Published on February 27, 2025 2:20 AM GMT
Last week Kingfisherwent on tour with AlexDeis-Lauby calling. Similar plan to lastyear: February break week, rented minivan, same caller, many ofthe same dances and hosts.
This time our first dance was Baltimore, and while it's possible todrive from Boston to Baltimore in one day and then play a dance, wedecided to be a bit more relaxed and do it over two. We also decidedto repeat what worked well during our summer tour andstop interesting places.
Tuesday we stopped to go sledding:
This is HenryPark in CT, which was nice and steep with a big flat area at thebottom. It was so icy that you couldn't get back up the hill withoutwalking in the existing footprints:
The ice also made for very fast sledding, though possibly a little toofast: while no one got hurt it was much harder to steer and stop thanusual. We also ended up making a hole in the sled:
This was the only time all trip we ended up using the sled,but minivans are big and the sled is light. It actually ended upacting a bit like a drawer, where I put a bunch of light things on thesled and it was easy to get in and out.
Building on our success last time with the miCARwave we also brought atoasCAR:
Warm tatertots with sour cream on a cold day are pretty great!
The inverter died in my lead acid setup, andmodern lithium batteries with built-in electronics have gotten cheapenough that I little while ago I got a AnkerSOLIX C1000. Much lighter, and probably more reliable too. Withits solar input functionality I think it could even be used for emergencyresidential jury rigging. Here is is powering the toaster at1,272W:
We spent Tuesday night visiting my aunt in Philly, and the nextmorning Lily and I went to the FranklinInstitute (Philly's science museum). Here's Lily in the enormousBaldwin60000 steam engine:
On the way to Baltimore we stopped at Longwood Gardens, which hastwo large greenhouses full of flowers:
It was fun to get a bit of summer in February, but even better was theorgan. Here's a small section, including an teleoperated piano:
This was probably a bit ambitious, but we were planning to doBaltimore, Asheville, and DC on successive nights. I do think thiswould've worked, with a lot of driving, but it really depended onclear roads. Unfortunately, we didn't get this: it snowed Wednesdayand Thursday along the route, and I don't think it would have been agood idea to make the trip. So after the Baltimore dance (which wasgreat!) we ended up taking a day off.
Thursday we slept in and played Splendor, which Lily and Cecilia hadlearned at Chattaboogie:
Lily and I spent the evening with DC friends, and the next morning wevisited the Udvar-HazyCenter. This is part of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, butis out by Dulleswhere there's room for a lot more planes. I was especially excited tosee the SR-71 Blackbird:
And one of a very small number of planes from a flyingaircraft carrier:
Also Apollo 11's MobileQuarantine Facility, for isolating returning astronauts in casethey'd acquired lunar pathogens:
I like this, as an example of people taking low-probabilityhigh-consequence risks seriously, though even given the science of thetime I suspect it wasn't actually worth it?
After lunch Lily continued to be full of energy, and wanted to see bigthings she'd heard about. So we went downtown to see the WashingtonMonument:
Lily found the White House very unimpressive, and thought the designof the TreasuryBuilding was much better:
That evening we played Glen Echo, which as an unheated building inFebruary was super cold, even with radiant heaters:
It was definitely hard to play as well as we wanted to, given thetemperature, but I think we still did pretty well and the dancersseemed to be having a good time!
Lily fellasleep in the keyboard case:
Saturday we stopped at IndianEcho Caverns, a cave outside Harrisburg. Here's some interestingflowstone:
And a small pool:
Whenever I visit a cave, I get a story like: "A very long time ago,someone thought they could make a lot of money showing people thiscave. They came in and did some horrible things to make it moresuitable for tours: blasting to make passages, larger, removing rockformations that impeded access, flattening floors by adding gravelor removing rock, etc. Then they went bankrupt, and, possibly after afew changes of ownership, we ended up running this place. We are goodstewards of this wonderful place and would never harm it like theydid." Except, without whatever that long-ago person did we would allbe having a much worse experience of the cave, if it were evencommercially practical to display it.
Above ground, we got to help feed the animals, including alpacas:
That evening we played Bethlehem, which was really nice. There arestill a bunch of folks I remember from when we used to drive up therefrom Swarthmore, nearly two decades ago. They also fed us dinnerbefore the dance, which is even better than portable heating equipmentin a car!
Lily really wanted to see the Statue ofLiberty, so we decided to take the Staten IslandFerry round-trip before heading into Brooklyn to play our lastdance of the tour. We parked at the Staten Island end, which was freeon Sunday. It was super windy on the boat:
We wore our snowpants, which was an excellent decision:despite the wind, we were plenty warm.
On the Manhattan side we explored Battery Park a bit, and enjoyed thehorizontal climbing wall:
There was also a slide that did well at being long and fast, but notat minimizing jerk. In away that kids are quite resilient to but I did not enjoy.
After riding back to Staten Island we drove to the Brooklyn dance,which was great as always. As an earlydance we were able to drive home that night, and I was in my own bedby 1am!
Travel expenses were $626.69 for the rental (including a flat $75 fortolls which I think was money-losing for Hertz) and $151 for gas,split four ways. Housing was free (thanks to our wonderful hosts!)and food was similar to what we would have spent at home (grocerystore food). We made $904/each in pay, plus $122/each in CDs (we alsosold four shirts, but materials costs are way higher, netting only afew dollars per shirt).
I'm glad we went, though I'm still sad Asheville didn't work out!
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