Thinking about technology and the on/off assignment, I  let go of the iPhone and internet as well as all other electronics for a short period for the last two nights.  During the week I had been thinking about what the number one thing I would need when these things were gone.   What would I need if ALL technology was to fail?  It quickly became clear (and I have actually thought about this quite some bit over the last couple years but never did anything about it because i love gadgets so much!)  that I needed to know one of the most basic of all survival skills: How to build a fire.

My project was to go out and find things in the garbage that I could use to build a fire with the exception of any readymade firemaking devices like lighters, matches, etc.  Now, I did have some insight as I said that I have thought about this before and have researched different ways online to do so but I thought this was a perfect opportunity to execute what I had found.  So, looking for what i thought to be suitable objects (wood, strings, etc) was incredibly easy in an urban environment becuase of constant construction and cheap manufacturing so it was really how to choose the objects and what i could carry easily.  I had to try many variations to finally settle on what worked best.
I settled with a pine board ("fire plank"), a towel hanger and shoe string (bow), and a broomstick (spindle).  I would then use some aluminum foil for a ember catcher and some shredded papers and wood from carving the pieces for the firestarter.  Unfortunately after these two nights I failed to successfully raise a fire.... HOWEVER - I did create enough friction to develop smoke which means I'm really close.

I will continue to blog about this as time passes.  There is no doubt that this can be done.