All posts by johncohn

Saturday night – ice. ice baby

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

Thursday night – uhhhhh

 I make it a point of never discussing work in these pages.. and won’t start now.. but I gotta say today had some of the most unusual and interesting meetings I’ve ever attended.

Since, that’s all I did today.. and I can’t go into it.. I’ll cop out and post two cool videos that my new friend Feargahl (is that a cool name, or what) just sent me . I met Feargahl through also-new-fried Whist , the guy who’s teaching the fire sports class with Homer at Middleberry. He’d put me in touch with Feargahl on the outside chance that he had a Tesla Coil to lend me for my talk San Fransisco on Feb 9th.
Turns out that the coil Feargahl has is 12 feet tall , shoots 8 foot sparks and requires a large gas generator..   Unfortunately , it’s hard to move.. so I won’t be borrowing it. But after we spoke. he sent me two  cool vids of pieces that he and his buddies at  ‘Omega Recoil’ studio has done. The first is their entry in the annual Sausulito lighted boat parade. .. This boat had a Burning Man flame sculpture in the front, a ton of fireworks,a Jet engine on the roof,several propane flame cannons (like we’re building)  a klaxon from an aircraft carrier, and the Tesla coil I was just talking about hanging over the side and sparking to the water. …Needless to say,  they won the contest..

The second vid was a piece on BoingBoing about their ‘Dr Megavolt’ show.. Same Tesla Coil, metal suits and weird dialog.. Check them out !.

 ..

I’m going to meet up with these guys the next.. (or uber-next) time I’m in SF..

Right now I’m going to take Scott and Mary to dinner.. So I better go..

Someday I’ll tell you all about my day
Night folks, Night Sam
-me

Wednesday night – Lost in LA

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 did come across this guy bathing in the water fountain in the airport…   looked like he was having fun..

 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 ?

Tuesday night – History

It’s an amazing and wonderful day. Obama’s inauguration signals the need of 8 very dark years for us.. and the beginning of something new. I have no doubt that it will be hard going for this new president../// and there the tough realities of our economy and foriegn challenges are going to defy any quick fix… but… he brings something we’ve lacked for a very long time.. and that’s hope.


I did my best to follow the inauguration on the radio today…   But I had an eye appointment during the swearign in.. I asked the eye folks to turn on the radio.. so we listened to the pomp and circumstancs as they dilated my eyes.. I will never forget that…  (eyes are fine.. a mix of far sightedness and a little astigmatism.. got the first perscription glasses of my life.. still only for reading.. and I confirmed thta I have a laser burn in my left retina from a YAG laser I was tuning 27 years ago  bummer)

Diane spent the time in the laundremat in defference to our failing septic system . She figured as she fed coins into the machine she was indeed experinceing ‘change’. 🙂

It was an amazing day after the swearing in.. my email and facebook epxloded with Obama fever.. everywhere you went folks were happy and optomisstic.. ..
Even the colleagues  I spoke wiht in other countires were happy and buzzing with the regiem change’ Even having that for this one day during this tough times was a gift.. Thansk for that Mr. Obama.. we all needed it..

Not much else to report.. other than I found that  Kirsten had decorrated  Gabe’s feet again..   Cool.. huh ?


OK..  Everyone breath a sigh of relief.. and let’s get back to work.. Back to my talk ..  Gnite all.. Gnite Sam
-me