The Blog of Jason "Jayce" Olshefsky

Wow: it’s been quite a while — not since The Big Dig in July.

Anyway, the reason I’ve been away is this:

What would have been the way to get to Burning Man this year ...

Sometime in early 2010, I hatched a plan to build a vehicle that I would transport to Winnemucca, Nevada then pedal 100 miles to Burning Man. I knew time was too short to make it for that year, so I slated it for 2011. Well, I spent hundreds of hours on design toward the beginning of the year, a dollar amount I’m afraid to calculate on custom-designed parts as well as off-the-shelf parts, and another hundreds-of-hours on building. By Sunday, August 7, I did not yet have a pedal-able vehicle, and I had 11 days before I would need to ship it, so I put it off for another year.

The more precise plan was to ship the trike to Winnemucca by UPS Ground. I have designed it so it folds up and can be shipped in a relatively small crate (which doubles as a trailer for extra gear). I would take the train to Winnemucca and it would hopefully be waiting at the hotel — probably Scott Shady Court Motel (400 1st St., Winnemucca, NV) which I stayed at and liked a lot before. Sunday, the day before Burning Man starts (on Monday), I’d get my water jugs filled, get packed up, and head for Jungo Road (a.k.a. Nevada SR 49). From there I’d pedal the 85 miles to 40° 46′ 02.07″ N, 119° 07′ 12.26″W where there is a microwave antenna access road that crosses the railroad tracks. I would hope to pass the active mine at Sulphur before nightfall as there’s a bit of traffic supporting it (not so much on Sunday, but on the way back). I’d take a right and cross the tracks then head due west across the Black Rock Desert, north of the Burning Man event, until I reach the barely-marked West Playa Highway which I’d take south to the main gate. After the event, I’d just reverse the trip. I estimate about 100 miles each way which could take anywhere from 10 to 24 hours depending on how fast I could go — and since I haven’t tested anything yet, I really have no idea what is practical.

The vehicle itself is called a “tadpole trike” because it has three wheels and kind of looks like a tadpole with 2 wheels in front for steering and one rear wheel for propulsion. The picture shows the frame as far as I had completed it, and nearest the photographer is the mount for the pedals. I used parts from the 1994 Honda Civic I had taken off the road 2 years ago, parts from go-kart companies, bicycle parts, lots of scrap metal (mostly from bed frames), and the final drive is to use motorcycle chain for extra strength. I estimate that including the tires, it will weigh in slightly less than 200 pounds, so it’s definitely not meant to win any hill-climbs.

But I did design it with a broad gearing range: a 2-speed custom shifter doubles the range of a continuous-variable Fallbrook NuVinci 360 internal hub shifter from a stump-pulling 0.2-to-1 to a mountain-bike-high-gear 3.5-to-1. In terms of gear-inches (which, if you imagine a pennyfarthing big-front-wheel bike, it’s the effective diameter of that wheel) it has a range of 5.2 gear-inches to 18.2 gear-inches in low and 22.9 to 80.0 gear-inches in high. So with a pedaling speed range of 15 rpm to 150 rpm, that translates, overall, to 0.23 mph to 35 mph. And assuming I can put a maximum of 300 pounds of force on the pedal at a standstill, the lowest gearing will yield a massive 800 pounds of forward-force at the drive wheel.

I figure my goal is to just attempt it.  If I have to stop and go back, or haul the beast back broken, then so be it.  The road itself is generally pretty obvious, but I do have USGS topographic maps of the whole area along with a compass and a GPS for good measure.  I set up JayceLand to be able to accept picture-message posts like I did for the Big Dig … Verizon’s map shows the last point of “coverage” to be around 40° 53′ 21.534″ N, 118° 26′ 15.342″ W which is little more than halfway, and not quite to Sulphur.

But alas, the whole idea seems to be quite distant now. Funny how a week ago I was picturing it actually happening, and now I don’t even know if I’ll try it in 2012 — or ever for that matter. I think I will desire it again in the future. After all, part of the beauty of it is that I can potentially be someplace where it’s more than 20 miles to the nearest person. The whole trike and its testing is a separately interesting matter, but I can get that accomplished with some camping trips around here, or even just using it as a main vehicle.

We shall see!

The Big Dig Day One

Today is the first day of “The Big Dig”. It should be a lot of fun. Nick and Jeff are working now.

I got back today off the Amtrak (320 Central Ave.) after visiting with my brother Adam in Arlington, VA. For the most part, our visit was more to see where he lives — in fact, he sent me a link to a humorous video about Arlington. We visited only one landmark: The Pentagon Memorial which is very tasteful and pleasant.

We stopped at a number of restaurants and bars. I particularly liked the salami/Gorgonzola pizza at Piola Restaurant (1550 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA); their drinks and desserts were also excellent. We also visited Galaxy Hut (2711 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA) which is a really cool bar — much like Lux Lounge (666 South Ave.) in its casual atmosphere, outdoor patio, interesting clientele, and absence of advertising and televisions (well, except for one).

On both sides of the trip, the train stops in Manhattan and it’s an hour and a half before the Rochester train leaves, so I had a chance to get lunch. I stopped at New Pizza Town II (360 7th Ave., New York) which was pretty good — nothing like a slice of ziti-topped pizza with big glops of ricotta. On the way home, I learned that Amtrak’s Business Class is not worth much: the seats are a little bigger with curtains on the windows, free soft drinks, and most importantly, the car is located at one end of the train so foot traffic is minimal.

It’s been a while since I did something outside my comfort zone. Part of that is that my comfort zone is much larger than before, so finding new things is itself a challenge. Nonetheless, performing still panics me, so I decided to go to the Story Slam at Writers and Books (740 University Ave.) It’s hosted by Carol Roberts and organized (for now) as a way for people to tell a 5-minute true story. It was fascinating to enter among a room of strangers and leave feeling quite a lot closer to them through just one personal story. I decided to tell the tale of the $20 I found after the High Falls Film Festival in 2003 that led to me losing my job — I wrote about it when it happened as well.

Anyway, the idea is similar to The Moth StorySLAMs, although minus the competition. Some were better than others for various reasons, but it’s not so much a “slam” as it is just a way for people to connect. I’ll probably go back next month, although I expect it to be much different as I would feel like I met half the people there this month.

I had been working on a pig-head mask for quite a while, anticipating using it for a movie and for Halloween.  Well, as Halloween approached, I buckled down and finished it.  Since Ali and I were going to head to my cousin’s wedding on Halloween night, I took the opportunity to join the Night of the Living Wedge Halloween Pub Crawl so I’d have a chance to show it off.  I started a little late, so I decided to catch up with the crawl at Solera Wine Bar (647 South Ave.)

From there, we hit Lux Lounge (666 South Ave.), The Tap and Mallet (381 Gregory St.), and The Keg (315 Gregory St., behind German House where Rohrbach’s used to be) before finishing at Caverly’s Pub (741 South Ave., formerly Genesee Co-op Credit Union).  I was receiving great praise for my costume — partly because I had clarified what I was trying to be with the addition of some hospital-style scrubs and a “Hello, my name is” tag reading only “H1N1″ … plus, the eyes would heartbeat-blink red, and I could hit a button so they’d brighten to a blaring blue-white.  As it turned out, I won the darn costume contest.  I spread around some holiday cheer, favoring a couple homemade costumes before heading home to pass out.

The MEETinROCHESTER organizer snapped a picture that I’ll unabashedly use here:

Jayce as H1N1 on Halloween

Ali and I took the 50-mile drive to Chimney Bluffs State Park (7700 Garner Rd., Wolcott) for the afternoon with our dog, Lucy. The park is really nice and interesting: a moderately challenging [and, at this time, incredibly muddy], 1-mile trail that climbs to the top of alien-looking “earthen spires”. It’s a peculiar treasure around here: I have yet to mention it to someone who already knew about it.

On the way back, we stopped for dinner at Orbaker’s Drive-In (4793 State Route 104, Williamson) which is this great burger joint that’s been there forever. Ali knew of it — being an aficionado of sauce-laden burgers — and rates it very highly. While not quite worth a trip from anywhere, it’s not that far if you’re already out 104 on the east side.

Last evening I went to RIT (One Lomb Memorial Dr., campus map) to see Mark Frauenfelder, and Carla Sinclair speak about the “maker movement” going on now. This morning, Mark brought some kits from The Maker SHED — the store for MAKE Magazine‘s products — to share with The RIT Make Club. Although I just wanted to hang out to see how basic the Learn to Solder Kit really was, I couldn’t resist[*] trying to build the Drawdio Kit. With it, you draw a line with a pencil then use the line to change the pitch the Drawdio emits — the line acts as a resistor to complete the oscillator circuit [* har har]. I finished it up pretty quick, and got back that old feeling of how nice it was to build a project from a kit that, well, just worked. If I remember correctly, 4 people were also building the Drawdio’s and they all got them working.

Anyway, the Learn to Solder Kit was pretty nice. The circuit board has some extra pads so you can learn to melt and work with solder before going on to build the basic circuit. Mark had also brought several Super TV-B-Gone Kits which were very popular because they were more than just toys, they were actually useful (for turning off nearly any television by sequencing through all the known TV power-button codes).

In all it was a really nice experience. Mary Lynn Broe organized this as part of The Caroline Werner Gannett Project which brings together “21st century thinkers and scholars in the arts, sciences and technologies who ask the unasked questions.” Hopefully we can build from this to get people who make things together, as well as the people who don’t make things yet.

Since Ali had other plans, Christina and I decided to head to City Hall (30 Church St.) for the city’s Standing Tall…Standing Strong Black History Month celebration.  Well, actually we went because we knew there would be a food tasting featuring homemade dishes from City employees.  As in past years, there’s a huge line … and since we got there late, all the [presumably heavenly] macaroni and cheese was gone.  We were both very impressed by the Firehouse Meatballs by Carlos Manns and the Lasagna with Turkey Meat by Jeffrey Medford.  Everything was great, though.  Plus you can’t beat the price.

Unfortunately we had to leave early to get to the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) to see The Thing by 7. We got there a little bit late, but there was a huge line. Christina suggested we just watch it off her housemate’s Netflix box so we did that instead.

She maintains the film as one of her favorites, but I was not particularly impressed. I guess the whole futile, frenetic activity against an unstoppable force was just too much. I mean, what was the point of watching these people run around killing one another and stuff when their plight was beyond hope? Perhaps as a parable: how can you fight an enemy that can look and act exactly like you do? In that sense, I think the original version, The Thing from Another World, made more sense in the context of McCarthyism when your otherwise unsuspecting neighbor could be your sworn enemy.