With Superpedestrian’s CEO on the road, responsibility for hosting visitors from a Japanese company fell to me.  We encourage all of our guests to take a quick ride before getting down to business. Nothing beats working on a product that is guaranteed to generate smiles.  It is the universal reaction to your first ride on a Copenhagen Wheel, an experience that transcends languages and culture.

I opted for a healthy lunch today which took me to the salad bar at Whole Foods rather than on my usual trek to the calorically challenged restaurants of Central Square. On the way back I took a shortcut through Alberico Park where I encountered this unique play structure.

While out shopping for nacho ingredients, I drove past a couple of interesting sights worthy of a quick photo.  The chair on frozen pond is not very strong aesthetically, but I found myself wondering why it was there and trying to determine how long before the ice supporting it melts away. I may have to check up on it every couple of days to find out what happens.

I am not known for my cooking prowess and living with a veritable Top Chef does not add to my courage for experimentation. Today, however, I was determined that we should have nachos while watching the Superbowl.  With a small amount of coaching, I managed an edible, if not tasty result.  I was particularly pleased with the uniformity of the cheese distribution.

Verrill Farms sponsored a pancake breakfast to benefit research for ovarian cancer.  The mother of one of their employees is battling the disease.  One of my sisters is an ovarian cancer survivor and we were happy to support the cause with a donation in her name.

I took a half-day road trip today for the express purpose of photography hoping that the combination of light snow from last night and the forecasted sunshine would provide some good opportunities. Above is Mount Monadnock with Mountain Brook Reservoir in the foreground. Below is Doane’s Falls in Royalston.  There was a better angle to be had closer to the water but in a rare moment of thoughtful risk analysis, I determined that any attempt to traverse the ice-covered stones would end very badly. The last image is of he Cathedral of the Pines, a nationally recognized memorial dedicated to the memory and honor of all Americans who serve the nation in search of peace.

Temperatures this morning were just above freezing which felt like a veritable warm spell and motivated me to get out for a 4-mile walk after breakfast. The sounds of demolition brought me to MIT’s four-story West Garage which is being razed to make room for a new undergraduate residence hall. Not exactly clear to me how you make up for the loss of 370 parking spaces in a part of town where people already guard their parking spots with lawn chairs and traffic cones.

A very busy day at work started with a visit to a battery pack manufacturer in Billerica followed by my first all-hands Engineering meeting which went very well. By late afternoon I was helping out with photography for a set of instructions on how to replace the rim on our Copenhagen Wheel and then a meeting to prepare for a job fair we will be participating in at Harvard next week. Before I knew it the day was over and I was on my way home. One of the things I enjoy most about working at a startup is the number of different hats you get to wear.

Unfortunately, we on the East Coast only got to witness two of the three attributes of this evening’s super blue blood moon. It set just before starting to be eclipsed which would have produced the blood (red tint) feature. We did get super (the closest orbit to the Earth making it visibly larger and brighter) and blue (the second full moon in a calendar month). I shot this handheld from our farmer’s porch while shivering in my bathrobe which speaks well of the image stabilizer system of my lens and camera.

This replica of Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond reminds us that the tiny house movement is not a new thing. I passed by it on my way to the dentist this morning and paused for a quick photo.  Had I lingered to enjoy the setting and perhaps a lap around the pond, I would have missed my appointment and the discovery of two broken fillings and one broken tooth which will need to be addressed next week.

For the second time this week, it was necessary to relocate the tiny house. This time because it was blocking a window used for loading hay into the horse barn next to which it currently resides.  The hour-long process to move it less than 20 feet was nerve-racking but ultimately successful.  We are hoping that Olin College will agree to Maya’s request to store it on campus so that she can complete the interior construction as part of an independent study.  The design of multi-purpose, space-efficient furniture and storage space would be a perfect project for any mechanical engineering student.

For some time now, Jeanine and I have been taking turns at what we call “mystery date.”  Each of us gets to choose a date activity which remains a secret from the other until the last minute. Today I sprung a multi-part date that started with breakfast at the Clover Food Lab in Cambridge followed by a scavenger hunt/walking tour of historic Boston (www.urbanadventurequest.com), a tour of Superpedestrian headquarters, a visit to REI to purchase a warm winter coat for Jeanine, and a late lunch/early dinner at Seta’s Cafe in Belmont.  The scavenger hunt was very entertaining for both of us and we completed the tour in 2hrs15min with a score of 520 of a possible 525, good enough to place us atop the 30-day leader board for Boston.

Maya shared this photo, part of a team project she is working on for a course in entrepreneurship called Products and Markets. Their first assignment was to create value from Post-It Notes. Her team has created shadow templates of iconic images (women’s marches, in the case above), and projected them onto campus buildings to provoke discussions about current affairs. She says it has become more of a social action artistic endeavor than an actual product development but it sounds like a fantastic outcome to me and I am delighted she is having these types of learning experiences.
 

One of only two remaining advertising signs of its type in the area, the other being the Citgo sign in Boston, I pass this Shell sign when I return from work late at night. Located adjacent to Memorial Drive since 1944, it was built in 1933 and originally located on the Shell Company building on Commonwealth Avenue. In 2001 it was on the verge of collapse and looked like HELL (the “S” lamps had burned out). In 2005 it was turned off for good. After two failed attempts, the Cambridge Historical Commission eventually designated the sign a Cambridge landmark and in 2011, a replica, built using LED technology instead of neon and incandescent bulbs, replaced the original and has been enjoyed by all but its closest neighbors since.

After much preparation and several weather-related delays (deep snow on one occasion, black-iced roads on another) Maya’s tiny house finally left our driveway on its maiden voyage late this evening. The driver I hired on Craig’s List proved to be very capable and expertly backed the trailer into a very tight spot located next to a barn on a nearby farm. Not shown in the picture (which was taken the day after) is a truck that blocked access to the road. Had I rented a truck to drive myself, as was the plan at one point, I am certain I would not have been skilled enough to thread the trailer into this spot. The tiny house will live her through the end of May when we plan to move it to a more permanent location.