After completing our windmill (see my diary entries) we took RonB home (he lives in Texas) driving there all the way from Canada.
I had promised to come back to TomW to help fix his tower which we had left in a less than useable condition. So, the three of us (Johannes, RonB and myself) jumped into our van and took of, arriving at TomW's house late thursday night.
The next day we spent on finishing the tower as much as the daylight - and the temperature - permitted us. 50 feet does not sound very high, but when you're up there in the chilling wind it feels like halfway to the moon, and a misstep will kill you quite handily !
When we were done we drove of for southern parts, but near the town of 'New Hampton', Iowa only a few miles from TomW's house a giant fieldmouse jumped on to the road, right in front of our car. The imact of 350 pounds of fieldmice was quite amazing, but the airbag never went off ! (I'm kinda happy about that...). The reason why is that Ford, in their infinite wisdom has arranged it so that even if you technially do have an airbag it will never go off because the wires get snipped even on an impact with a giant fieldmouse, and instead of being punched in the face by an airbag you are greeted with a nice yellow warning light that your airbag sensor has just failed. Go figure !
The impact was in fact so hard that the hood latch was shoved right through the valve cover on the engine !! We limped into New Hampton and found Alan, a guy that was just finished gassing up who called Jeff, a buddy of his that runs a bodyshop.
Jeff proceeded to straighten our car out at an amazing clip, pulled back the bent header that runs across the top of the engine compartment, we fished out a broken fan, and a whole garbage can full of red plastic bits.
After that Jeff popped off the valve cover and fixed it (it had a gaping hole in it, not a good thing for a running engine) using some epoxy that sets in a couple of minutes and we fished out some aluminum bits before they made it into the engine (probably not a good thing).
Two hours later we were on the road again, and Jeff should be in the national hero gallery !
The next day we arrived at RatOmeter's digs and we went out for lunch.
After that it was on to the Lone Star state.
On the way there we found "Over Unity University", proof that we had been totally misguided in disbelieving the claims that energy out of nowhere is a serious possiblility. After all, if Oklahoma State funds it, it must be true !
RonB lives in a huge place, that has the largest woodworking tool collection that I have ever seen. We slept in a motel nearby, and had diner on the first night in Texas in a german restaurant of sorts, where the waitress advised us to order anything but the blue cheese. I wonder what she knows what we didn't, but we heeded her advice :)
We also visited 'Marty', who introduced us to some of the tricks involved in vacuum infusion, a technique we may use for the production of the blades for our windmills in the future. Marty's son Colt kept us supplied with tea, and gave a demonstration in skateboarding :)
On the way there we came across a nuclear power plant, and shot a picture just outside the 'authorized vehicles only' perimiter. Another thing we found is a place where they have absolute, positve proof of creation being not a myth by a bunch of imaginative writers a few thousand years ago, but rock solid reality.
Also, RonB took us for a tour of a little museum that is dedicated to preserving all kinds of water pumping windmills. There are over 30 of them, and I took tons of pictures, but I'll post those at a later time, because I need to do a lot of editing to make sense of them.
On our last day in Texas we went on a shopping spree in a surplus electronics store. All kinds of goodies, heavy shunts, connector blocks, 50 A 600 V full wave bridges, heatsinks and so on. A whole store full of 'the good stuff'. Too bad they're so far away and I can't visit them more often.
Then we said our farewells to RonB and continued on to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, where the Dans have their lair.
At night, close to the Colorado border we came upon an amazing scene, hundreds of little red lights in the distance, the top ones blinking on and off in weird regular patterns. After looking at it for a while we decided that either the aliens had finally landed, or we were looking at a gigantic windmill park at night. The latter - unfortunately ? - turned out to be the case, and we saw a few of them up close (but way too dark to take pictures). We stopped for the night in "Lamar", and visited a display on the windmill park the next morning.
108 Windmills of 1.5 MW each... /me is jealous !
The scenery got more and more beautiful as we got closer to the Dans, and after a quick food & fuel stop in Fort Collins we drove into the mountains. The Dans live in a canyon near Fort Collins, and it's really quite the road up there. We had totally missed the direction DanB had sent us (I couldn't print here, had sent them to RonB, where we forgot to print them again, and finally had them read over the phone, which led to all kinds of errors). We took two major detours - sight seeing - because of this and had a hairy ride down a hillside on a couple of inches of snow. You really don't want to make speed on a hill like that - no guardrails, very steep drop of to one side, mountain on the other !. When we finally made it down we found out that once more our directions were flaky and we had to do it all over again...
It was almost dark when we finally arrived, and we met with DanB and 'Dave', who had also come there from somewhat lower in Colorado (Trinidad).
Matt came up to visit us (he lives nearby) too. Michelle - DanB's lady - and daughter Maja arrived late at night and Johannes went to bed. DanB, Todd & myself talked - and drank (me tea :) - till deep in the night in DanB's shop, and Todd - who likes to call himself 'Dave' for unknown reasons - at some point at night decided that he wanted to have another good look at his dinner :)
The conclusion of all this is that Southern Coloradoans hold their beer less well then Northerners.
We were also introduced to the concept of 'the German Snuggler', which otherwise looks suspiciously like a german pointer but is a far more cuddly kind of animal.
The next day Todd left for home, and we talked some more with DanB, met with Tom, a neighbour who also is off the grid and DanF, and proceeded to hack about fieldlines, with mixed success. (yes, it's faster and a bit more reliable, but we iced the 'x COmments, y new' feature).
After another night the next day we decided that it was time for us to return home, and we once again said farewell to DanB and Tom to drive some more miles.
We crossed briefly through Wyoming, and boy that is not a good place to live. About every third car is a police car ! I seriously wonder if that is a way to make a living there, on a 50 mile stretch of highway I have never ever seen so many police cars, and most of them seemed to be engaged in stopping cars that had nothing obviously wrong with them and that were not speeding. Probable cause is not in the dictionary in Wyoming.
On Friday night we crossed the border back into Canada. At that point we'd done more than 7000 kilometers, which is about 4400 miles !
pictures follow:
The work on TomW'stower nears completion:
The view from 50' up !
RonB & TomW
Giant fieldmouse impact damage on Ford minivan. Note the complete absence of any grill and the 12" dent in the condensor/radiator assembly. Miraculously the radiator survived, but one fan just behind it got smashed to bits. Go figure !
RatOmeter & Son, and some guy that kept popping up wherever we went:
Over Unity university:
The museum with evidence of creation, only in Texas !
Marty's tape drive windmill:
Marty and RonB:
Nukular (:) plant in Texas, from just outside the 'authorized vehicles only' zone. This is what we're trying to get away from if possible ! The whole area is wired with sirens and I wonder how much fun it would be to power a few of them up in the middle of the night ?
One happy Texan back at home:
Johannes illustrates how large a windmill of a 1.5MW turbine is:
How is that for a boltpattern, those bolts are 3/4" each:
34 meters long ! (102 ')
and over 5' (1.5m) high, hardly any twist visible:
DanF, trying to use ssh over a satellite link:
DanB in DanF's digs:
I spent one night in here, I'm seriously allergic to cats and having cats is a must in Colorado (at least, I did not come across a house that did not have at least one).
DanB's workshop & a windmill he's working on:
Another large windmill park in Colorado, those little sticks are 1.5M each !
Sunset in Nebraska on the way back:
