Snow Anyone?

To Liverpool, New York -- 50.6 miles, 11.3 mph, 775 ft

Brrrrr! The cold weather persisted today and even delivered a few snow flurries this morning (at which Dex and Kylie rejoiced and ran outside). Although we were hit with frozen rain during the first 45 minutes of the ride, the rest of the day was mercifully dry.

We saw Anita and Dave for just a few moments this morning as we stumbled back and forth to the bathroom and they we getting ready for work. Larry showed up around 7:30 and was awesome as always. He told us of his treasure hunting hobby using a metal detector….

Before heading out he made sure we left with bag lunches for the road. By noon we were looking for a place to warm up and the bag lunches were greatly appreciated. The new wool socks we bought for Kylie yesterday were apparently still insufficient. She and Dex both decided to try Larry’s trick of stuffing their feet in plastic bags before putting on their shoes.  They also resorted again to putting socks over their knit gloves.

Plastic bag socks

Although the terrain was relatively flat today, the head wind for the last half slowed our progress and knocked down our average speed. When we arrived at Andy and Wendy's house at 4:30, we were ready to get off.

Dandelion field

Andy is an electrical engineer at Lockheed Martin and Wendy a radiology technician at a local hospital. Andy is also, apparently, a mad scientist. Before, dinner, he offered to do an experiment for the kids, his famous coin shrinking trick. The first step is to make a coil out of heavy gage wire, trap a coin in the middle, then connect it to nearest source of 12,000 volts! (Don't try this at home, unless you're Andy).  I thought it was a joke until he explained the physics -- the induced eddy current in the coin melts the metal enough that the two opposing magnetic fields (one from the coil and one from the coin) squeeze the coin reducing its diameter. We all loved it. Here's what Kylie thought:

Andy does lots of science, and he had time to show us one of his fancy machines in action. His bulky machine is supposed to shrink coins. Step 1: wrap a wire the diameter of the coin. Step 2: take two wooden dowels and push them together to trap the coin. Step 3: wrap tightly with tape. Step 4: Turn on the machine. Now for the fun part (the experiment is so crazy, it's like sme cartoon you might see with an Albert Einstein character). Andy put a heavy duty steel tube over the top of the coin and wire. He gave me some big ear protection head phones, watched the needle on the machine, then gave me the all clear sign while everyone else stood back. I pulled a string and the coil exploded like a gun shot. There was a white flash and when Andy removed the cap from the tube, there was smoke coming out of the top. Andy carefully removed the tube and found the shrunken coin and the bits of wire, which had been blown to pieces during the process. When he removed the coin, it had shrunk!

Slightly deformed and shrunken quarter

Before bed, Andy took Dex and Kylie downstairs to show off his home made robots and 3D printer. They were totally stoked to get their own freshly printed rumble bugs. A good day indeed.