Hobby Engineering?

I live in a house with four growing boys, which means we drink a lot of milk. I received criticism when I came home midweek with two more gallons of milk only to respond that it is not that absurd; we drank all that milk inside of two days... I suppose you are asking now "but Gary, what are you doing with all those empty milk jugs?"

That is a fair question. Even when we crush the jugs, it still filled our recycling bin fairly quickly, so I came up with the great alternative to use them in a wild project. After running a quick and dirty calculation, I determined we would need 200 milk jugs to form the main buoyant support for a raft. A raft made from recycled materials.

At this very moment hanging from a hook in the kitchen is a string of 15 jugs. Threaded by the handle onto stringers, twenty ranks of ten jugs each will support a deck composed of recycled Styrofoam sheets sandwiched in layers of cardboard. The entire deck area will be sealed with marine grade epoxy, the only part not already used or salvaged. Rigidity will be achieved through skirts made of scrap lumber from the back yard.

This will merely be an exercise in utilizing recycled materials as the finished product will have hydrodynamic drag too high to be fast or maneuverable. It should float just fine though. And it should support a half ton load.

The Fairest Affair: The Fair

A friend of mine hunted me down a couple weeks ago and asked me if I like to cook. I do. He asked if I would enter a dutch oven cookoff at the Palouse Empire Fair. You know my response... Only thing was that I didn't have a recipe or gear to use.

Not a problem for me. Just a trip to Tri-State and a little journey on the internet yielded me an on-the-stove recipe which could be adapted for a new dutch oven.

Got up at 5:00 on Saturday to get everything together. I had the cooler packed with chicken and vegetables and a bin packed with everything else. I was missing a charcoal chimney, which meant a stop at Rosauers in Colfax to buy the cheapest coffee they had and a can opener to cut holes in it. I was a few steps away from making a fancy bellows out of a Schrader valve epoxied into the can and my bike pump.

It was the first ever dutch oven competition at the fair, and it had low PR, so there were only 8 entries. We all had a blast as we talked food and cooking and borrowed each other's supplies. I made some cool friends, made some good food, ate even better food (Paella, brownies, pizza, cake, pirogies, and more).

After standing in the hot sun for hours and hours and hours, the judges finished and awarded prizes. I didn't get anything in the special categories (beef, wheat, or potatoes), but I did take the red ribbon for my orange ginger chicken with potatoes. It was a close match that was decided by only a small point spread. Everyone who tried it said that the oranges and the ginger make it taste "fresh".