 and 3 say “Gifting: Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value” and “in order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.”

These are nice words, but how does it work in practice? In my experience, it is utterly transformational compared to the ‘default’ society I’m accustomed to.

Burning Man is a city composed of thousands of camps, and every camp contributes gifts to the community. The gifts might be daily coffee and tea service (this is what my camp provided), or yoga classes, or bike repair, or a cost-free pub, or lessons in trapeze arts, or a dance party, or any of a hundred other things. These gifts make Burning Man go, they set the menu of activities for the day, and they support the day-to-day functioning of the temporary city.

Morning coffee service hosted by my camp.

What’s incredible is the shift that occurs when you interact with gift purveyors instead of paid service providers. Every thing on offer is “free,” and that instantly sparks gratitude in the recipient and the joy of giving in the purveyor. It transforms every routine interaction into a positive one ripe for human connection–you are always just minutes away from a new friendship. And you’re eager to share your experiences deepening and broadening a network of connectivity among camps and individuals.

This gift-oriented posture spreads beyond camp services and pervades everything you do. Whether you’re out and about on the playa or just hanging around your camp, you find your attitude toward other people has changed. If you see someone in distress, you offer them help. If someone is lost, you give them directions or just walk them to where they need to go. You find yourself picking up trash and even trying to keep the porta-potties nice. You come to expect this kind of behavior from everyone else you encounter, and it makes you feel warmer and more connected to those around you. I experienced all of this, even as a relative introvert, and I was captivated and inspired by it.

inclusion, participation, and immediacy

I belong at Burning Man. Of course, I’m very used to feeling a sense of belonging as a white, cis-het male. But, incredibly, the inclusiveness of Burning Man is so baked in and pervasive that I did not feel defined by that identity, and in fact I felt invited to challenge and subvert it, and I had a blast doing so. At Burning Man, people are not interested in “what you do” or even “who you are.” They are interested in your participation in what’s happening right now, with them, and you are welcome to decide on the spot how you’ll behave or act in a way that is gloriously unconstrained by your accumulated sense of identity or personal baggage or whatever.

A few fun examples that come to mind: there was a camp devoted to swings of various kinds, including a series of rings you crossed like a monkey. The camp provided instructions for how to cross the rings, with the final step being “take off your pants!” So, I dutifully followed each instruction until I was confidently sailing across the mats they provided. Then I was gently encouraged to consider following through on that last part–and soon I was experiencing pants-free monkeyness with a crowd of strangers cheering me on. Why not?! At another camp was a group meditation session where pairs of strangers peered into each others’ eyes continuously for minutes at a time, often leading to tears–of recognition, relief, connection. On the playa, hundreds of interactive art pieces invited viewers to climb, swing, enter, or ignite the art as they viewed it. I have never experienced such intense connection with art before in my life. I ended up giving a teary bear hug to my favorite sculpture, The Cosmic Messenger, when I had to leave it for the last time.

The Cosmic Messenger, my favorite piece of art. I wish I had a picture of it at night…

It’s worth mentioning how the “immediacy” principle feeds the feeling of freedom and connection. Aside from a few moments taken to grab a photo or send a proof-of-life text message, there just wasn’t much use for cell phones at Burning Man. When you encountered someone, they were right there, with you–not about to return their attention to a phone, or marching off to a meeting or some other commitment. Everyone collectively agreed to pay attention to each other and the world around them, and it electrified every interaction with so much more potential. It made me realize how much we give up by being coy or insular in our day-to-day interactions.

the mini community of your camp

Most Burning Man participants come as part of a camp. Camps range in size and ambition, from just a few people to more than a hundred, and from offering coffee to bringing huge art cars and concert venues. Within each camp, attendees support each other by pooling resources like water, cooking group meals, joint trash and gray water management and expansive shade structures. But also core to my positive experience was the emotional support, knowledge, and invitations to participate that came from my fellow campers, many of whom had ten or more burns under their belt. Every one of them was eager to help explain how things worked, to help me find my way, and to invite me out to see art on the playa or to a 2am dance set with a special DJ.

The camp provided a home base to chill and recuperate, where faces were familiar and a sense of safety and security pervaded. It was a place I could make direct contributions in cooking, cleaning, and coffee service. It provided a framework to be a healthy, functioning participant in the broader Black Rock City community. In addition, my camp was wonderfully multi-generational and multi-disciplinary, with participants ranging from new college grads all the way to retirees, tech folks to lawyers to journalists. They showed me that everyone belonged in our camp who was willing to give back in turn and support the others there.

Most of the people I know who enjoyed the burn had a similar camp experience. It is possible to camp solo on the fringes of the city, or to be a part of a camp that you buy your way into, but that often doesn’t result in such a positive experience–and I think it might be unhealthy for Burning Man in general (see below).

threats to and limitations of community at burning man

If it sounds like I am drunk on the utopia of Burning Man’s community, that’s because I am. But I am also aware of how delicate it is, and of how unsustainable it is in the form of Black Rock City.

The most important threat is from non-participating attendees. On your Burning Man ticket in huge print is the text “No Spectators.” At the top of the website for the event is the admonition “Burning Man is not a festival! It’s a city wherein almost everything that happens is created entirely by its citizens, who are active participants in the experience.” Alas, I witnessed a certain set of BRC citizens who definitely seemed like spectators. They stayed in “plug and play” or “oligarch” camps that made minimal community contributions, where camp members did not know each other, and where membership was simply purchased for some thousands of dollars or financed through personal wealth that employed staff to insulate their members from the obligations of community participation. It’s hard to describe how, but you could tell who these folks were when they were near–they seemed to be looking ‘at’ Burning Man rather than being part of it. At night, I could feel gravity wells formed by groups of these folks as they moved among the dance parties and free bars, hungry for the next experience that Burning Man would provide them.

I also have to acknowledge that Black Rock City is not a sustainable community. It is made possible through a huge amount of paid infrastructure (sanitation, power, emergency services, etc) combined with a year’s worth of effort and contribution in art, activities, and supplies that is all very much not free, but rather jointly contributed by people who make their money in the ‘default world’ and then funnel it into Burning Man to make it such a spectacular yet very temporary space. In this way, BRC is not a model community, but rather a radical experiment in how a community could feel if consumerism and class could be magically erased.

go to burning man!

I first considered attending Burning Man twenty years ago, buying a ticket for me and Leslie in 2005 when I was on the cusp of grad school. I ended up not going because I hadn’t realized all the demands that were placed on participants, and I wasn’t ready to meet them. And, to be honest, I had decided that by 2005 “Burning Man was over.” I mean, how could something that had been going since the 90s still be cool? This year I was able to attend because I was invited to an already-functioning camp that created a space for me to show up and contribute. And what I discovered was that the culture of Burning Man is alive and well, because of the community that is created there.

If, like me, you’ve been curious about this strange experiment in the desert, then I encourage you to connect with a camp and make the effort to go. In Black Rock City you can taste a version of community that is incredibly inspiring and encouraging, even as it is evanescent and endangered. I’m convinced that it carries important lessons for those of us seeking to build and improve communities in our daily lives.

a day in your life

To Paul: this is how you spent the day you turned 8 years and 9 months old.

Usually your mom does these posts but she’s off on a vision quest in Taos so I’m taking over for a guest post!

You rose in a pretty good but slightly delicate mood. I immediately began preparation of your current favorite breakfast: toasted, buttered bagels. You also recently acquired a BeybladeX battle arena where these little plastic and metal tops fight each other, and we played a few rounds of that to warm up to the day.

There was no safety patrol this week, which means that we were able to delay our departure until 7am sharp. You had a plan to show off your new Beyblades by whipping them out of your vest pockets after unzipping your Pokemon hoodie. No word on whether that actually happened.

You disappeared into your school day and I met you on the other side. I inquired how your day was, and you said “normal” and ended the conversation. I later learned you didn’t play Beyblades at school, but not the reasons why. You took off for a solo walk home due to an urgent pee need.

First, you request a “relaxing” day where we immediately start watching Bluey when we get home from school. I reject this plan, causing you to nearly tear your Investigators book in half with rage.

I then prepare you a beautiful snack of sugared strawberries, manzanita bananas, cotton candy grapes, and graham crackers, which you happily consume, then remind you of our agreement that we would all together either go climbing or do a Crunch Labs box (usually just Annie and I go climbing on Mondays but since I’m solo dad, we had to work together). You launch a fierce, tearful campaign explaining how you absolutely are not going to leave the house because (a) you’re exhausted (b) you hate climbing (c) Annie always gets what she wants and you never get what you want (d) you don’t like the air in the climbing gym because it’s chalky. After 20 minutes of careful negotiation, we agree you can play your Beyblades app in the parked car while Annie and I climb for 30 minutes.

After we arrive at the gym, you change your mind on all that and decide that you actually do want to climb! Luckily I have brought everyone’s climbing gear and we jump right into a nice happy 30 minute group climb. You seem eager to show off your climbing skills after months of opting out of this dad activity, and indeed you still have your mojo. There’s a bit of competition between you and Annie but we keep it civil with a promise of Snickers bars for you both on the conclusion.

Once back at home you and Annie launch another attempt at starting a Bluey marathon, but I rebuff you again and you remember your new bubble machine, which entertains you and Annie for a good 30 minutes while I prepare dinner.

Annie rediscovers Mom’s gavel in her writing desk and we spontaneously convene a court make-believe game while dinner is cooking. I am a bit too good at inventing a crime where royal jewels are stolen from a museum, where I am a suspect along with Fetch the tiny Squishmallow. You say “let’s play this game a lot because I really like it,” and glory in your role as expert witness with the key piece of info to pin the crime on me. We eat a dinner of tortellini then finally, at last, you get to watch some Bluey with your sister.

You joyfully squeak to the Bluey antics for half an hour or so then beg an extra episode out of me by hustling to brush your teeth and change your clothes. I read you a chapter of Hank Zipzer book 15 and bid you adieu in the midst of a tickle war with your sister.

immich is pretty cool!

I’ve maintained gallery.overt.org in one form or another for about twenty years as a way to self-host my photos. I wrote the initial version in Cold Fusion soon after I got my first digital camera around 2000.

For the last 10+ years, it’s run on Piwigo, a PHP clone of the now-defunct Menalto Gallery. These platforms are great, but they are definitely meant for showing of a curated subset of all the photos you take.

To manage the ongoing stream of photos our family takes, we’ve been using Google Photos for over ten years. It offers automatic backup of photos as you take them, easy group albums, and slick ML-based search–I don’t even know why I’m describing it as it is ubiquitous, probably the best new Google product to come along since GMail. But it does expose you to reliance on Google to store and organize your photos–something that the self-hoster in me has always chafed at. I’ve also been vaguely worried that I could lose my photos if I ever lost access to my Google account.

Along comes immich, an open-source clone of Google Photos you can host yourself. It has all the key features of Google Photos without its basic problem of a third party controlling your photos. I set up an instance on my home server and used immich-go to ingest the ~60k photos we had saved to Google. It took a couple of days, but now I’ve got ongoing automatic backups from my phone and Leslie’s phone.

I’m leaving Google Photos turned on as a parallel solution, and to make it easier to share with others, but it feels good to have a self-hosted copy of all our photos now. Nice work immich team!

haleakalā sea to summit ride

Slightly longer version of the Strava description 🙂

We had a week in Maui as part of our epic 8-week sumer road trip. I’m training for a half Ironman, so have been looking for interesting rides along the way.

Haleakalā is the big volcano that makes up most of Maui, and it’s a famously cool view that Leslie and I visited when we were here 14 years ago. We thought it would be cool to take the kids up. Then I thought, hey, can you ride up? Yes, you can! After reading the description I figured this one was beyond me, but a friend suggested that it might be doable if I planned my day carefully. So I started to get excited and booked a bike rental in Maui.

Alas, a wildfire started near Crater Road, which is the only road to the summit. The summit was closed and remained so for a couple of weeks as our time in Maui approached. After we got to Maui with no change in the status, I put away my hopes to try the climb and started planning for the West Maui Loop instead. The night before my ride, I checked the park service website one last time and was delighted to discover they’d reopened the summit

So just like that, the original plan was on! This morning I threw the rental bike in an Uber at 4:30am for a ride to the start in Paia.

It was an awesome climb (reputedly the world’s longest paved climb?) and quite a challenge for me. I was riding almost exactly for 5 hours, with only a few hundred yards total that wasn’t uphill. I took the “slow and steady” approach, keeping my heart rate low. I wasn’t sure how the altitude would hit me as I climbed toward the 10,000ft summit. It was not too bad, but if you look at the Strava report you can see that my power drops a lot as I approach the summit.

My wonderful and understanding wife drove the kids to the summit to meet me and give me a ride back down.

It’s hard to describe an experience like this that is so internal and hits everyone differently, but I will say that at a certain point about 2500ft of climb / 2 hours from the top I started to really believe I would finish, and a banger of a Justice remix came on my earbuds, and I actually started to cry with joy. There is absolutely no reason to do things like this–they are time consuming, self-absorbed, and physically demanding beyond any reasonable fitness benefit you might gain. But somehow there is also something profoundly affirming and grounding about them, too.

Leslie says that this ride means I can no longer say I’m not a cyclist 🙂 Notes for the future:

Things I should have brought but didn’t: more snacks, chamois butter.

Things I brought but didn’t need: my large chainring, brakes.

8gig Google Fiber upgrade

File this under ‘further adventures in pointlessly fast home internet.’

Screenshot 2024-05-29 at 12.54.48 PM

I noticed on a billboard that Google Fiber was offering new 5- and 8-gigabit speed tiers for their home internet. I absolutely did not require an upgrade, as I was already on an unusably fast 2 gigabit plan, but that has never stopped me in the past. Just ask my parents, whom I enrolled in the beta testing programming for Road Runner cable internet when I was a tween in the nineties.

I hopped on the Google Fiber site and signed up for the next available appointment, one week away. A couple of days before then, I got a call saying we’d need to delay for 10 more days so they could ‘upgrade the fiber in my neighborhood’ (?)

I knew that I couldn’t take advantage of this new speed without making some gratuitous home networking upgrades, so I got to work on that to pass the time.

I already use a Unifi ‘Dream Machine’ SE (UDM SE) as my home internet gateway, which supports a 10Gbps WAN connection via SFP+. My existing Fiber Jack, model GOGP220C, had an ethernet port that will train at 1, 2.5, or 10Gbps, and so I started out by plugging in a generic 10GBase-T SPF+ module into the UDM SE WAN port and verifying it came up as 10Gbps.

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Next, I needed to upgrade the connection to my home server to 10Gbps. It sits in a media closet separated from the gateway by a ~20ft run of CAT6 going through the crawlspace. So, used another couple of the above SFP+ ethernet adapters and placed an inexplicably cheap switch that had 2 10Gbps SFP+ ports (and 4×2.5Gbe ethernet ports, all for $50, how?) next to the server, using a cheap direct-attach copper cable between the switch and a basic 10Gbps SFP+ PCIe network card based on the Intel 82599EN chipset that unRaid supports out-of-the-box.

A week later, the Google Fiber tech arrived and upgraded my Fiber Jack to the newer GOXP330C model that supports speeds higher than 2Gbps. It’s slightly bigger than the old model, and requires a 1-amp (vs. 1/2-amp) power supply. He didn’t touch the fiber drop to my house, which was a relief, because I have rerouted the entry into the house into my back utility room using my own armored cable that I carefully installed and didn’t relish the idea of redoing. It turned out the ‘fiber upgrade’ was actually a card installed in the neighborhood’s fiber hutch to support the higher speed.

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The tech was immediately able to pull the full 8Gbps symmetric to his laptop, but I was only getting about 3.5Gpbs down and 6Gbps up. A bit of research revealed that the UDM SE can only handle 3.5 when doing ‘deep packet inspection. After I disabled that I was able to get the 7.9/6.6 you see at the top of the post from the Speedtest CLI running on a VM on my NAS box.

I guess now I just have to wait until we break into the double digit gigabits!

goodbye, sous

Sous-chef Hall-Klingner, our dog of  14 years, died on 17 March 2022. She was a loyal and loving member of our family. She escorted us from Berkeley to Oakland to Austin, welcomed Annie and Paul to the pack, and delivered us safely to our new house.

Sous took me on thousands of walks and runs. I owe to her my adult relationship with the outdoors. I promised to care for her for her whole natural life, and I feel lucky that I got to keep that promise.

She’d been slowing down for years, but still made the half-mile walk with Annie and Paul to elementary school most mornings. Finally, she just got too tired, and she needed to rest, so we let her go.  Goodbye, Sous. We love you.

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remembering the stroller years

Sometime around April of 2017, before Paul was even a year old, we bought a B.O.B. Revolution Flex Duallie Stroller on the recommendation of a neighbor. It was tough and great for running, he said. And so began an intense, four-and-a-half year relationship that would cover (by my rough estimate) between 1500 and 2000 miles of strolling.

Here’s the first picture I could find of the stroller, from late April 2017

first_shot_30_april_2017

We took the stroller on long walks, most usually a 4-mile loop from our house down to the trail boardwalk, through Auditorium Shores, then back up to our favorite breakfast taco place, Mellizos (RIP). Here’s a Strava track of a typical walk

We joked that the stroller is like an SUV: huge, unwieldy, aggressively inconvenient to fit places and park. But so convenient, with huge cargo capacity. We trained our kids to sit in it for hours while we engaged in all sorts of activities and in all weather. Caught in the rain with the Crowders and their own double-BOB on the trail, June 2017:

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Attending some light protesting for health care on the UT campus in the early Trump years, with my parents gamely pitching in:

protesting_24_sept_2017

I ran behind the stroller a lot. By my estimate, at least 1000 miles with me jogging as I pushed–a great way to boost the effort. Here’s a shot from a trail run near my parent’s condo in Tabernash, July 2018:

trail_running_colo_7_july_2018

Here’s an example of extreme cargo capacity as we return from the neighborhood pool, July 2019:

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A key activity in later Stroller Years was the Donut Run, where Dad, eager for Sunday morning exercise, would bribe the kids into an hour and a half of sitting in the stroller by stopping at Howdy Donut (later Master Donut 2) on the way to a ~6 mile trail run. Here’s we are on a representative donut run from October 2019:

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Trail of lights, December 2019:

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One of the stroller’s great assets was its tube rubber tires that could cover lots of ground. You did have to occasionally add air or replace a tube, but no problem with help like this (July 2020):

stroller_maintenance_18_july_2020

One of our last great adventures in the stroller came this summer when Dan walked the entire length of the Hike and Bike trail with me on a very hot summer day. Here we are crossing Barton Creek about 8 miles in, June 2021:

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To commemorate all the good times on the trail with the stroller, we donated a brick to at Lakeshore Park, which was installed in June this year:

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We decided this summer that, at 6 and almost 5, it was time to focus on getting the kids to move their own bodies around, rather than continuing to rely on the stroller for our adventures. We quit cold turkey in July, and after a few months of sitting idle, I decided this morning was the day to give away the stroller. A bittersweet moment! I had the kids climb aboard one last time, November 2021. Farewell old buddy.

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diy home backup generator

During the Great Austin Snowpocalypse earlier this year, we lost power at our house for several days. It got really cold (single digits) during this time, and even though our house has gas heat, we couldn’t use it because we had no electricity to run the furnace blower / air handler fan. So, it got colder and colder in our house until we had to leave to stay with family who still had power and heat.

During the cold, I had a friend who managed to jury-rig the output from his solar panels to run his furnace blower during the day, keeping his house warm. It got me thinking that I really didn’t need much power to keep our house livable. A small gasoline generator would probably do the job. But the idea of running an extension cord from outside into the house and into the attic to hot-wire my furnace blower didn’t sound great.

Through some research, I learned of the existence of load transfer switches, which let you place some or all of your home’s electrical circuits on generator power in the event of a power failure. This sounded like the perfect low-cost solution to make the house livable for a day or two in the event of another extended power outage. Here’s how I went about it.

The generator: Honda EU2200i ($1200)

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My goal was to provide 24-48 hours of backup power for critical systems. I decided to go with a small, quiet gasoline generator from Honda. Why?

There are a lot of “battery generators” on the market now that use lithium-ion batteries to provide up to a couple of thousand watts of power, but at this output, they last only a few hours at most. You can go crazy and get something like a Tesla Powerwall for bigger energy storage capacity, but this will be a major installation and set you back tens of thousands of dollars. The energy density and cost of batteries just can’t compete practically with fossil fuels, and for a once-in-ten-years emergency power backup, I figure it’s okay to go with internal combustion.

The Honda generator doesn’t look great on paper next other options. For one, it only supplies 1800 watts of power. But, this is plenty for me to run my furnace blower, refrigerator, internet/wifi equipment, TV, and a few lights and outlets. The only major additional thing we might consider is the AC compressor, but this alone consumes more than 3000 watts and would take us into another realm of size, noise, etc. And it’s hard to see air conditioning as a critical system we couldn’t live without for a few day. The Honda is also only 120V (single phase), so you can’t use it to power any other 240V loads like an electric oven or dryer.

The Honda only runs on gasoline, while many competing options will also run on propane or even natural gas. Assuming our gas service was uninterrupted, that could mean endless generator backup time! But I have no outdoor gas outlets, nor a gas grill that gives me any other reason to keep propane around, and gasoline is the most energy dense of these fuels.

The number one thing that drew me to the Honda is its outstanding reputation for reliability: it will start up when you need it to. When reading about cheaper Chinese options, there were always concerns about reliability, especially when the generator spends most of its time sitting in storage. It also has a mode to run it just until the carburetor and fuel lines are empty of fuel, which does a lot to reduce gummed-up lines that may threaten reliability. Finally, the Honda is really really quiet, so much so that I would not feel bad running it in my urban neighborhood for two days.

The load transfer switch: Reliance Controls R306A Pro/Tran 2 ($300)

R306A DoorOpen WithKey

There are a lot of options to consider when choosing a transfer switch. They range from manual switches controlling a single load to whole-house, automatic switches that are intended for big diesel generators.

Because I have no permanent backup generator installed, a manual switch was the obvious choice. Reliance Controls seems to be one of a few big players in this market. I chose the R306A because:

  • It’s outdoor rated, and my service panel is outdoors.
  • It has enough circuits for my use case (6).
  • (this is big) It comes pre-wired with a NEMA power inlet, breakers and all the wiring you need to install it on your service panel (see below).

Installation and testing

Armed with my generator and load transfer switch, all I needed was to find an electrician to do the installation for me. Online research indicated I should expect to spend about $200-300 to get this done. In reality, I got two quotes for this work, with one coming in at $1200 and the other at $1600, for something like 5-6 hours of work. Which was just too much for me to stomach. What to do?

It turns out that Reliance Controls has a really nice YouTube video series explaining how to install their transfer switches. After watching them, I felt pretty confident I could handle the install myself. Let me say that of course you should not even consider going near your electrical service panel or even giving it a lusty glance. Leave that up to highly trained and paid electrical professionals, OF COURSE. But maybe, just maybe, imagine that in a parallel universe, I did install my own load transfer switch by following Youtube videos. How would it have gone?

It actually took me less than an hour start to finish, including time to test that the switch worked properly with my generator. The great thing about the pre-wired switch was that it comes with exactly the wires you need to introduce the loop between your circuits and the electrical service that passes through the transfer switch. You don’t have to touch anything inside the switch, just pull out the load wires from your breakers and use wire nuts to patch them out–see the videos for details.

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After getting the switch installed, I plugged the Honda in using a household 15-amp  to L14-30 NEMA adapter, and shut off the city power service to the house entirely. I started up the generator, and turned on my heater.

Here’s the generator app reporting power load with my refrigerator, TV, internet, lights, and heater all running. About 800 watts steady. No sweat!

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Maintenance / disaster prep

Armed with the knowledge that my setup would work today, I wanted to take a little care that it would work in the event of an emergency when it might be hard to find gasoline, motor oil, etc. So I laid in a supply of gas in a separate tank, and put fuel stabilizer in it that is meant to last a year. I set a reminder to start up the generator once per quarter and run it under load. I set another reminder to replace my gasoline once per year (I guess I’ll just pour the old gas it into the CR-V)

In all, this project set me back about $1600 plus a few hours of research and lots of time waiting on electrical bids that did not satisfy. What I get is ~2 days of heat, refrigeration, and internet for the next snowpocalypse. Not bad, I’d say!

goodbye, old friends

very well-loved Chacos
Today, it finally happened–my 8+ year-old Chaco flip flops finally had a fatal blowout in the right toe strap. These things are vintage at this point, as Chaco’s manufacturing quality has declined and they no longer even offer thin, flexible flip flops with “outboard” straps like this. These things were used as full-blown hiking shoes on our rafting trip down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon, hundreds of miles of Austin walkin’, and even served as pretty good running shoes chasing after Paul on his bike. I have some serviceable replacements, but they’ll never live up to these guys.