The Setup

In all fairness we have no idea what we're doing. Despite both Nick and my extensive traveling, we have never gone on a roadtrip like this before. He's in Croatia currently, coming back just in time for us to head out. I'm camped in my room, looking over AAA guides and making mix CDs to get us through our five day journey.

Our goal: to drive four days as fast or slow and wild as possible to arrive at Tres Piedras, New Mexico. There, we're staying at an Earthship we've secured a room at. Our worksite is at Taos, which is a drive away from Tres Piedras which is why we need a car. Plus it's more fun to drive. The whole trip, to me, has an aged aroma to it: something a bit loony like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with the introspective sageness of Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance. It was Nick's idea to spend ample time on the road, since we'd be, with luck, hungover every morning.

I've wanted to do a road trip for years, and this upcoming internship was the excuse I needed. Driving out west for no reason? That's silly. Driving out for a vague, unpaid internship? That builds your resume.

To be fair, the project itself is pretty cool, which brings us to...

The Internship: Earthship Biotecture is a project that aims to aid in a small wasy the energy crisis. Since global warning is P-R-O-V-E-N, many organizations are testing new ways to produce energy with little or no pollution or other harmful effects.

An earthship is a basically a house that utilizes natural and recycled materials and uses the sun's energy to keep itself at a core temperature all year without using fossil fuels. One of its primary building materials are old tires, which both absorb and release heat from the sun to keep a solid 70 degree temperature year round. It also has solar-powered generated electricity and looks like a beach house designed by Dr. Seuss. Overall, it's a groovy dwelling, and it doesn't poison the atmosphere. We will be staying in a completed earthship while working to build another. Biotecture is also trying to sell these homes and raise awareness of the possibility of mass produced, clean homes. Hopefully one day clean energy homes and cars will be neither "weird" or "hip" or "stupid" or "wacky" but simply the normal, rational, easy way to live. Hopefully.

The Plan So Far: We're probably leaving on September 30th, giving us four days to get there by October 3rd and check into the eathship. To the best of my knowledge, the internship starts on the 4th. It's hard to be 100% on anything for this trip, since the Earthship Biotecture's website rivals college websites in earnest worthlessness. The search bar seems like an effort in futility, like "Type search info here, and we'll try our best to dig around and find something relevant. No, really we will. Ok....is this right? No? Damnit."

Oh, we're also not getting paid for anything. Like, at all. Tools, food, housing, the drive. Monetarily it's such a horrible idea that we seem destined to take part in it, because Nick and I share the inability to hold onto money if we ever have an excess, or amount > 0 of it. But we believe both in the project's goal and in taking the chance to drive almost 2,000 miles with windows down and a cooler full of beer.