I'm at the San Jose, CA airport waiting on Reid.  He's flying in from a weekend visit with his boys in Houston and I flew in from Durango this morning having gotten up at 3:30 am to do so.  His flight is a bit delayed so I thought I catch up on my blog in the land of the fast internet.

I've been on Lake Vallecito for almost 2 months now.  I've made some improvements but they're coming along slowly since I have more skill using a computer than a saw or hammer.

On my sabbatical, I wanted to visit intentional communities across the US and I did so traveling around in my tiny house/RV.  I like the model of living with like minded people sharing and leveraging resources rather than being wed to the idea that we all need our own stuff.

I know I need my own space but it doesn't have to be big.  I just want it to be cozy and warm and if it happens to be in a lovely place--all the better.

My RV provided that experience except staying in a lovely place required that I do so crammed in next to a bunch of other manufactured homes.  That wasn't what I was going for.

Given the fact that I live and breathe by my ability to connect with the world via my phone and the internet, I also found the places where I stayed didn't offer that.

None of the intentional communities that I visited appealed to me enough that I wanted to move to any one of them but all had a quality or two (or many) that I'd like to replicate.

I liked the Twin Oaks community in Virginia who had a huge shared clothes closet.  As a person who shops at consignment stores and recycles my clothes often, this had a real appeal to me.  Twin Oaks also requires communitarians to work 38 hours a week in the community in exchange for the opportunity to live there.

We might use some of their practices up on Lake Vallecito as we begin our own new community there.