The day started  out really nice. quit and slow …. Our brother and sister in loaw, Joe an Pat showed up. Tey usually live in Endicott NY.. but this week they are staying in Longmeadow Ma. takign care of our nephew vince and families cats .. .. so .. its only a 3 hour drive to see us.. THey showed up 9 ish.. and we got to hang out and catch up

Gabe’s in town (!!!). he’s here from Germany for his freind Justin’s weddibng.. when he woke up , diane laid out a feast of breakfast.. yum !!!!

gqbe has masterd the self timer

about that time, the day switched gears. we got a call from our buddy Duane.. Fluffy has a gig this weekend  at a festival called ‘Forest Frequency’  up in jeffersonvile . 
 
early this morning duane and aaron began the long slow trek from charlotte to jeffersoncille.. it’s a slow tri as fliuffy really cant go faster than 20mph with her clouds mounted.. 

duane was driving.. while aaron followed bbehind in duanes truck

then…..

about 45.75 mile into the 46 mile trek, fluffy clipped a power line that was hanging too low actoss stebens rad in cambridge.. 

fluffy weighs 36000 lbs.. so she kept moving .. and that pulled down a 1 0,000V ower line. the pole it was on. the transformer on the pole.  lknocking out power to 20 houses..

. all without hurting anyone..

sure.. three of fluffy’s 52 clouds were badly damaged. and part of the pole managed to embed itself in fluffys dancefloor

and.. now one was shocked..

and nine of the 200 lbs of propane onboard fluffy even noticed..

lets say theat even in a f***ed up circumstance people were exceedingly . extremely .. magically .. and wonderfully .. 

“fine”    !!

 

Duane and aaron described what had happened.. . and we were  so (!!!) relieved to hear everyone was ok !

Diane and I quickly pcked up the tools, documents and software we needed and headed up to jeffersone vilee.. Here’s what we found. 

the utility crew was there and workign to restore services.. fastbook and reddit were lighting up with the details.. 

we drove around.. n showed up at the csiite and got to work 

our job was to restore fluffy to its operational beauty ..

oen of the clouds.. D2 on driver side had taken a direct hit.. but miraculously  its led strips were intacke.. Itw fron brother ( or sister ?) D7 was not so lucky. it was shereded and floderd in half.. it’s led strips were visibly shredded.. .. 

 

and he front cloud F!.. had been pulverized.. we didnt even have all of its peices.. 
diane and I got to work on D7.. first I tried to repair the split led strip.. but at this poitn folks were sncing on fluffy and I couldn’t get everything still enough to attempt a solder repair.. 

probably just as well.. as there were probably several other things that could be broken..  

we needed a plan B !

the issue is that a missing cloud is a problem.. but it  also disables all the other down stream clouds in its channel ..  (there are 16 channels that manage fluffy’s  almost `15,000 leds )
Here’s the map of D7’s channel (Channel 2 on the driver side) 

it would have been ‘easy-ish to take the wires from the previous cloud (D6) and patch them directly to the next cloud (D)  ..   .. but then its downstream cloud D8 would not match the LED map used to map the patterns..   that might not sound like a big deal.. but it would stad out and really ruin the beauty of fluffy

Diane and I thought  for a bit.. and came up with a  work around. we put in a ‘dummy’ strip between D6 and D8 and hid it in the map pocket inside the bus.. .. the shredded D7 was dark.. but the rest of the channel looked great. 

Similar story with the destroyed front cloud F1.. it was absoeltutly gone.. F1 .. shares a channel with the pasenger side dance floor.. while important.. is never viewed with other leds at the same tim e .. its inside the bus.. while all other strips are outside and visible. so there, we just patched beteen the channel 15 octo line directly to the pssdenger dancefloor.. . we also had to add an extera power sullply and power tap that would have been supplied by the front cloud F1. 

at that poitn.. Fluffy looked just abotu normal.. and the freaky party got under way..

It was a bunch of beautiful  people .. all dressed in white.  there was a shabbot service going to happen.. and I think it was why the white.. 

anyway.. now that fluffy was ok.. diane and I could relax.. and mingle.. .lots of nice peopke.. great food, .. and an brathtakign setting 

our freinds skunk. clair and alwencia were there .. and kim and company were there spinnign fire.. 

it was a really nice party.. a little strange not knowing the guests.. but sweet 

We headed home around midnight.. 

disaster avoided !
nite all, nite sam
-me