I played hooky today from work and we spent the day hanging out with Selim and Helena. It was a really great day.

First vermont breakfast at home.. waffles and maple syrup

Then up to Puritans to refill the maple syrup and to get some for them to take back to Austria

 

then some sight seeing around richmond

then a quick tour around BETA .. where we got to see our friend Mary’s heart mosaic.. THere’s a samstone hidden in it !

 

Selim and Helena loved the mushroom conference room !

 

and helena liked Aarons snake Clementine

 

we then went downtown.. first a quick Poke lunch (yum !)

then some  church street  shopping

 

a little Itlaian in little italy

 

we ran into our friends Danika  and Braydon playing on church street

 

 

then we headed dow to nordic to show them the bus. .. No pics of that.. but right as the sun was setting we got in the car and headed back to all souls to catch a beautiful post sunset light show

we ended up at home with take out Chinese food and a very pretty moon !

 

 

 

 

super fun day with our friends .. I think they enjoyed it too !

nite all, nite sam

-me

Super exciting day..   My old friend and ‘hausbrudder” (if thats a word) Selim and his daugher Helena arrived in vermont. Selim was  the son of my House parents Helga and Necat Erol when I was an exchange student in Vienna Austria in 1979-80.. At the time Selim and his sister Karin were 8 years old.. together with their brothers Murat and Osman they were like family to me..  here we aare all Selim is the one over to the left of the picture together at the  Erols country house  in Meisenbach on 1984 or 85

We’ve stayed connected over the years..   especially me and my Hausfrau Helga who died in 2016 :

Selim is now a professor and the department head of the industrial design department at Fachhochschule Wiener Neustadt. Last November I went  and visited him in Wiener Neustadt and gave a talk..  and got to see his whole family again.

This time he and his wonderful 18 year old daughter Helena are traveling in the north east of the US.  Its so fun to have them here

Earlier in the day I got to hang out with two new friends.. Here are Mathew and Malachi.. Mathew has been working for our friends Deb and Hannah.. and Malachi is a high school intern at Beta/. Both cam e and helped us on the bus !

I also got to give matthew a tour of beta

nice to hang out with them.. you never know when new friends can turn in to old friends.. it’s fun when they do !

nite all, nite sam

-me

Diane and I woke up strange sight… A porcupine was walking through our yard. We see porcupines now and then but not generally during the day. At first we were alarmed that it might be rabid or something… But it was pretty peaceful. It’s circled our wood frame four times… Which was pretty strange. I’m a little worried that she might have been looking for her babies or something… But she didn’t appear distressed and she eventually wandered offLater that day after work,

I went and worked with rebar on test fitting the fire proof are on top of fluffy while it was still in the bay at D1.

Just for reference.. this is rebar standing 17 feet above the floor of the buss.. or 25 feet above the ground as he does this. What a guy !

 

later on that evening at nordic we had the first multi cloud test of our new lighting scheme i worked up using sound .. we like it !

a decent days work !

nite all, nite sam

-me

Busy Sunday…    We’re startign work in earnest on the fire effect for Fluffy the burning man bus. First step in that was to transfer all the remaining parts from our house to Nordic.. That included 2 new 100 lb porpane tanks with quick fill valves.. they are sweet. Anyway.. our car looked kinda suspicious with all that gear

We also had our friend allen along.. he’s new to the area and has had fun meeting some of the artists on the bus.. He’s such a cool guy

one fun thing is that the wrench we have that’s big enough for the unions on the device is Diane’s Italian grandfathers hundred year old wrench… Hey you use what you have

On the way to Nordic, we stopped by BETA D1 to take soem measurements on FLuffy. We ran into my friend Aimee who is an intern ant beta and an AMAZING inventor. We got a tour of his tool bus which includes  solar panels, a huge inverter and an old alia battery to power everything, starlkink internet, a heat pump, a cnc mill, a laser cutter a 3d printer and a ton of tools.. Pretty sweet ride !

Friend Sean was there to see some of Fluffy’s rigging.. he’s been a huge help too !

Back at home the temperature was rising

so people started parking crazily again across the street.. UGH !

This is Umiak.. THey are dropping people right out on cochran road.. where they get their  tubes and stand around in the road. I reallt worry that someone is going to get hurt !

later on , our freinds Caroline and Kaleo dropped in they live in Maui and hosted us a month ago. It was great to be able to show Klaeo around.. he’d never been to Vermont

we finished the day with a fast hike up to duxbury window..

busy day !

Whew.. really busy day !

nite all, nite sam

-me