Safety Whistle Necklace

Just in time for the family ski-vaca I finally got around to crafting some lanyards for the safety whistles I bought a few months ago.  The kids are under 10 and we’ll be skiing in bounds the whole time – but it was a fun project and if I get them to wear them every time they ski and hike it might make a difference some day.

Materials:
Wind Storm Whistle, purchased from Campmore
2 meters of Cord per Lanyard: MINOR Cord, 3mm I bought a 15M roll from EMS

The Knots:
Sizeable Necklace Knot

Boatswains Knot

The boatswains knot is purely decorative. I suppose it holds the whistle at the midway point which might be handy, but the main reason I use it is because it’s exactly what the knot was designed for.

The sizeable necklace knots work pretty well, and allowed me to make 4 identical lanyards that’ll fit both the wife and I as well as the kids.  I’m not sure what the name of this knot is though.  I think it’s fashioned after a noose – which is not a good image to have making something that’s going around your neck.  If anyone has any advice on a better knot or technique to use here I’d love to hear it.

Oh yeah – pix:

A completed whistle and lanyard

The sizeable knots

 
The Boatswains decorative knot

License Plates I want

The DMV in NH has a website where you can check if a combination of letters, numbers and -, +, & are available for a license plate.  Over the years I’ve found a few that I’d consider getting, here’s a list I can remember right now:

SOX09, SOX2009, 2009SOX : These won’t last

SOXTUX, TUXSOX, SOX+TUX, TUX+SOX : Gotta get a “Tux” bumper sticker back on the jeep – and this’ll make the plate match the big Red Sox logo on the back of the jeep.

TRSKIEE : It’s the word “Ski” inside “Tree” – aka Ski in the Trees

P-K3 : My standard opening chess move, sets up for the fools mate.

YANKS04 : A nod to the team that choked and let the Sox go on to the 2004 World Series Victory.  Never gonna park in NYC with this one.

LOSTSOX: A group of Red Sox friends who help each other get tickets and enjoy games together at fenway is called “The Lost Nation.”  This is the smallest version of that name I could come up with.

CODE4U : A nod to my avocation – and one I used to see all the time commuting down to Boston.

FF0000: The hex code for RED, would look good on a Red jeep.

If you have any other suggestions, check the website to see if it’s available.  You’d be surprised how many license plates you thought were such an original idea are already taken.

ASDFGHJ: This would be good for someone in a QA department.

QWERTY: Same theme – not quite as funny some how.

Ski Rack Project

I’ve had a hard time keeping the skis organized over the years – and it’s only getting worse with the kids acquiring equipment now.  My friend Bob had this rack setup, and it looked like it worked well.

This is the 2nd attempt – the first try I had bought a pretty crappy 2×10 and it was split pretty much down the middle so it fell apart as I made the cuts.

On the 2nd try I was able to build the whole thing in under 2 hours.  The real key was some clever geometry that made the measuring go fast.

In it’s current configuration it holds 8 pairs of skis and 8 sets of poles, only a couple of the slots are holding more than a single pair of anything.

The wood from the first attempt was used for the cross members.

I did some measuring of our skis to see how tall the bindings were and the smallest skis (from where they’d be resting in the slots)  and the largest bindings to determine the dimensions.  Because of this I won’t even post the measurements as you should repeat the exercise for your gear.

Here’s a Sketch-Up 3D model of the rack.

Skiing with the Girl at Pat’s peak

Running out of chances to take the Girl to her skiing lesson at Pat’s peak, so I jumped at the opportunity when it came (of course all sorts of problems came up at work, but it was totally worth it) – we had an absolute blast. She told me about her day at school on the drive there, commented on how she loved riding in the jeep and her friends were jealous. When we got there it was a bit of mayhem getting all the right stuff to the lodge – I forgot her ski pants in her school bag.

Skiing was splendid, just right for a little girl. All groomed. Was having so much fun we were late for her lesson and with another girl had to be shepherding to where their group was. They went to the top of the mountain for the first time. I then had some time to take about 2 runs before her lesson was over.

Her hands were too cold to do any more skiing after the lesson, so we went to the restauraunt area and got some food while I helped her a bit with her homework – but the only help she needed was to be told to stop looking at the TV.

Drive home was another great father-daughter talking opportunity, and fun bumpy ride getting out of the parking lot in the Jeep.

X/C Skiing for the year

I typically cross country ski almost exactly once a year, and this year I guess today was the day.  Put the running shoes on,  stretched, fired up the iPod+Nike device and got out there only to find all the roads very slippery.  I was hoping the busier roads would have pavement, but alas – only the very crunchy ice was fun to run on.  So I turned around and ran back home – probably 1/4 mile round trip running.

Put on the X/C’s and walked about 200 yards to the beginning of a trail I thought would be good and stepped in.  I told the iPod to “continue workout” thinking it’d be interesting to see how the pedometer functioned on a x/c stride vs. a running stride.  It took me a couple seconds to remember that the little device that makes it all happen is inside my running shoe – so that experiment failed.  So it was skiing with the TWiT podcast, and that was fine.

Car Shopping

Car died – trying to replace it.  Surprised at the ease of use of CarTrader.com - easy to filter on all the important pieces of data.  Found a really fun sports car, but the carfax came up with some accidents – and it’s no good for skiing.  The stated goal is to get something reliable, but the secret goal is to get something fun.  I’ve owned 7 volvo’s – and it’s time for something fun.

Skiing in June

Skiing in June
Originally uploaded by M@.

Hiked up Hunter Mountain last weekend to ski with some friends from TimeForTuckerman.COM. There was a “Mountain Jam” concert going on at the base of the mountain so we had music as well as perfect weather. Lego had a great time too.

T4T @ RedBones

img_9129
Originally uploaded by M@.

Had a pretty good night out with the crew from the TimeForTuckerman.COM website. Got lost on the way, but the cell phone saved the day. These are all people who share my passion for Tuckerman Ravine, and we all met through the website, and there wasn’t a moment of time where we didn’t have something fun to talk about.

Earned Turns

76M_
Originally uploaded by M@.

Hiked up a local mountain with my skiis on my back today, after snowblowing 2 feet of snow off the driveway. Was very happy to have the people at timefortuckerman.com to find a couple folks to go with me. Had a great time even though we only really skiied what would be considered a single trail at a typical ski resort. We did get some very fresh very deep powder though.

Ski season is finally here – we took some turns in at Killington on the 9th. I made a little movie of it – my shortest (so probably the best) one yet: http://m.sheppard.net/tuckerman/KMartOpening.mpg – it’s about 8 meg long. Movie editing is getting easier, and I seem to have found the balance between quality and file size. Gotta make some more fun movies with the kids. Maybe feature Nick as a monster with the pot holder mit’s on.