It's been a solid 3 weeks since I've been really connected to the internet world, and it's been a nice break, no offense to you all. In fact, I missed Oppo more than most anything else internet-based.

I will post some more detailed stories and pictures another time, but in short here's what I've been up to:

1. I took this:
   
   And went on a 10-day winter backpacking trip with another teacher and 8 students from my school, in the White Mountains of NH. @MybirdIStheword btw the bottle rockets went over very well.

On Wednesday 3/16 I woke up to this (totally normal, it's just in stark contrast to what comes next):

2. 3 days later my wife and kids and I were here:
   

We spent about 5 days in the Bahamas at the crazy Atlantis resort. I mean, aquarium in the lobby. Waterslides through shark tanks. Beautiful beaches, too.

3. Our flight from the Bahamas left at 2:00pm Friday 3/25. By 2:00pm Saturday I had skied all "61 trails" of Waterville Valley in a fundraiser race and we ducked a rope to ski this one, as our last run: (not me in the pic)

In fairness, most of the trails were covered with snow. Plenty of bare spots, sure, but it wasn't bad on most of the mountain. And yeah, that's the East for you - 61 named trails on a little mountain smaller than a single bowl at Whistler.

So what am I doing today? Drinking coffee by my woodstove. It's 17F outside and blowing 15-25mph. My body just does not know what to make of this. I've got laundry to catch up on and paperwork, class prep, car maintenance, yard work, and dog snuggling.

I hope you're all doing well and I'll post more when I can. Thanks for being excellent while I was gone.

The T6 was unceremoniously dropped off last night while I was at work, with the paperwork just left on the passenger's seat. Total cost is only $27.00 on top of the original price, for the title fee. I really love working with these guys, it doesn't get much better. It was also a few thousand below what appears to be current market for this year and spec.

I already swapped the roof rack and I'm keeping the wheels that are on the 2012 for winter wheels, with snows I also already have.

For now I'm just happy with my engine swap for +60hp and the next best part?

My kids are the exact age where they can use these integrated boosters. No more car seats in the back of my car! Woohoo!

Some of you may recall a project I started over a year ago that I finished up in June of this year. It involved taking a Ford 351 from a ski boat company's engine testing department and shoehorning it into a 1956 Shepherd wooden boat that belongs to my father-in-law. This boat is the reason I met my wife, and it's been a saga the last 15 years or so, with the boat sinking at one point, and generally being trouble.

Well the boat's primary job these days is to take my father-in-law to church; there's an island chapel on our lake where services have been held in the summer since about 1903. He's been a regular there for decades, and the day he brought his daughter with him was the day I met my future wife.

This was a complete teardown of the non-structural elements of the boat. Gauges, wiring, fuel tank, driveshaft, engine/transmission, cooling, shift and throttle controls, fuel lines, exhaust, bilge pumps, steering system. The shift lever was actually taken from an old Century Resorter, and works surprisingly well, with a lot of custom work on my end. The prop came off an old Supra (80's ski boat). The exhaust combines pieces of a 2000's wakeboarding boat, a section of 3" fiberglass exhaust, several elbows and adapters, and a LOT of hose clamps.

All summer, the boat has been reliable and has taken the FIL out to church every week - in fact, it's the first time in many years that every service was held on the island, as opposed to the backup location on land for rainy days. It didn't rain a single Sunday, and the boat didn't have a single hiccup.*

Yesterday, I felt like the circle was completed as my wife and I went to church with him, and brought our kids along, all riding together in the wooden boat that started it all. I love these things, and I had made friends with the future father-in-law because of his boat. Going out there all together in this boat, with the engine I found and installed, really felt significant. I slept well last night.

*(okay, the shift lever needs to be tightened and I've tinkered with a few minor things... nothing to do with reliability though)

They all have to park together, it's a little boat show every week.

Below was last week's wooden boat lineup at church, better than this week.

Any updates you get from here will be "how I improved the steering in the former project boat, now just another persnickety old wooden boat" or something like that. I do need to tighten up that shift lever.

Happy Labor Day, Oppo.

... wondering what I've been up to. Let me sum it up with a few pictures:

And finally, we saw this last week while just hanging out on the lake:

*same show but I think this was pre-hyphen... definitely pre-hyphen. So I don't feel too bad shamelessly sharing it again here.

Long story short, the BBC rented my truck for a day to drive it around New Hampshire during Peak Foliage Season, which for us is right now. In fact, this year seems especially good for whatever reasons.

Anyway they aired their "Autumnwatch" special back then and a surprising number of local people told me they saw my truck on TV. It was a joint thing between BBC and PBS. So anyway, they're airing it again!

Screenshot from my phone because ...

Go watch PBS / BBC Autumnwatch, there's about 5 minutes of truck time in the 2 hours of show haha

And anyway I took a couple pictures today because the colors really were so good. These are just on my way home today, phone pics from stopping on the road.

This is the best time of year to have a bright lime-yellow truck.

She bought me this for my 40th birthday:

Of course, I don't have it yet because the global supply chain is broken but hoo boy I'll do a review when I get it! Probably July.

And by that I mean the leaves are literally falling at their maximum possible rate. I parked this truck a few hours before taking this picture.

In 90 minutes yesterday there were enough leaves on my Volvo that I could have used a snowbroom, still had to use wipers because they were wet and wouldn't slide off.

Here it is just moments after parking it, you can't see the leaves on the roof or hood, but I assure you they're there.

I have some raking in my future.

57.3 lbs

All the heaviest stuff is packed low and close to my back. The tent is a big bulky thing that just couldn't go anywhere else. -30F sleeping bag in the drybag on bottom. Rain gear on the very top in another drybag. 5lbs of layers and dry socks inside. Big puffy in there too.

Other notables:
2 x 1-liter containers of fuel for an MSR stove, we'll probably mostly use it to jump-start wood fires for cooking.
2 x 32 oz nalgenes of water

Headlamp, map, compass, lighter(s), med kit, tape, pocket knife, leatherman, small towel, winter hat, baseball hat, sunglasses, extra paracord, deck of cards, some single-page crossword puzzles and a pencil, and so on.

Not pictured: the 3lb-each insulated boots we wear, plus lightweight snowshoes, gaiters (those are optional but I love mine). Oh, and our standard-issue LL Bean mitts:
Everyone draws on these with sharpies and then we waterproof them with Sno-Seal, they are rugged, simple, warm, and excellent. I let each of my kids decorate one hand, and they came out great.

I'm in a group with 1 other adult, 1 senior (high school age) and 7 juniors, everyone is carrying some group gear like cooking supplies, shelter, shovel, food, etc. and this is our life for the next 10 days. Hike a few miles, make camp, repeat. We only cover a modest ~40 miles in the 10 days, some of them are intentionally slow or out-and-back hikes. The kids will do a 3-day solo time in the middle, where they make camp and have no direct contact with anyone for 3 nights. I will actually come home for a night or two while the kids are on solo, there are other adults who can cover that time as needed. My wife will need the help with the kids; she works full time and has done very little solo parenting while working.

After that we reconvene and hike the second half all together, getting picked up the morning of Day 11.

I return from this trip to go right into a week in the tropics with my family, so that will be a shock, but a nice one.

As the title implied, I basically won't be online for the rest of the month. I go back to work something like April 4th.

I painted the exhaust shield black. It was silver. I like it better this way.

For reference:

Project Squamasee is almost done. Successful test ride today!

Also it 1000% needs tires.

That does look like a steal. YOU WON'T DO IT

But also GAHHH the 45 degree pictures!!!!

@ibRAD said in Skiing at Loon Mountain Early Season: A Brief Review:

Oof. That looks like the local sledding hill at the end of the year's first snow day. What kind of wax works best on mud?

Full send wax.

But seriously, that's my method. No one on the slope so just go fast and don't look back.

Update: it rained a whole bunch yesterday into today, and it's still warm. This morning it was a little ugly in places:

But to be fair, it wasn't bad in most places. It was cooling off so the snow on the top half of the mountain was firming up. It was still fun spring conditions on the bottom.

Still, yuck. Oh well, it pays the same.

@ash78 said in Stupid Auto Pilot Brain:

LOL, not bad.

My MIL's Mercedes (not bragging here, it's just a GLA) has the SHIFTER where the WIPER STALK should be.

I'm ok with some of the shifter innovation that's been going on the past few years. But not this.

The world of shifters is like when cars were first invented and nobody could agree on throttle, brake, choke, or shifter positioning so you had to re-learn every single vehicle.

Pretty sure I had a rental CLA with a shifter like that. I did not get used to it the whole time.

Driving a 3-on-the-tree back to back with an automatic column shift, which I did for a while, really taught me not to get too comfy with shifting - gotta think a little every time.

You see, this is yet another benefit to having many cars. If you drive several different cars on a regular basis your muscle memory for each gets somewhat overridden by the stimuli of "hey now, which car am I in?" I grew up driving several different cars all the time and I still drive a few different ones every week - way more in the summer, but still.

When my wife worked in Boston she and some colleagues would travel to NYC from time to time. She was always on Team Train and would get there in about the same time as those on Team Plane because of all the extra time on either end. The big difference came (fairly often in the summer) when a flight got delayed, in which case, game over. Team Train FTW with that short travel distance.

First-gen boxster? Could be had in your price range.

That Si though is perfect, I love those.

@KITT222 @HammerheadFistpunch This is really just a brief experiential thing we're looking for, nothing serious, formal, or paid even. The student has big aspirations but I think would be served with shadowing anyone working in that space for a week or so.

Thanks for the thoughts.

Hey, I'm trying to get a student connected to an electric car company for a possible research opportunity / mini-internship kind of thing, in March 2023.

Who was it here, who worked for Rivian? And/or do any of you have thoughts on this?

It's a year-long research project with an experiential component and this student is researching electric cars, but has struck out so far on the experiential part.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.