A Good Strong Wind

If I haven't mentioned it before, the project that keeps me sane these days is building a small (200 sq. ft.) outbuilding at my ranch(ette) in Dripping Springs. Since 1992 I've owned 20 acres of beautiful Texas Hill Country, what some would call "raw land," though I choose to call it a "ranch," being in Texas and all. The area is rapidly moving from rural to exurban, located about 25 miles/35 minutes from my house, and I've finally started on building something out there this spring.

I'm using reclaimed cedar deck timber for the frame, and reclaimed cedar fencing for the exterior, and building a covered front porch and a narrow back deck hanging out over the gently downward-sloping hill. It will have a small loft and a gambrel (barn) roof when I'm finished - I'm going to need some help at some point. Because of the weathered fencing for siding, the cedar plank doors and shutters, and the tin roof, it'll look like it's been sitting out there about 100 years when I'm done. That's the plan anyway. I'm calling it my "eco-barn." It will have a wood shop down below and a small sleeping loft above.

I've finished with a lot of the fun work, and I'm now facing an ugly task - clearing out all the dead wood that hangs around the construction site, because I've had to chain saw away dense cedar undergrowth and some pretty tall old cedar to make way for the barn and clear out the view of the scenic hills to the West. If you've never dealt with clearing mountain juniper, what we call cedar-chopping here in Texas, it's an ugly affair, with stickers everywhere and sharp sticks waiting to poke you in the eye. But until the dead wood is cleared away, it's hard to work on the new building - and therein lies the analogy for what I just read about MetroFi.

I'm dreaming of a good strong wind to come along and blow all this dead wood away, so we can finally take stock, start afresh with new business models, and get on with it! But I'm afraid it will have to be more of a manual clearing effort, with painful labor that will take some time. At least that's what it looks like so far. But the sooner we can put Muni Wireless 1.0 behind us, and that means picking through the pieces and gleaning lessons, the sooner we can move on to Muni Wireless 2.0, no?

Check out my previous post for more discussion on where we can go in the future, as soon as we're able to let go of this past.