In October of 2013, three of the FRIENDS OF THE TANK Executive Committee, Bruce Odland, Mark McCoin, and Lois LaFond, spent several days in Rangely to implement the next steps to the Save the Tank project.
After our wonderfully successful spring Kickstarter campaign to raise the needed funds, a myriad of unexpected issues arose. With the help of many of our friends in the Rangely community, we were able to conquer several problems and accomplish many of our goals. We had several major meetings discussing a vast number of issues with the County. The main meeting was with Mark Sprague, our primary contact with the Rio Blanco County; Jeff Kummer, County Building Inspector; and our wonderful volunteer engineer from Denver, Mike Fields, to discuss the design and approval of all of our Tank improvement plans.
Meanwhile, we made some serious headway on both our obligations and our enhancement of The Tank.
NAMES: With the help of many of our Rangley Helpers, we were able to position the close to 800 names of our Kickstarter donors in silver ink over the new maroon interior. (That huge clean-scrub-and-paint-job had been done during an earlier summer visit by a crew of very dedicated Tankster guys.) The names look gorgeous – like stars around the Tank planet.
RE-TANKS: Bruce and Mark tackled the incredibly complicated process of re-Tanking the music sent to us during the KS campaign. The job would have been easier… with electricity. Without, it was a monster of a project! However, this will be the one and only time that re-Tanking will ever be done without electricity, so it holds a special place in the engineers’ hearts [have you ever tried to run Genelec studio monitors off a car battery?].
THEN, ELECTICITY: Our biggest improvement, and most expensive (So, THANKS to you, KS Donors!) was getting an electric pole installed, and the Tank wired for electricity – 100 amps with 120/240 volt service. This is huge and means that we can actually execute much of our vision.
DRIVEWAY: Councilwoman Elaine Urie and her husband, Steve, have volunteered to put a driveway in for us! We have to wait for the Conditional Use Permit (see below) to be approved – and by that time, we will have avoided the snow and rain. It is hard to give sufficient thanks for such generosity. We keep finding out what a welcoming place Rangely is.