The tour was a real success, but of course it is very nice to be back home in New York! The bus is back at Grace Church in Jersey city, in fact, just across the river from Manhattan. We are finishing up the painting here and also making some improvements to the interior based on our experience on the tour. In addition, this Sunday we will have BioBus Sunday as a way to give thanks to the church for its generosity in letting the bus park in the driveway while we paint it.
Sketch of Wheel Well Stand
Tomorrow, my friend Gaylen will help me add a step/seat on the left-front wheel well, based on the design by Ray Naula (at right). This will add to the useable space in the front of the bus. The wood is coming from the old organ in Grace Church that Donald is currently taking apart – it was made of beautiful hard-wood and will make a very sturdy, and handsome, addition to the lab.
One of the things I have found quite gratifying while working on the bus has been our ability to get many of the materials we need second-hand or sometimes even out of the garbage. It is incredible how much stuff we throw away that is perfectly good and useable, if you can just find the person who needs it! It is true that you can usually furnish your apartment just by spending a few days looking at the trash piles on the street. I’d like to take this opportunity to promote one of my favorite, slightly more organized, recycling resources, called Freecycle. On the NYC list, there are about 100 items people are giving away for free on the list every day – it is an amazing resource whether you are running a shoe-string non-profit or trying to help save the planet by reusing things that would end up in a land-fill, instead of buying them new.
Francisco
Francisco came by last night and did an amazing job cleaning the microscope and wet lab. Francisco is gifted in many things – he not just cleaned the bus, he started teaching me how I could keep the bus clean myself more easily! Typically the bus gets cluttered with tools and parts until I have students coming on board and I clean it just for these occasions. But I need to develop a system for storing things and keeping things neat so that the bus is always ready for action. Francisco also came up with a very neat idea about how to use the space in the computer lab at the back of the bus that is atop the vegetable oil tanks. This is a large platform, about 7 foot long and 6 feet wide, with about 5 feet between the platform and the ceiling. Francisco’s idea is to put cushions along the walls around the sides of the platform and add a low table in the center of the platform. Students would sit cross-legged or with their legs under the table. The number of students that could sit would range between 4 and 10, depend on whether they were big high schoolers or smaller kindergardeners. I think it is a really nice way to utilize the space, and I will also try to make the table adjustable height so that it can accommodate different sized people, as well as drop down all the way when the platform needs to be used as a bed.
It is getting cold again, and the wood stove is heating everything up nicely. I have gotten good at making smoke-free fires, and the stove is big enough to really heat up the entire bus. There are still places that need to be better insulated, but otherwise I am happy. I am still considering replacing the wood-stove with much more convenient and space-saving propane heat, but there are also good reasons not to do it. First, wood-heat is very cheap! Second, it is carbon-neutral. Third, it makes the bus have a really nice atmosphere. On the other hand, propane can be turned on and off instantly, and replacing the wood-stove with a propane heater would make enough room for another microscope station.
