Happy that today is the day I head out to Portland to see Diane. Gabe. Same and Nova.. One of my main jobs was to take gabe microscope out. It’s at least 60 years old and pretty delicate.. so it had to be hand carried. I fitted out a pelican case for it and carried it on to the plane. I guess it looked pretty weird on X-ray because they took it apart to see what was in it. anyway.. got on board.. and wrote “micro” on my hand to make sure I didn’t leave it.. (also had a tracker on it)
I had two connections to make.. which made for a long day.. My first leg I traveled with my friend Sarah , her daughter and two of their friends. They were heading down to Nashville to see a show.. It was fun talking to them !
the wifi was bad on all of them so didn’t get much done.. but it was nice just relaxing. I even watched a bit of “Groundhog Day”.. in honor of the important holiday !
Midway I ran in to some kids heading to high cascade.. that’s the snowboard and ski camp that sam and gabe went to. It was fun talking to them about camp. and the famous cobra dogs !
I got to PDX around 6. Gabe picked me up.. we headed home , picked up diane and Sammantha and headed out to GadoGado.. a really easy Indonesian place.. We met up with Shawn and Mel and had dinner with them.. and then some of Gabe friends coincidentally came by.. it was really nice.. and sooooo tasty. They had this pumpkin and mushroom thing that I can still taste !
SO nice to be out here with my people !
Max check in.. he finally got to Vietnam and it seems to be amazing !
Today was really fun. We had a gathering at work to show folks three new demos and get their input and ideas. Out team.. mostly shannon, rebar and I build demos that we use to explain the science behind Alia . Our stuff is designed to help both kids and adults an ide of the challenges and magic of making an electric airplane work.. It’s such a fun jib because we get to dig in to how things work.. then find ways to explaining them to folks who often dont have any background in electric flight.
Todays demos were a new gen5 battery pack.. but out of dummy cells to make it easy to handle, a demo of ho our planes inverters work and a wonderful reproduction of the worlds first patented electric motor. It was invented by Brandon VT Blacksmith Thomas Davenport and his wife Emily in 1837. The working demo we have was expertly created by good friend Dave H who’s done a ton of historical study on Davenport.
Folks showed up for our Demo Wine and Dine around 4. We had a great turn out. We walked folks through our new demos as well as many of the existing ones. We got great questions and suggestions on how to improve the story telling. It was so fun !
Oh.. one other thing I built this week.. I call it “the Pavlov”. its a candy dispenser that I hacked so that when our project manager Sophia wants to reward us for getting something done on our planning list, she can push a button on her desk in North Hanger, and the Pavlov will spit out some M&Ms on our desk in another building. I feel motivated !
As part of our demo day prep, Rebar, Shannon and I went down to see my good friend Dave D at Mainly Metals.. Dave operates a water jet shop down in Bristol with 3 big machines. We used them to build the Time Cycle back in 2009 (here’s an old post from then )
Today we just had to cut out a piece of aluminum to finish off the top off our battery demo..
It was SOOOO good catching up with Daves life and work. He’s such an interesting and kind person. He was able to make time in his schedule to do this simple part. It was fun watching the machine work. It’s the closest thing to a light saber you can actually find !
We headed back to South Burlington about noon.. it had been a really great field trip !
Max is on his way to Vietnam right now with friends. Wishing him happy and safe travels !
Gosh.. really nothing much happened today. We are heads down at work preparing for our study hall wine, dine and demo on Wednesday. we have 3 new demos to finish, test and document.. it’s really fun work.. and so nice to be working with our hands so hard..
I’m heading to Portland on Thursday and really looking forward to seeing Diane, gabe. Sammantha and nova… I’m doing a decent job of eating, sleeping and exercising.. but it’s much more fun when diane is here 🙂
