Oy.. 1AM after another long and busy day.. very productive work day from 8 till 6 then three events afterwords.. First stop was the VOMIT (Vermont’s Own M. I. T.) club meeting at Good Times Cafe in Hinesburg. I couldn’t stay but I did feel the need to stop by so we could toast the memory of our good friend and fellow MIT Club officer. John I/ John passed away about 2 weeks back after a long illness.. he was in his 80’s. John was a brilliant and eccentric man.. which can be said about most of the MIT grads I’ve ever met. That said, John was more of both / John taught me how tree sap flowed and why certain bugs had such rigid sex organs.. He was a specialist in many things.. none of them normal things.. A great epitaph if I’ve ever heard one.. Here’s to you John.. I hope you have a good machine shop wherever you are now.
From there I headed out to David D’s for one of the last days on the burning man vehicle.. we’re down to the wire now.. the car has got to ship out on Thursday.. Friday at the latest in order to make the opening of the burn. Things are going well.. but there’s still a ton to do. I went to train Dave who’s going to work with Carly on the lighting out on the playa.. I also went to finish the documentation and check out what still needed doing in the wiring. David D just finished the commutating connector hubs that will allow us to get 110Volts AC to the wheels.. These use the very cool mercury filled rotating passthroughs that I found.
There was a ton of activity and people there tonight.. people dodging forklifts, dodging falling parts.. lots of guitar playing and beer drinking.. it was almost like burning man.. but without the sand.
I did a walk through with Dave on the lights.. they were looking pretty cool toniht. I hope they’r erobust enough to work on the playa !
around 9 I took leave of the burners and headed up to Avery’s for our weekly fix of the colony. The crouwd has been growing every week.. this time there were about 30 folks.. most of them kids. It’s awesome watching the show with them.. Tonight’s show was pretty good.. as always .. it’s what you don’t see that’s so interesting to me. It was hard watching the part about George leaving.. It brought back sad memories.. I’m sure folks are wondering why it really made us sad… after all.. we knew he wasn’t dead.. the trouble was.. he really was here one moment and gone the next. George was our glue guy.. he kept folks talking to one another and smoothed out many of the interpersonal problems in the group. He was the ‘perfect’ person to spirit away because his departure left the biggest emotional gap.. I’m not sure that viewers could understand the bond we had given what’s been shown up to now.
There were some other funny things about the show.. I like the way they treated the transmitter.. it’s a very complicated build.. but they kept in the most important parts.. I hope that didn’t bore too many folks. They did use a little license in editing.. I really did blow out the inverter fans with my first test.. but we were only without power for 45 minutes.. and that was during the day.. the implication that we spent a night without power was not quite right.. though we did have such nights when our fuel was running low pre-solar panel. One thing I remember about that whole scene is how well mike kept his cool and helped me fix the problem I caused. At that point our technical relationship was really starting to work..
I was also really glad to see that Morgan got to show her diode radio receiver.. The cool thing is that both the receiver and the transmitter actually worked !!!! We actually had to be careful when we had mikes near the receiver. We had to tune carefully because we were picking up a bunch of spanish and korean stations near the low end of the AM dial. Annother funny story:.. I originally sent out the SOS message that Leilani had written for me..”SoS, SoS, SoS, We are Colony. In need of food, water, security… blah. blah. blah …” A few days later it dawned on me that i was really transmitting.. so that sending a true distress message in code might be a bad thing to do. From that point on I sent a different message everyday about 4 times. It was “Katherine is locked in warehouse, please send Rum.. ” (Katherine was one of our story producers)
We finally got home around 12:30.. I couldn’t wait to see Max’s clay oven.. He was nearly done with the first layer.. It was SO cool !
OK , I absolutely need to sleep now. my eyes keep closing.. more tomorrow friends. Nite all, Nite Sam ! -me
