The Wind of Change. Chapter 56

It is just too much to attempt to catch up with at this point.   Leave just to be said that life has taken me back home to Wyoming and a lot has gone on to bring Jesse and I to this place.   I will start there.

Project completed

As I focus a lot on packing for the upcoming move, I still am making time to complete some projects. Finished this horse and saddle burn in the last couple of days.  Looking forward to my first public showing in Wyoming come April.

Georgia v Wyoming

The game is afoot.  After many months of planning and decision making the time has come to move this Pyrography and Uber/Lyft driving business to a new location.  For months the plan had been to move to Colorado, but an opportunity has come about to move it to northern Wyoming.

With that being said, the downside is that Uber / Lyft driving does not exist in Wyoming.  Word is out they are trying and perhaps I can influence that in the State in some way.  I will reach out to both Uber and Lyft to see what I can do to help them make that happen.

The upside is that my Pyrography should do well there, with hope.  Blogging may be minimual for a time starting March, but by April I hope to get back to an update.   There may be some Blogging on the journey there.

Started phase II of the large oak board which is an epoxy application that I hope to be able to show off in just a few days.  I am going to work to get that entire project finished before the move.

Uber v Lyft and ACLU

 It is seldom that I have addressed politics in the blog, but perhaps it is time to vent some issues here off and on.

Trump as tapped the Strategic and Policy Forum by picking up two of executives in the tech industry with the addition of Uber Technologies’ Travis Kalanick and SpaceX’s Elon Musk.

I can't say that I am excited that Travis Kalanick has chosen to work with Trump.  Nor, Elon Musk for that matter.  As an Uber Driver this rubs me wrong that they would work under the umbrella of this man.  It concerns me, but will monitoring their input closely.

Lyft on the other side of this has thrown big money toward the ACLU to work on cases that concern the people from the black listed countries.   I support their efforts and look forward to focusing my own personal business of driving to Lyft pickups and will be leaving Uber as the lesser of the two app's at this point.  I hope to see riders do the same and support Lyft by adding is as one of the apps they most use for rides.

I do hope that Ubers Executive does not fail by falling under the spell of the Human Rights violator that stole the election by the outdated Electoral College.  It should always be the popular vote and they Electoral College needs to go away.

Completed works in the last 30 days

 The 4x4 completed bard picture is done.  Going forward with a unique idea of framing it and will present the entire work in a blog post down the road.  I've made comment before that taking photo's of these do them no justice.  I really feel that way with this one.

Below is another completed work that I sketched out years ago and finally decided it was time to finish it up and get it out.  The Kalispell Grand Hotel in Montana.  I have done similar ones to this before.

Jesse had suggest I do some covered bridges. This is a small 4x6 that is stained in natural color and the bridge is in the drift wood stain that I recently acquired.

 Started the ground work on a very large and very heavy piece of Red Oak.  It measures 38" by 15".  My original desire was to make a table top out of it, but that ended up presenting a lot of challenges.  Then it came to be to make a wall mounted piece out of it.  The natural crescent moon shape is going to be part of the Native American theme of this when finished.  I will be walking through that process as I go so that followers can observe the amount of work that goes into doing a piece of this art.

Right now I have sanded down the rough cut to the wood and drummeled away much of the dead end of the plank to make it easier to work with and prevent loss of the piece over time.

Mavin Makers

Yesterday, finished cutting board that I had started for classes at Kevin Makers.   Small, but brought out new thoughts and skills needed to get some new things done.  

 Finished work light and it isn't good.   Not bad, not good.   Once I have completed it, I will put in a photo of it. 

Was hoping my pens for burning set would have arrived but they didn't.  PTL Enterprises has been very slow to fill my pen order and respond to my emails (not at all). I love the equipment, but taking care of my needs is poor.  Still haven't even seen the deduction from my account that he has filled my order placed last Friday.  As of yesterday, I can't get a response by phone, either.

Hoping through Mavin Makers to become involved in a local gallery for show and sales of some of my works.

Uber/Lyft driving has not been there again with business and about every 5th rider want to become one.  I was encouraging them to start.  Now, I am less and less being so, as my recruitment may work against me.  Took Friday and today (Saturday) to focus on wood projects and rearrange things in house so I can stay functional at production with wood work and still make steps toward preparation for a move come May.

Etsy, Lyft (v) Uber, etc

The area seems saturated with Uber drivers.   Too many part-time drivers to be productive as a a full-time driver.   Not unless I wanna work 15 hour days 7 days a week.   Lyft has become number one for me.   More business with it and complaints.  

Brings me to riders feeling the same.   I get more positive feedback about Lyft.   Game plans change daily out here.

Etsy is getting some hits, but I think I must go back in and re-evaluate my key words soon.  

Two very unsuccessful days...is our market saturated with too many Ubers?

The last two days have been most discouraging and seeing the number of Uber placards in windows, I wonder if your market in Savannah is just saturated with drivers. To some extent I feel like the part-time drivers may be killing the full-time driver business.  I'm going to be keeping an eye on this, by the same token I am going to really zero in on the Lyft market where most of my business today and yesterday came from.  This might be a better market right now.

Attended my safety training with Maven Makers (Makerspace) last night.  It was good to get down and dirty with some real equipment for woodworking.  I may not use the space as much as most, but it will be important for being able to take larger works in and get them fine tuned to bring them home for artwork to begin.