Stopped at the corner coffee shop for my latte and croissant - yes I know that's wrong. But it's my deal. The ambient music was MØ which feels very authentic. They have little chocolates by the creams and sugars and I always grab a milk chocolate and a dark chocolate.
WakeUpCopenhagen lobby
Back to the hotel with enough time to eat my breakfast as it were and wait for Michael (boss) to pick me up. Traffic was insane as apparently the trains were on strike. What was supposed to be a half hour plus turned into an hour and a half.
Not only was the automobile traffic insane but they bikes! Oh man the bikes! Wave after wave of non helmet wearing beautiful people wheeling past at breakneck speeds.
For Michael, a true Dane, the traffic navigation was slow but effortless. I think I know now how my family feels when I'm driving too "expertly". But we didn't die or kill anyone. We had a wonderful chat on the drive though.
So one of the coolest things about the less urban areas is that there are thatched roofs! Driving out to the office I got to see a few different buildings with a very traditional thatching for roofing material. Hope to get a picture some day, too..
Chatting by the dashboard lights. Another thing we need in Minneapolis
Today was the day the new Solutions Architect started in Copenhagen, so I got to meet Stalin. Nice guy, totally isn't the communist legend. It helped a bit to have someone else to hang out with who wasn't familiar with the place, but it was nice to at least know the folks around me.
By the time lunch rolled around I knew enough people to get into the location's cantine. I know some of what I picked out was fish, and the salad had an interesting pesto like dressing. The bread was intense and I think I could have built a nice boat with it. But best of all was a currant juice that made me feel like I was at a Danish Ikea!
Quite tasty, and low calorie!
While some of the folks muttered about the food -- can't remember if it was lack of variety or what -- I thought it was great. If we had something like this in the Minneapolis office it might keep costs down and make everyone eat healthier. No sushi bowls though, so dealbreaker.
People eating lunch.
The overall building space is bright and well lit - an added bonus on those days with very little sunlight.
More details from the office
It was fun seeing the little details again - this time the polaroid org chart and table upon which snacks are distributed. I was going to get some kind of stereotypical American candy but never had time to get around to it. Something to let a following Minneapolitan take care of.
Mid afternoon everyone started to get changed for the Holiday party. I was glad I opted for a more casual jacket and dress shirt as it was much more comfortable than a tie, and the heat was starting to get to me.
By heat I mean they actually make their interior spaces warm. Back home it seems that when winter comes so does frozen feet and the ever present chill that reminds you the environment will kill you given half a chance. But everywhere I have gone has been nice and warm - but as a result I'm overheating in my many Minnesota layers of clothing. Going to have to adapt to that!
We all boarded a bus that would take us to the evening's dinner location, and it was quite convenient. Cars being crazy expensive in Denmark, not many of the employees have them, so this is just a really efficient way of getting everyone there.
Mateusz passes out refreshments
Themed to be a red carpet affair, we were guided into an area of the bar so the different teams could be led into the venue and have pictures taken. There was champagne and it was all very fancy. Lots of fun!
Rupak helped move the crowds around
Milling about and mingling
Photos on the red carpet
The whole affair was quite nice and between awards there were various courses of meals. Very fancy presentation and quite tasty food was the order of the evening. Also, the beverages flowed freely and there was much rejoicing.
The chicken option
My preferred veal option! Amazing!
The awards were various (five in total) recognitions for different people in the company, from Brand Ambassador to "Queue-it person of the year" and I had been nominated for the "Extra Mile Achiever of the Year" award and won! I was the only person in Minneapolis to win, and was very appreciative of the honor. We were nominated by our peers, and judged by the founders, so it means a lot to me to know that people have that vision of me - and the pleasure of receiving the award!
I will admit the miles part confuses me since it's a country of kilometers..
As the awards continued on, and dessert was served, the dinner changed over to a dance. Tables were cleared and lights were recalibrated as a dance floor was set up.
Groovy
I had been told by more than a few people that Danish holiday parties can be pretty interesting. An already flat organization drops all pretense, and people are able to interact with their co-workers in whatever fashion seems appropriate. I have to say I didn't see anything untoward that happened all night long, and I get a sense that the fact that people can be free to let loose is the reward, regardless of whether or not they choose to. Everyone was respectful, had fun, and all was well.
Ok, at some point it became amusing to get the American to try different kinds of Danish shots, and that part was a bit harrowing. I mean, why would you make an alcohol taste like pomegranate? I hate pomegranate! On the other hand, that licorice and fish tasting stuff wasn't half bad once you got over the shock of doing that to your taste buds.
Once we shut down the dance many of the younger folks moved into the pool hall (another part of the bar that one of the employees is a part owner in) and we played some pool. Mind you, the official party ended at 3am. But I was fairly well rested, right?
An even smaller contingent decided it was time to head downtown, and we went out to find a taxi. We were not in a very taxi-like neighborhood, mostly residential. But a car pulls up and this nice young lady asks us where we were heading. She was just heading home and thought she'd offer us a ride. WHAT? Yeah, that's just how Danes are, I guess. Flabbergasted, and maybe a little less wise than usual, we all piled in and she gave us a ride downtown. Thrilled that she didn't pull into an alley and kill us all, we thanked her profusely (and she got a company card as she was looking for an internship - go figure!) but warned her that we could just as easily have been bad people. (We were a mixed crowd of guys and gals and not very threatening, if that matters.)
She dropped us off by Zefside, a club downtown that was pretty amazing. Everyone just piled up their jackets and bags on a bench and went about their business. No coat check, and nobody was worried about anything being stolen. Naive? Maybe. But nothing was stolen. I made it out of the club around 5:30am with my jacket, bag, no broken bones phones or lost dignity. And I hadn't gone through much of my cash either.
Zef. According to Die Antwoord, "Zef is, you're poor but you're fancy."
DJ
The bar
Marcel, one of my colleagues
Copenhagen, 5:30am
The city was quiet, cool, and beautiful as I made my way back to my hotel, a not-significant walk through the heart of Copenhagen.
After a bad night's sleep I showered and put on my old clothes. There was a Starbucks a block away and I climbed through snowdrifts where I'm assuming there were suburban sidewalks. I was having flashbacks of "Trains, Planes, and Automobiles" having just watched it with Lily and Jill. But it was good to have a proper Latte and pre-Denmark danish.
Copenhagen is beautiful in the winter. I wouldn't know yet, this is Illinois.
I picked up a copy of Armada, by Ernest Cline yesterday. He wrote Ready Player One and I thought why not - I had searched the house for a paperback I wanted to read and couldn't find one. On day 1 (again) I'm already a third of the way through it, and that includes the many pages I read and re-read over because I was listening for rumors and announcements on the plane.
It took three hours to get to the airport, rebooked (again) and through security. Add time for lunch and checking in with work and my day is full. It's amazing how much you can not get done in a day of travel. The SAS person said that having an hour between connections in Stockholm would be no problem - same terminal, no security, no problem.
I saw a few familiar faces at the gate of the new flight -- through Stockholm this time -- including the snocross guy from Norway I cabbed with last night. Boarding the flight I was struck by the Swedish aesthetic. It was like a plane full of attractive Minnesotans with better glasses and fashion sense. It was a little surreal. The announcements were in Swedish first, then English. But it was odd that the Swedish seemed natural. I couldn't understand a word of it, but it was oddly familiar. The pilot sounded just like one of my Danish co-workers. Remember that.
This is what I hear when I hear Swedish spoken. (Funny video regardless)
The flight was uneventful. Quite long, cramped seat, tired of being on planes, etc. One of the cooler features of the multimedia experience was the ability to see a camera's view from the nose of the plane. Made taking off and landing much more exciting! During the night flight it was, of course, boring and dark. As we approached Stockholm, the sun began to peek out over the horizon.
It was a pretty amazing site. It was hard to capture as a picture (especially if you were the guy in front of me using a flash..) but I tried. After looking out the window and seeing nothing but the moon reflecting off the wing, this was a happy reminder that I was making progress despite my setbacks.
As we came closer and closer I started to notice the time. We were certainly not running ahead of schedule, and I flagged down a flight attendant and asked her if I would be likely to make my connection. She looked skeptical and mentioned that I would have to go through passport/immigration checks as well as re-enter through security, but that my connecting flight was in the same terminal. My connection anxiety at this point was getting pretty intense, and I could only remember why I always chose nonstop flights in the past - and the future. But I held out hope.
By the time we landed I had 15 minutes to clear all of my hurdles. I made it through passport quickly, and securtiy fairly speedily as they weren't TSA and let you do crazy things like leave your shoes on. Still had to contend with the folks who don't know how to go through security efficiently. How do people not know how to do these things in this day and age? Had a moment of cringe at passport control when I opened it to my picture and handed it over. I look nothing like that now, going from 40 to 50 in a passport photo proves that time can be a cruel mistress.
Another speedwalk through the airport to -- of course -- the furthest gate available only to get a nice shot of this:
Another plane of mine that I'm not on
But at least it was away from the jetway already. No clerks at the station, so I went to the closest SAS gate (another Copenhagen flight over an hour away, remember this) and she directed me to the SAS service desk which was, of course, at the otherother end of the terminal. By the time I got there three people were in line. I asked which one was at the end and they pointed out the handy queue-number issuing machine. Great, I can get behind that, I'm a queue-ing professional! So I took my ticket and sat down at a gate where I could see the next numbers, but not have to stand with angry people. More and more of them showed up, and they didn't look happier and happier as time went on. One woman was trying to call SAS via phone and then web on her laptop that her dutiful husband was holding out for her. Clearly no point that that exercise, as she looked intense and unsuccessful.
The guy at the head of the line who was being served took at least half an hour. Seriously. And then another number called, and another. Finally, as people were becoming confused if they hadn't taken a number, or were hoping their number was somehow more important, my number was called. Strolling past them all was sweet, but I could feel the eyes on me. That's a hell of a lot of karma to have to work against. But when I got to the window the agent took one look at my record and said I was already rebooked. And my flight was about to leave. Guess where? Yup. The otherotherother end of the terminal. She picked up the phone to tell them to hold it for me (by name) and said.. "Run!"
So my second airport sprint of the trip felt much better than the one at O'Hare. I was thinking less about the irony of dying of a heart attack on the way to a plane, and more about how maybe regular running was a good idea, this wasn't so bad. I felt odd being the spaz running through all of the amazingly dressed Swedes, but sometimes you have to trade self respect for the next plane.
When I got to the gate I found.. at least three dozen people queued up. Was the service agent just playing with me, or what? As it happens the whole flight was late -- as they were waiting for people who hadn't shown up yet. Why, of all flights, was this the one to wait for the people who were me on the last flight?
The best part was that higher row numbers were asked to use the aft jetway. Which actually translated to "down the stairs to the tarmac" but I was so happy to be in fresh air -- and it was nice and warm, at least mid forties.
Worth risking being tackled by security to take a picture on the tarmac
Those were maybe the very best 90 seconds of the whole trip thus far. Fresh air and hope that this was my last flight.
Final leg went just fine, finally. Flying into Copenhagen I got to glimpse the proper sea for the first time, not from 50,000 feet. Choppy and whitecapped, it was truly nautical. A ship was passing through the harbor and it reminded me of the great lakes. Gray and windy, it looked amazing. While waiting to deplane a pilot who had been deadheading in my aisle asked if I was in a rush to get off the plane, and I was happy to say for once that I wasn't. As it turned out, he was the pilot who flew us across the Atlantic! We chatted about the flights and missed connections, and it was a pleasant way to trade stories of delays and complications.
As it turns out, passport control had been fully completed in Stockholm and I was free to just walk off and finally arrive in Copenhagen. And the icing on the cake was that my bag was one of the first off the airplane, so I not only had completed my journey, but had everything I needed, no lost luggage!
Scored a metro card and made my way to the trains to get into my hotel. Quick, efficient, and full of interesting characters, the train was quick and efficient. I expected no less. I have to wonder if we have our own cliches at home, as I was seeing people with very european bikes on the metro, as well as ordinary looking folks carrying various Lego products. If it was a movie scene I would have described it as a bit heavy handed and obvious.
My hotel was WakeUpCopenhagen, a chain of efficient, budget minded hotels. With small rooms and simple setups, it's ideal for me as I like simple and a cramped space is more comfy - just like my boats! The clerk had trouble finding my reservation, as I was already considered a guest -- a day late I had to wonder if parallel timeline Robert who made all his flights had a good day wandering the city the previous day.
The view from my room
Michael (my boss) had suggested I just grab a taxi to the office just to maximize my time, but I had to get some food first. At the end of the block I'm staying on is an amazing coffee shop, a 7-11, and a hot dog stand. I ordered a plain hot dog there and it was delicious. Bright red, inches longer than the bun, and covered in more sauces than I could figure and it was sweet and savory and I could have had six in one sitting. But I stuck with one and a glass bottle of Coke. Avoiding soda for a few months makes those rare colas taste particularly good!
Going to the taxi rank I got pretty wet. It was a light, persistent rain and I couldn't help but think that this was the weather we expected in Ireland. Gray, rainy, wet and cold. But it suits the city here and it's much warmer than home.
Copenhagen is shorter than I thought it would be. For a "world class" historic city, the buildings are not high rises, and it has a much more grounded feel. Beautiful old buildings, much variety in the way they're presented but a common aesthetic that makes everything seem classical, but not necessarily old.
I finally made it to the office -- google maps told me to go to the wrong end of the complex, so I got an improvised walking tour. Michael told me to check in at the front desk and have him paged, but I never really found the front desk. I did find the Queue-it office though and just wandered right in. Martin (one of many Martins) the CTO saw me first and rushed to greet me. It was so much fun to get to meet so many of the people I had been talking to online.
This included Rupak, who is actually on my team and I've worked with a ton, but meeting him IRL was so different -- truly a nice guy and fun to be around. Here he is showing me the flat-out amazing coffee machine at the co-working space.
It'll make pretty much any kind of coffee you want!
I got to see all of the different groups of people in the office, and really finally understood the layout and how people are arranged. And it's the little details that were most interesting - like this bell, for ringing when someone in sales closes a deal!
We need one of these in Minneapolis
My express goal for this day was to make it to our weekly team meeting - but this time on the Copenhagen side of the conference call. I did indeed get there in time, and it was surreal, fun, and interesting. Introductions were made all around the office, and I settled in to a desk to catch up on my email and schedule. It's always different to see people in their natural element, and our CEO was even jovial -- often just no-nonsense and serious on calls with him, it's easy to forget he's actually a happy, nice guy - not just all business. That was one of the biggest things I noticed, was the mood of the office. While I understand it's the holiday season, I felt a general vibe of happiness in the otherwise busy space.
Eventually the day grew to a close and an exhausted me was thrilled to get a ride back to the hotel via Michael. I hadn't had proper sleep in more than two days, but needed food. After changing into more comfortable footwear, I wandered a bit of Strøget, a primary walking street full of shops and other interesting squares and restaurants and such. Being the holiday season there are Christmas Markets in a few different spots in the city, making for an amazing wintry scene. Even if there was no snow.
Food ended up being a gas station hamburger -- from the Gasoline Grill, touted to be the best burger in Copenhagen by some, it was an amazing burger. I find it funny that the place was converted to a food shack, but they still sell gas.
Convenience and Cuisine!
On the way back to the hotel I stopped at one of the many 7-11's and grabbed a couple beers for my burger meal. Like a Pret-a-Manger for beer and comfort food, 7-11 is the place to get stocked up for less than the bar and restaurant prices.
So a late dinner in my hotel room, tiny but cozy. Watched some Danish TV (it's like they have a different word for everything!), writing up some notes from the day(s) and then off into a deep, deep sleep.
Here begins the adventure to Copenhagen, a trip for work but also for the company Holiday Party, and a bit of tourism if I can work it in.
Original plan was to fly to O'Hare and connect to an SAS flight to Copenhagen. Two hours to connect, should be no problem.
The first of the "no problems" was when we turned around on the runway and headed back to the terminal because the flight attendants heard "a noise" and literally sounded scared. So maintenance jumped on, couldn't find anything, and we waited. An earlier flight reported the APU valve door as flapping open and shut and so they turned it off and tried again. It seemed sketchy - but wouldn't you think that would have been fixed, or noted as a "not scary noise?" United for the win.
You could feel the pilot doing everything faster once we were cleared to take off. Careening down the runway access lanes, and everything sounded a bit louder and faster that you are used to. We were an hour+ late from the gate and you could feel the tension in the cabin. There was a gaggle of 20-something girls who were trying to connect to New Orleans for the loud and negative one's birthday. Future note for travellers: No matter how dire your connection is, someone else has it worse and isn't complaining. Perspective.
Also, we started to understand the insistence on the pilot's behalf. For every missed flight, United was going to give out hotel vouchers for people who have to wait for the next day. When we were about to land they had us all turn on the flight attendant call buttons if we were making a close connection. Half the lights went on. That's a lot of hotel rooms.
When we landed we stopped in the middle of nowhere on the tarmac. Apparently they were de-icing our parking spot. So my window was shrinking, from the original 2 hour connection time down to an hour. And then half an hour. By the time I got off the place it was 9:35 and my plane was leading at 10:05 -- and the doors lock ten minutes before. So I had 20 minutes to get out of Terminal 1, take the tram to terminal 5, then get through security and hoof it to (of course) the furthest gate in the concourse. I was running through the airport as best I could, but there was a Dane I met on the tram who was on the same flight and in much better shape. He started prepping for the security checkpoint while we were on the tram -- clearly someone to follow. That didn't last, because this kid was fast!
So while it was a good idea to prep for the security checkpoint, but running through a terminal with no belt it not the easiest task, especially when you have a backpack and winter coat in tow. Comical, I'm sure.
I did catch him at security though, along with another guy (from Norway) who was on the same flight. We used our mass to push our way past the line, and when we got to the screening point every lane was taken up by half a dozen folks who were clearly on a tour group, weren't used to airports, and didn't know how to go through security It was like herding confused cats.
The Great Dane as I'm calling him now made it through security first and disappeared. By the time I got to the gate it was clear the doors had closed. I asked an SAS attendant how late we were and she said about ten minutes. So technically we were on time. But there are processes involved, and must not be deviated from. By the time eight of us had accumulated and the plane was still de-icing I held out a bit of hope they'd open the doors, as you could see the SAS people doing math in their heads - rebook all these people or risk people on the flight missing their own connections?
The Great Dane, and our missed plane being de-iced.
Once we were all rebooked we had to go back to the original domestic terminal (back on the tram) to get hotel vouchers, etc. United was fairly efficient on this front, and hooked us up with hotels at growing distances from the airport. The previous day there was a snowstorm and flights were starting to clear up, but it sounded like a lot of hotel rooms were taken by those delays. The cab situation was a mess, and just getting to the hotel ended up taking me past midnight. And I was using every trick in the book short of getting an expensive uber (which was iffy, given the crowds) - but I shared my good luck and shared a cab with the other runner from the airport. He turned out to be from Norway (and then three hours from the airport north) and had been in Duluth in a snocross race. He came in 13th and had motor troubles, and did not find a contract for the rest of the season, so home he goes. He spoke with a classic Norwegian accent, and summed up the night when he said, almost to himself, "It will be good to lay down in bed to sleep."
Every stop I hit (SAS, United, Cabs, Hotel, later food) I would see bedraggled families shuffling up. And I'm sure they were getting worse times as the night wore on.
The hotel was in the middle of nowhere, restaurant closed, and the only place that delivered pizza was Sarpino's, and seemed sketchy out in this burb. But after an hour plus of waiting, a meatball sub and some wings showed up, expensive and small, but showed up. The delivery guy was a cartoon of a pothead. It would have been funny if it hadn't been 2 in the morning. I felt no guilt over all the calories, having run, walked, and stood all day long.
My luggage was still checked, so no CPAP, no meds, no toiletries. When I finally got to sleep I slept poorly and pointlessly. But hey, free hotel room.
I have always been fascinated by computers. My father worked for Burlington Northern doing "computer stuff" back in the days of punchcards and floors upon floors of whirring machinery. He obviously enjoyed them as well.
My hunger for a computer of my own was satisfied by the Timex Sinclair 1000. It was a pre-built version of the ZX-81, except it had twice as much memory -- 1k! (That's 1000 characters. The wikipedia definition of kilobyte is actually one and a half kilobytes.) It was hard to find, and we scoured department stores, electronics shops, magazines, and watch stores for information, books and software. There was no Internet, so finding even a scrap of information was like striking gold. In fact, there was a Timex watch kiosk downtown Saint Paul that had more Sinclair software than we'd ever seen in one place before.
Eventually we found out about the Sinclair User's group in Saint Paul. It was a diverse assortment of folks, all interested in this funky little computer. It was a wonderful opportunity and resource. I remember being one of the youngest folks there, as it was mostly adults. Someone had a "chip drive" which was like a disk drive but it used some sort of "chip" technology to save data. I bought a "blippo" from someone - a module you plug in that would allow you to make a dozen beeping tones. Very cool! I even got the hi-res Memopak which allowed me to program graphics up to 192 by 248 pixel resolution. I also remember one of the men in the group had an earring. It was the first time I'd seen that, and it seemed so exotic. (I'd have my own within five years.)
I'm remembering now just how supportive my father was in bringing me to these meetings and helping me with everything. We learned a lot together on the Sinclair. One of our best bonding times was in the basement - he would read me the letters to type in from a program in a magazine and I would mash them out on the nubby little "keyboard."
One of the folks in the user group was Donald Empson, a watch repair professional. He was very helpful and I remember visiting him at his shop once or twice over on Grand Avenue. It was full of tiny, tiny parts and so many shining gears. In my later years I've often thought about how cool that shop was for it's mechanisms, but at the time I was focused squarely on making that computer do so many more things than it was intended to do. I sucked the life out of that thing, but in the process learned a lot of the skills that make my trade today: programming, improvising, researching, and even disaster recovery. (If you touched the computer the wrong way you could jostle the 16k expansion module and lose all of your data. HOURS of typing!)
Many years later my mother showed me a book she found somewhere called "The street where you live" and I immediately recognized the author's name - Donald Empson! The book is a list of Saint Paul street names and their origins. Many of them were obvious, but other surely required a lot of research. I read it from beginning to end like a novel. To this day I take a drive down Bison street whenever I'm near the Como zoo. I tell my kids (again) about developers fighting for customers, and how one of them installed a pen of Bison for people to come see the giant animals -- oh and while you're there, maybe look at a new home! Journalists in Saint Paul have credited it as a vital resource in their research kits, but I use the book for finding interesting areas in Saint Paul for my scooter club to ride through.
A new edition of the book has since come out and I'm so happy to have it, so that I can keep my first edition safe and sound. I also still have a complete Sinclair system tucked away.
Google turned a couple stills into an animated GIF automatically. Wasn't that nice of them?
It's Harold, the Christmas Spider!
We took out some Christmas decorations today and Lily noticed a couple of dead spiders. They looked kinda curly and scary, but my first thought was "let's look at them closer!"
When we were at the LaBrea Tar Pits I found a pocket microscope in the gift shop (I do love a good gift shop) and picked up a set as my souvenir for the day. They were pretty cheap, but I can't remember how much. Less than $20 for sure, plastic lens and all. We've all used the magnifier for lots of interesting examinations, from beach sand to, well, Christmas spiders. It has a white light to illuminate the subject, and a blue light for counterfit bill detection, but I don't know how to use that properly. Nifty little case and it tucks in my travelling bag quite nicely.
I used an old trick - putting the camera lens right next to the magnifying lens. It works for distance, also, using binoculars or a monocular. It doesn't give you the best image in the world, but it's surprisingly effective.
Here is a quarter close up:
And a few more pictures of Harold, the Christmas Spider..
Peep Show. Mitchell and Webb are an amazing duo, watch also for "Mitchell and Webb"
Shameless (UK Version). Loved it till the McGuire's took over, but it's still good. Scatter!
Hyperdrive. Like Red Dwarf, but with more contemporary comedians like Nick Frost - the other half of the latest Simon Pegg movies..
Assuming of course that the IT Crowd, Little Britain, etc, is all known as wonderful, of course..
To be honest there are very few shows from the past decade (i.e. not Benny Hill, not Fawlty Towers) in the "British Comedy" list on Netflix streaming that aren't good.
A Blister run record for most miles in one day. Two Harbors, Grand Marais, all the way down the Gunflint trail (and up and down and up and down a few times), Grand Marais again, Betty's Pies and back to Canal Park for beer and meat.
Lots of fun, nobody died, Scott is wearing a duct tape hand bandage that nobody wants to see coming off. And we found that if you have a scooter that doesn't work and you have an identical scooter that does work, it's much easier to debug. Twice.
No moose, but I think we decided that was probably safest. We are all exhausted and just now warming up but it was all kinds of good.
We are in Grand Marais after a very long day of riding into the wind and having lots of pickup trucks with boat trailers pass us. Some dangerously, others just annoyingly.
Took some time in Two Harbors to swap out a fuel line in an effort to curb some WOT fuel starvation issues. So far so good but I'm not convinced its warm enough to reproduce the issue.
Grand Marais is actually chilly but Duluth was extremely warm. No rain but at one point it closed up and got quite cold. And now we have sunny and wind.
The $9 helmet headset kit from office max. Fits like nothing is there and sounds great.
In past years I have done everything from drain my phone battery by listening to mp3's to getting an old old ugly mp3 player and taping that to the scooter. I think this is probably going to be a bit easier solution but it may be kind of a hassle with the cord hanging down. We'll see.
As luck would have it I just upgraded my phone to a Nexus 4 and I still have the old phone sitting around so I'm going put it in airplane mode and listen to music on that thus saving my new phone's battery for things like navigation and not being able to find a t-mobile Network.
Packing gets easier every year. It seems all you really need is a toothbrush, phone charger, change of clothes and rainwear. Everything beyond that is just added weight. I enjoy having my rainwear bundled and strapped in front of my scooter so that it breaks the wind a bit and makes me slightly more aerodynamic. But I really like to be able to ride the scooter like I do everyday and not like I'm driving a huge bike with tons of luggage strapped to it. This year I have the back rack so I'll be able to strap my backpack to that and be on my merry way without having to worry about being able to fit on the seat or sliding my gear off the back of the seat while I'm riding.
Heading north on the annual long distance scooter trip we call the Blister Run this weekend. I am considering using this blog as the blow-by-blow account of our fun and travels. We'll see if I follow up on that...
Updated a ton of pictures in my photo albums, but I'm not going to say which ones, you have to guess. Once I get all caught up I'll post something nicer. Just wanted a post on this blog from this year instead of last year. More next year!
Jill is out of town for a couple days and she's barely out the door before we converted the breakfast nook into a soldering/glue gun project station. I got the kit for the brain machine at the Maker Faire last year but hadn't put it together. Lily has been bugging me to do it so tonight was the night.
She is getting quite good soldering and has wicked patience for waiting for the solder to "turn into molten metal" (her words). Not only did the project involve soldering but also the glue gun, double plus good. It's nice to be able to teach her the finer points of making stuff: Me: "Will it hurt if we burn ourselves on the hot glue gun?" Lily: "Yes?" Me: "Actually the correct answer is 'it will hurt WHEN we burn ourselves on the hot glue gun.'". Glue guns are a no win situation but oh so much fun!
So we got the kit finished in pretty good time and Lily and Eli and I took turns trying the brain machine. Trippy to say the least! Lots of fun for all. Bonus project danger: seizures! (It's OK we're all fine.)
Yes, that's my daughter hooked up to a circuit board flashing lights in her eyes and dropping binaural beats in her ears.
I tidied my shop recently just so I could get back into making things, and started with Spikenzie's Solder Time kit. A couple hours of messy soldering, resoldering, trimming and following directions and voila!
It's massive. It requires you to press the button to show the time (displays for five seconds and turns off) and it won't tell you if it's AM or PM. Ideally opening a shade enough to see if it's dark or light out will give you enough of a hint on that point. Here it is without a flash, so you can see the display:
It's hard to tell, but it actually works quite well. It was a fun little exercise in soldering. Eli was most impressed. Until he heard it was a kit, then he scoffed. And then he asked if I would build him one, too. :)
