Fun end to a busy day.. I spent most of the day working on my talk.. again..   It still needs work.. but It’s getting there…    Elizabeth and Chris took off this morning Gabe went up to the mountain.. and Diane went to a meeting in the afternoon. ..so I had no excuse not to work. My plan was to go down to Middlebury to meet up with Homer.Whit and Nicole to see the final project of the flame arts class that Whit and Homer were teaching.  I was trying to get out of the house by 2.. but didn’t make it until 4.. .. It was just getting dark as I pulled into middlebury. The guys were just done filling up the last of the balloons with hydrogen they’d made by dumping aluminum foil in drano.. . They were going to use these balloons as targets..

I went down to the green (now very much white) and watched as they set up the propane accumulator.. It’s a very simple design that Whit has come up with. It’s an empty 40lb propane tank with the top valve replaced with a simple manifold which included 3 inlet lines from full propane tanks. one pressure gauge and an solenoid valve topped with a long steel pipe . The idea is that you let the pressurized liquid propane from the three filler tanks fill the empty accumulator with somewhere between 50 and 100 psi of gaseous propane.. Then you activate the solenoid and it release a blast of high0sh pressure propane over a small lit torch at the top. The torch is wrapped with coarse steel wool to keep it burning.  

Last weekend I built a small time delayed relay for the guys to use.. it uses a small micro controller to allow you to set the on time, off time.. and rep rate.. . The kids had made this massive wooden box to hold my tiny, tiny circuit.. most impressive. 

The other part of the piece the kids designed was an electric controlled spinner thing with two stainless steel baskets hanging off form it. those baskets held the balloons filled with hydrogen and a little burst of oxygen. the idea was to trigger the propane flame shooter as the  balloon swung over .. which would cause the balloon to explode loudly.. How cool is that ?

The kids were doing the final setup .. we took advantage of that to go inside to warm up and grab a snack..   On the left is homer’s buddy the Econ prof (can’t recall his name), Homer , Whit and Nicole..

We got back and a crowd had formed..  Home, Whit and the class kids turned on the gas and started shooting..   It was truly beautiful.. They were having pressure problems due t the cold.. but even so.. they were getting a good 10- 15 foot flame plume. You could feel the heat from the blast from 20 yards away.. Very, very  nice against the dark moonless sky.

I promised folks on Facebook movies of the thing firing.. so here ya go.. Note it was hard to time this to catch the baboons going off.. but I think you can get the idea..

OK.. this is going to be a busy week.. Better get to sleep.
Night everyone..
Nite Sam.. hoped you liked the fires..
-me

Gaaaaa – I’ve just spent 30 min trying to fix my blogging software.(Scribefire) . now I’m too sleepy to blog properly.. Whats a blogger to do ?

OK.. Here’s  a quick recap of a very nice day. I got home last night around midnight to find the whole house asleep.. Woke this morning after a great 8 hours sleep and tumbled downstairs. Our niece Elizabeth from Boston is here visiting with her friend Chris.. We sent Chris off with Gabe to Bolton, while Diane, Elizabeth and I went on a mornign Snowshoe…

We took her to see the tiny sweatlodge we found on the mountain…

We found a mysterious piece of birchbark that looked suspiciously like an old IBM punchcard…

And we wandered into an impromptu dog parade… .. a lady waled by with six dogs.. our two made eight.. It was quite a party. ..

I left a SamStone at the trailhead just for fun…

We wern’t gone long.. but the dogs were tuckerd out when we got home.. I found Satori asleep on her favorite toy.

I spen t the rest of the day workign on my talk… and on the upstairs coputer that had gotten messed up by a microsoft code push (grrrrrrr)

Around 3:30 we all got in the car and headed to Stowe. Gabe was competign in a Red Bull sponsored rail jam…

It was a surprisingly big crowd considering the weather.. It was just below zero when we arrived.. and the temp started droppign as the sun set.. .. There was a 20 MPHZ wind with it.. making it feel quite… ‘refreshing’.

The sponsors were giving out free red bull.. even to lazy dads.. they had my favorite.. Diet Redbull. what a great invention !

Gabe went to practice the course while we walked aroudn the grounds at Stowe. I’d never actually been in or around the lodge.. it was quite ritzy and nice.. We were lucky enough to cathcch the tail end of an ice carving competition.. The things were amazing .. Take a look at this ‘ice mantis’.. it won the $1000 top prize.. and rightly so.

I like all of the pieces.. there a bit hard to see in this light..   This is a bear on his back drinking a bottle of beer.

This is a lady taking an outside shower..

Here’s a bear and an eagle..

And a frog with a peace sign on her/his tongue.

We made our own called ‘fire and ice’ out of scraps we found around.. This fire sure felt great !

This one was amazingly tall and elegant .

two eagles fighting.

a fish head.

And lots of worded signs..

We went inside to wai for Gae’s event.. while thawing , we ran into our friend Sue

Finally it was time for the event.. but that poitn it was about five below zero and blowign a very brisk 20 miles per hour wind..
It felt like we were on mars as we stepped outside.. They’d set up a small half pipe filled with a variety of butter boxes and rails..
They also had a huge projector shining the red bull logo on the side of the mountain .. pretty cool !

Was we waited we checked out some of the racy boards.. including friend Luke’s ‘love board.. the one that’s stirring up the controversy.. Here are a few less provocative ones..

There were lots of kids we know.. Sawyer, Sumner, Cameron,  Luke, Jessie , Dylan.. and here’s Ralph !

Gabe had  good night.. . His style was really nice . He’s now a younger guy in an older age group..he’ll learn a bunch doing that.

Had to do these without a flash.. so their blurry.. but I like the effect with the light ray…

We kept having to duck in to thaw.. -5 with 20 MPH wind is what in windchill ?

Ahh.. a balmy -29 degree equivalent.. it was brutal..   It was -8 by the time we got home. -12 now.. Not the coldest night we’ve had this month.. but cold enough for me with this wind.. Brrrrrr

One last event for the evening was Elizabeth’s birthday cake..She just turned 25 !  Diane made one of her yummy carrot cakes
and we dug in.. it was about 10:30.. kinda late to be eating.. but … there’s always time for cake..

OK.. gotta get to bed.. I’m GOING TO FINISH MY TALK TOMORROW… so I can start practicing.. If you see me doing anything else tomorrow.. tell me to get back to work..

OK.. now off to bed.. night folks.. night Sam
-me

Greetings from LA. I’m out here on biz-related travel. Not much to report.. just a long day of travel. I really enjoyed it though.

Got to JFK and Obamamania was everywhere you looked !

 

 I flew from JFK to LAX with a plane load of folks coming back from the inauguration. just the contact high was worth it !  Everyone was wearing buttons and shirts.. I heart tons of travel horror stories.. but no one seemed to mind.. Everyone was just beaming. It was so very cool to see so man people that jazzed about something !

I took advantage of parallel mirrors in the planes head to create a hole in the space time continuum. and clone myself… made me less lonely, I guess.

That’s about all to the day.. maybe tomorrow will be more interesting..
-jc

PS. I was working on my paper and came across this sound actuated picture than Max, Sam and I took of a firecracker going off.. Ever feel like that ?