Wallenda Walking

Nikola TeslaNik Wallenda (no relation to Nikola Tesla, right) has been practicing the past two weeks for his soon-to-be-attempted wirewalk across the Horseshoe Falls on June 15th. His last scheduled practice run is scheduled to be tomorrow, Tuesday May 22nd. I went to watch today.

My choice for getting there was to drive to the little LaSalle Park near the Grand Island bridge and ride in the bike path on my Trike. I’d ridden there before, but this is the first time I parked there.

The park was kind of small and not much to see when I was there last year, but a nice location and not a bad place for a picnic by the river, maybe combined with a little fishing. There always seemed to be a few people there enjoying it. When I pulled in this time, I wasn’t sure I was in the right place. I thought, at first, I had pulled into a parking lot for some apartment complex next door. But no, they’ve redone the whole parking lot and it’s first-class now. Continue Reading…

OMG! It’s been a month

…since I last posted here.

What have I done since then? Let’s see. The robotics team has built another robot. I got my Director’s number on the Geratol Net. I’ve gotten a month older…

That’s about it.

The WarlocksThe robot for 2012 is done and looking good. We had relatively few problems programming it, though not totally problem-free, less than last year. The kids doing our programming are doing a great job and what we have is truly a joint project with us all putting our heads together to come up with working code. We looked good at the Penfield scrimmage a couple of days before the end of the build season. Two days of practice and fine-tuning at the Kenan center after that got things really humming. Continue Reading…

LED Flashlight Head-to-head

Coleman MAX

Why an interest in LED flashlights? Well, it’s an offshoot of the bicycle lighting research I’ve done. Both are ever-changing with better technology coming along every year, mostly due to the advances in LED design.

This is totally unscientific, but based on two LED flashlights I currently own. I have an older one that has multiple LEDs that comes nowhere close to these two, so I thought maybe most people don’t realize what is out there in this niche market.

Norlight Tactical

The one thing that makes these flashlights different than their predecessors is their high-powered, high efficiency Cree XR-E LED. If you are not familiar with this company, or think you know about LED brightness based on what you may have seen in the past, you are in for a surprise.

Both of these flashlights are super-bright. Bright enough to be painful to look at. Bright enough to shine a light across a room in full daylight. In darkness, they are comaprable to much larger incandescent flashlights in a fraction of the size and weight. Continue Reading…

Five-wheelin’ to Rochester

From Drop Box

For the second weekend in a row, I took off on the bike for a overnight trip. This time I rode to the Rochester Hamfest in Greece NY, a trip I usually make by car. I go every year and it’s a chance to socialize with fellow Ham Radio operators I often don’t see much any other time. I talked to more Hams I know from Lockport than I see around town.

I belong to one Rochester area Ham club, the Rochester DX Association, and I enjoy meeting and hanging out with them. They always set up a big area at the hamfest for that purpose. You can sell things there, if you don’t have enough to justify setting up your own table. Or just talk.

I rode out on Friday, planning on arriving in the evening and camping overnight. I knew I would need to stay over Saturday night as well, so I asked ahead to see if I could stay the second nigh and got permission.

The trip out was long, but uneventful. I rode the Canalway Trail from Lockport to Medina, then jogged north to Route 31 aka, NY Bicycle Route 5, and took that to Albion. Riding the road was much faster and it was hot and sunny. I was glad to find places to stop and buy something to drink. I pulled into the Super Wal-Mart just outside Albion and bought a lemonade, Vitiamin Water and a candy bar, mostly for a break and a chance to get out of the sun. When I left, I stopped again in the Village of Albion at McDonalds and had one of those Lemon-Strawberry Slushies. I got brain-freeze, but felt much cooled off. Continue Reading…