Thunder in the Streets

49 Photos   Oct 10, 2009

This past weekend, we piled into the rig and headed down the road to the 5th Annual Sanford Bikefest, aptly named “Thunder in the Streets”, at Fort Mellon Park in Downtown Sanford. Situated on the southern shores of beautiful Lake Monroe, the town of Sanford really goes all out for this event. The most interesting part of the whole thing for me was the level of integration among different styles of bikers. As it says on the Sanford Chamber’s Website, “Weather you ride a classic, sport-bike, chopper, custom, cruiser, metric or three wheeler, as long as you have the biker spirit and want to enjoy great music, vendors, food and people you are welcome to Sanford and Thunder in the Streets.”

Suprisingly, I found this to be very true. The biker spirit was front and center, no matter what you ride! About half of the attendees were crusty ole Harley folks, with their stickers, patches, parts and gear. Eveyrone customizes their bikes to much that strangely enough, they all start looking the same again. The other half of the folks attending were much more diversified than I had thought possible. There were Latino and African American biker clubs, crotch rockets, Motorcross, American cruisers and even a fare number of my peeps – the Three Wheelers.

We had a great time! Everyone was really nice, and most folks were in good spirits in spite of the blistering heat. The Ural got its fare share of smiles and “thumbs-ups” from some and curious questions from others but all-in-all, everyone seems to really like the rig. We didn’t stay for the evening festivities although I’ve heard it’s usually quite a party. Maybe next year. This was really a dry run for Biketoberbest this weekend, and overall I think it went really well.

Unfortunately, Dre has to work, so I’ll probably be attending The Volusia County Sidecar Rally alone this Thursday. Without my resident sidecar monkey, I’ll have to go easy around the corners, although maybe I can still talk Diggz into joining …

Frickin' laser beams

27 Photos   Oct 11, 2009

A couple of years ago, Dre and I got a  great set of Halloween skeleton yard flamingos.  We liked them so much, we started leaving ‘em up all year.  This year, my buddy Diggz and I were pontificating about how to give them appropriately scary, red, glowing LED eyes.  One trip to Skycraft, two ready-made AA battery packs (batteries not included), four small red LED lights, a soldering gun, shrink wrap, electrical tape and some small guage wire and you’ve got yourself the makings of a proof-of-concept.  A little drilling, a little soldering and voila!  It’s actually up and running in the front yard as I type this.

The implementation was pretty simple.  We drilled a hole in each eye socket and one at the bottom of the flamingo body to run our wires.  Simple pigtails connect each eye socket so we don’t have to run a separate pair of wires for each LED.  We decided to solder and shrink-wrap the wiring for weatherproofing purposes.  While the battery pack is still proof-of-concept, the wiring should be permanent.  We’ve taped up the current battery pack to make it somewhat water resistant and velcroed it to the bottom of the body right under the tail.  If you’re not looking for them, they’re pretty inconspicuous.

Phase II of the prototype is to switch to a separate, standalone, waterproof battery pack to service both birds, and install a light sensing switch (so they only come on at night).  One more trip to Skycraft should do it.  So far it’s gone suprisingly smooth.  Stay tuned for part deux!

The Senator

 26 Photos   Oct 10, 2009 

I’ve wanted to see it for a long time, but haven’t ever gotten around to it.  Always in a hurry I suppose.  Until today that is.  On the way back from the Sanford Bike Festival (photos coming!), we decided to stop in and take a look.  Having the Ural seems to make us pull off the road at all kinds of places we might not normally stop.  It really is the perfect drive by vehicle!  I’m glad we finally saw it.  The park is nestled between U.S. 17-92 and State Road 427 just north of Longwood, FL.  The focus of the park is, as the name says, a really big tree. A 3500 year old, 17 1/2 foot across, 118 foot tall Cypress tree named “The Senator”. Oddly enough, there are two signs near by, both stamped “Seminole County Historic Marker” with a very official looking logo. They each describe slightly different aspects of the story of  The Senator. One calls the Senator “one of the oldest and largest cypress trees in America” while the other simply says “Largest Cypress in USA”. Either way, it’s definitely one big-ass tree.

Baltimore in the Fall

121 Photos | Oct 4, 2009

I was in Baltimore last week for a conference and with my recent interest in National Monuments and Parks in mind, I decided to walk the 3.4 miles from my hotel to Fort McHenry (Oh Say Can You See!).   I got a little concerned as evening quickly approached and my chances of taking some good pictures waned.  Turns out it really didn’t matter since the Fort closed at dusk.  As I made my way back, I quickly found out that I’m really not used to walking seven miles at one time.  I was sore for a good three days, but it was a nice visit anyway. Got some cool pictures of the Inner Harbor including the U.S.S. Constellation, the American Visionary Art Museum, and other interesting sights along the way.

Ocala National Forest

163 Photos | Sep 20, 2009
Had a great trip this weekend through the Ocala National Forest. This is really what the Ural was born to do. Dirt trails and lots of offroading.

Everything went well, allthough we’re still trying to figure out all the GIS stuff. For example, it seems like the Garmin wants to re-route no matter what. I had a great route picked out that started and ended at the house. A block away, the GPS starts telling us to make a U-turn ASAP. Why are we driving way the $#%^ up to Ocala if our destination is right here?!? Stupid GPS. So now it’s time to figure out whether I can turn off the auto routing feature, or whether I need two one-way routes (instead of a single round trip). I’d also like to figure out how to extract our actual trip in KML format and upload it as an attachment to the album. Oh well, one step at a time…