Project Description
At the end of 2019 we set our sights on repeating our awesome Alvord Desert trip earlier that year. The end of March, 2020 was agreed upon. This trip was planned months in advance, and the last thing any of us could have predicted was a global pandemic. A week before leaving, dealing with preparing for the trip, listening to our political leadership talking about a statewide shutdown, bare grocery store shelves and trying to ensure our families left behind were taken care of, we prepared to leave on a trip we literally questioned if we would be able to return home from. It wasn’t all bad, Jordan had recently prototyped two portable diesel heater units and a trip into the springtime chill of Oregon’s high desert was a perfect testbed.
We left for our trip on Sunday, and going into the weekend Governor Brown stated that she would be making an announcement the following Monday. We had no idea what this announcement would mean. Would there be checkpoints on I-5 getting back into Portland? Would gas stations close? Planning for the worst, and equipped with onboard refrigeration in every rig, we prepared to completely self sustain on all consumables except for gasoline. The plan for gas because we live in Oregon and Oregonians are not (normally) legally allowed to pump fuel into their cars was to verbally refuse the employee’s assistance, wear gloves, wipe down the pump handles with disinfectant wipes, pump our gas and wipe down again before leaving. Fortunately, we managed to find a tube of Clorox wipes… Thanks Eric for leaving Clorox wipes in your trailer!
Monday morning, Eric was putting the WeBoost to work with a few stops while he had service to refresh Governor Brown’s twitter to see if the lockdown announcement had been posted and, thankfully, the announced restrictions didn’t effect the remainder of our trip. We had a successful test of the diesel heater prototypes, even splitting one between two tents on a couple especially cold nights. Both Eric and Rob described the shared heat experience in low teens ambient weather as “tolerable”, so I (Jordan) count that as a success! We got to relax in amazing hot springs and enjoy our introduction to social distancing.
