It’s Friday night and we’re getting packed to head to Endicott tomorrow morning. We were going to leave this morning, but we wanted to hang around and watch the Rail Jam the Friends of Sam were throwing tonight,

The extra day was nice.. We got to spend a little extra time with my folks this morning. We got the kids up to say good bye to them… Gabe had been up till 2:30 and max (I thin) till 5.. they were pretty sleepy..

It was nice having them up..

I spent the middle of the day putting the finishing touches on the rail I built for Gabe.  The last steps were putting on the wooden feet.

Before I did I hid some messages under the metal footings. I try to put a secret message like this in everything I build.. It’s fun to find them when I rebuild something years later.

Somehow.. that managed to take most of the day.. before I new it it was 5PM and time for the Rail Jam at Bolton. Ralph had organized the whole thing.. There were 3 categories.. skiers, 14 and below and 15 and above.. They had about 17 kids.. It was great watching them do the rails..   The were three rails.. the down rail that Ralph and his dad, Marc just built, the Sam rail that Sawyer and Neal built and the butter box.

the pictures are a bit wobbly because of the low light… but they look sort of cool, so I’m including them anyway.

I like this blurred one of Gabe.

After the Jam, everyone gathered on the porch to her the winners..

Zack was there too..

Ralph called out the winners.. Gabe came in 3rd in the under 14’s.. Whoo hooo

Luke came in first in the above 15’s.. he got a skateboard deck a case of red bull and $100 .. not bad for a night of fun…  The rest of the take goes to the Friends of Sam for their good works..  These kids are so awesome..

The Jam ended with a prize toss off the porch.. It was a good lead in for the Night Riders competitions that start in a few weeks.

After a bite in the Tavern, I went back to the car to go home and start packing.. I found my glasses in the snow.. this would have been the fourth pair I lost or destroyed this week.. Thank goodness it will only be 3..  BTW. One of the messed up ones was a pair of safty glasses that got  stopped a hot  blob of metal that was coming at my face.. (I always  wear ’em… and that’s why !) 

There were two packages waiting for us at home this afternoon. One was from Stacie. In it was a box from  All Children’s Hospital , the place where Sam went after his accident. They sent us a beautiful silver heart ornament with Sam’s name on it. I could feel my own heart come into my throat when I opened it up. It’s really beautiful..

The second package was from LifeLink, the organization that orchestrated Sam’s organ donations. Inside was a really wonderful letter from ‘Bob’.. the guy who received Sam’s left Kidney. LifeLink has a policy of editing the letters to maintain peoples anonymity on both ends of a transplant.. so they had whited out last names, addresses and phone numbers.. but it didn’t keep the warm grateful message from coming across loud and clear.  Bob has 2 teenage kids. He had been on dialysis for several years and was growing weaker and was unable to travel. Since  his transplant, his health has returned and he’s feeling great. It turns out that Bob has connections to Vermont Thanks to Sam’s strong kidney  he was able to travel up here recently to visit relatives. When he was up here, he climbed Killington and drank a Red Bull in honor of Sam at the top. Not only that, but he sent us the can !!! I reread the letter several times.. I guess there’s no Hallmark Card for a situation  like this..   It’s so wonderful to know that Sam’s strong life energy is helping soemone live out there life fully. Even though there’s great sadness in the situation, I can’t find words to say how good that makes me feel.
Good luck Bob….. (if you’re reading this)  thanks so much for writing.. . Please keep in touch !

Way to go Sam… We all love you. G’nite all..
-me

I just learned about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.. I didn’t hear until late this evening because we don’t have TV or cable and I no longer listen to news on the radio. I was really shocked and saddened when I heard. Bhutto was a brave and powerful leader in a part of the world that needed such leaders. I only hope that the outrage from her murder galvanizes people in the region to work for peace. I know that’s not the way it usually works out… but I have faith that were evolving as a species.

The news about the Bhutto tragedy was an abrupt change from the rest of my day, which was very peaceful. My folks are still up visiting, so they hung out with me for the day. We didn’t have much planned. I got an invitation to go visit my friend Scott and his friend Russ to see some cool science geekiness. Around 11, my mom, my dad and I piled in the car and we drove down to Charlotte to Russ’s house. Rus and Scott work together at B.F. Goodrich in Vergennes. Both of these guys are into high energy physics demonstrations on a large scale.

First thing I saw when I got to Russ’s was this huge bank of 4 high energy pulse capacitors.. They were each 230 microfarads at 7000 volts.. that makes each one fully charge capable of discharging (1/2CV**2 = 0.5 2.30×10**-4 x (7×10**3)**2 = 5635 joules… so with four of them charged, that’s 4 x 5635 = 22,540 joules. =~ 22kJ For reference, a 20 joule discharge into your body has a 50 percent chance of killing you.. so this is serious (and very dangerous) power.
Russ and Scott had built them int0 a system they could use to explore high energy pulse phenomenon.

Here’s the rating panel on the capacitors. They came out of an old pulsed laser system from the University of Rochester.

They guys had built as simple 10 kV power supply out of an old neon sign transformer.. It even had a voltage gauge..

The first experiment was exploding wire.. They attached various lengths of MIG wire to a simple jig that was connected to the capacitors by a triggered spark gap. When the chunk of wood was pulled out, the spark gap closed and all the energy in the capacitors was put through the thin piece of wire.

We had to wear protection for both our eyes and our ears.. even if it just meant sticking our fingeres in our ears.. here’s mom and dad preparing for the blast.

The next experiment was ‘coin crushing’ . The idea here is that you discharge the capacitors through a small coil of heavy wire that’s wrapped around a coin such as a quarter or dime. The coin is held between two dowels to hold it steady.

The discharge is so powerful that it blows the coil to bits each time you try it. It explodes with such force that the fragments can travel through a piece of plywood as they did here.

The guys had to switch to using sand as a blast shield to keep from getting covered with shrapnel.

As the coil blows out, the intense magnetic field generated by the high current through the coil creates a tremendously strong radial crushing force that squishes the coin from the edges.. it actually makes the coin smaller in diameter and thicker.. You can imagine doing this with something like playdoh.. but it’s amazing to think of the force needed to do that to a chunk of metal such as a quarter.

We were all hooked up with a quarter and ready to go. Russ hooked the coil with the coin inside to the device and set up the spark gap.. he charged the caps up to 7000 volts

Inside you see our quarter looking a bit squished.

Here’s just how squished it is.. it’s about 30 % smaller and about 30 % thicker, very cool.. Here it is next to an uncrunched quarter.

You can still see the features… but they are distored byt the strength of the blast.

We repeated the experiment with a dime

Here’s a comparison with an un-shrunk dime.

The last experiment was to crush a soda can. In this set up they use a larger, reusable coil of wire. The soda can is put in the middle. If you choose your energy level correctly, it just squishes down the middle of the can like an hourglass. Too much power and the can shreds into two pieces that are shot out like bullets.

It was fun having my folks there, they enjoyed meeting Scott and Russ.. and my buddy Homer who showed up as well. >We then had a great lunch at Good Times Cafe in Hinesburg then came back home. We all took naps.. and I managed to sneak in a few hors to finish up the welding on Gabe’s rail. It should be ready to go tomorrow.

This evening we all went up to Deb’s house for a wonderful dinner party.. Again.. their house was full of our friends.. it feels like home up there. My folks knew many of our friends.. so they had a really good time, too !

Oh wow. it’s late.. I gotta get some sleep.. thar’s all for now. Gnite all, gnite Sam… Love
-me

Today was a wonderfully slow and peaceful day…   We managed to sleep until around 8 when Chai the alarm dog jumped up into bed with us. She’s not ‘sposed to do that.. but .. hey.. this is christmas !

The boys wondered in a little later on.. this is a far cry from the 5:30 or 6AM Christmas mornings of years past. The easy and low key beginning signaled the tone of the rest of the day… 

Diane and I wandered downstairs to find out that Chai had already identified her stocking and had proceeded to pull out her toys..

The guys came down a few minutes later.. we’ve always had the ttradition of video taping them coming down the stairs.That was a hard moment for me…  It was cool to see them bringing one of the Sam lamps down with them.

First things first.. we went for the stockings..    Sam’s is there in the middle.. as is our bird Gabby who passed on more than 2 years ago..  Hey live on with us too…   Gabby’s stocking had a wad of Suet for the birds outside.. Sam’s was filled with the glass SamStones that I made with Chris and cards for the two donations we made in Sam’s honor. One was a years training of a Mayan midwife in rural Mexico we made through the Seva Foundation (www.seva.org) .. And the other was a donation of three goats to a rural family which we made through the Heifer International (www.heifer.org). Both of these charities support sustainable communities in the emerging world. 

From there we launched into opening presents… including this stylish foot ware being modeled by the boys..

Here we are at the other end of the process.. It was a very nice morning.. I really liked that Diane got me gun powder and a welding torch.. Did I marry the right girl or what ?!  (ok.. so I chose them.. but still… )

Around 11is we had breakfast.. our holiday tradition of crepes and smoked salmon . We kept one of Sam’s lanterns burning throughout the day (it’s still burning.. I note at 9PM) .

The rest of the afternoon was amazingly quiet.. the boys got immersed in a new video game..

Diane went out for a snowshoe with Chai and I fell asleep for a couple of hours.. My fever seemed to break and I woke up feeling pretty good. I managed to get a few hours of welding in on the rail I’m building for Gabe.

Around 6 it was time to eat again…. 

Now we’re all about to settle in for a movie..’The Hebrew Hammer’ ..that Max got for me.  a Saturday night live spoof on a Jewish action hero.. yeah.. right.. .. The quiet end of a quiet day..

So much has changed with our family.. yet.. we are still so lucky.. We have so much love between us..

Merry Christmas everyone.. Merry Christmas Sam.. we love you very much
-me

It’s almost 2AM on Christmas Eve and I’m just lying down to do this blog. I apologize if it’s rushed. Another Christmas and with it come such a mix of emotions. We’ve had a really good day just hanging out with friends, wrapping presents, eating.. like just about everyone else we know… At the same time, missing Sam is taking nearly all of my energy .. Still it feels OK to me in some other worldly sort of way. I feel  like Sam would be (is) proud of us for enjoying ourselves as much as we are.

We had a steady stream of drop bys today. It was great having these short visits with friends just to say happy holidays…   Just after lunch we ventured out to decorate our tree in the woods.

On our way over, Gabe took us on a short detour to see a beutiful christmas card herd made for all of us in the snow. I never new you could use spray piant on snow.. but look, it works !

Decorating a tree outdoors  is a tradition we’ve had for many, many years.. we take our old baked goods, smear some of them with peanut butter and birdseed and hang them on this one evergreen back up in the woods. It was a tough climb getting there today without snowshoes. The snow was still 1,5 feet deep and crusty.. We kept falling in.

We got to the tree and laid out our goodies and proceeded to decorate. Gabe developed a cool way of hanging bagels and donuts.. You tie two together and through it like a bolo. Works every time !

We had the tree looking beautiful in no time. It was fun being there today. I was also  thinking of Sam in that beautiful spot.. and all the times he was with us there… 

We spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out and wrapping presents. Around 5 we all went up to the Black Bear inn on Bolton Mountain. Tim, Jen , Coc . Marie and Nate had invited us to meet them up there..I’d actually never been in the place.. even though Brian and Jill, the owners, are  friends of ours.It was a really, really  wonderful meal.  I strongly recommend the place !

We got back to the house abotu 8.. and played a quiet game of who-Monopoly , (Gabe won).. Around 10 everyone decided to go to bed. It’s been a good day..
I”m looking forward to Christmas day…

Merry christmas everyone. Merry Christmas Sam. You’ll be there in our hearts tomorrow…

-me