Upcoming events

Here's what I know about that's coming up that may be of interest
to the N.E. locals.
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Mike Dabrowski wants to hold a smallish hybrid gathering at his place
in Connecticut. He's got a page up about it here. If you haven't
seen his shop space and garage/outbuilding bulging with various
inventions and parts, it's worth a visit! He's the resident guru
on the Honda Insight, and you could see where MIMA was born.
This would be the weekend of Aug 25-26, depending on which day
has the best weather.
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In September, of course, there's Altwheels, Sep 28 and 29 [yes,
that's friday/saturday, not saturday/sunday]. I'll be part of an
effort to retain some good solid technical content, where instead
the show seems to be moving in more of a "festival" or family-fun
direction. Apparently the technical and environmental talks they
tried to hold at Museum of Science last year were very poorly
attended, so they gave up. But while City Hall Plaza in the middle
of Boston isn't a place where a bunch of cars could just drive in
for a gathering, it's a good opportunity to come out and say hello
and get info on all kinds of other energy and transportation and
city-infrastructure stuff.
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The week before Altwheels I'm probably heading out to Pennsyltucky
to be part of the MAREA Renewable Energy & Sustainable living
festival. That promises to be a fun little camping trip, as I'm told
that the fairgrounds has a camping area and several of those present
will simply overnight right there on-site.
.
Any of these could present opportunities for more prius/hybrid
meetups and road trips this summer...
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_H*

 

Bump. Mike's gathering is next weekend. From this far out the
weather's looking slightly iffy, but we've got pop-up tents and
a couple of places to pull in out of the weather and could probably
do a couple of EV or EBH installs while we're at it. Anyone game?
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Problem is that posts like this rapidly get buried under all the
chaff flying around in Fred's and the like...
.
_H*

 

Well, the weekend was a lot of fun. My high [or was it low?] point
was changing the tranny fluid in what has to be THE highest-distance
Prius on the road right now -- Andrew Grant's got nothin' on this
guy. Webpage about it all is here. I spent much of the actual
meetup day tooling around on the roads with people, so didn't get
too many pix of that. But attendance was pretty good, even with the
mildly threatening weather! There's hope for New England social
consciousness yet!
.
I'm thinking about doing an "impulse" day-trip up into NH sometime
this week -- maybe a big loop including the Kankamangus, just to go
see some mountains and stuff. Anyone got days off this week? Some
of these local activities really oughta involve *driving* somewhere!
.
_H*

 

Today's loop is here. Conway isn't shown by name, but it's at the
eastern end of that little bump at the top right. I actually didn't
go through Conway, but took a little shortcut just before it called
Bald Hill Road and popped out on the Kancamagus to head west. Just
after Livermore some really impressive thunderstorms rolled in, and
it was *blasting* rain from about Lincoln to Plymouth after which
I just got on 93 and hightailed it the heck out of the storm's path.
Started showing 64.2 mpg, returned home showing 64.4, but of course
it was all over the place in between. Topped out the battery twice.
.
The big green arrow shows that yes, there is indeed a town called
Podunk, in VT. That might make another nice road-trip target.
.
I don't know what I'm doing Labor Day yet...
.
_H*