Although his birthday is not until tomorrow the family celebrated Nico’s 17th birthday this evening. Jeanine prepared his favorite mac and cheese casserole and Maya baked a yummy flourless chocolate cake which was served with a raspberry sauce and freshly whipped cream. Kyle gave him a bucket of golf balls which were put to immediate use after dinner. Our undulating back yard is non optimal for volleyball or soccer but when it comes to golf it cannot be beat. We essentially have a driving range complete with elevated tee area. Nico is the best golfer in the family and did his best to give Kyle and I some pointers. Earlier today I had breakfast with a former colleague from Sonos who gave me a tour of their new facility in downtown Cambridge. The company is growing by leaps and bounds and the new brick and wood beam facility has a very nice feel to it. While I miss many of the folks at Sonos, I was reminded how much I hated the commute.

Nico is featured in the latest newsletter from SideStix which can be found at this link. It features a photo of him balancing one of his crutches on the other and I asked him to duplicate the feat for a photo of the day. Maya and I put in a few hours on the kayak and completed the most difficult fiberglassing task (inside of the hull).

Brother and sister looking up the top ten smartest dog breeds on Kyle’s new iPhone as dinner conversation turns to the possibility of getting another dog. The possibility of this actually happening, incidentally, is exactly zero.

Maya and Jeanine volunteered at the Concord Fourth of July Picnic in the Park today as face painters. Oddly, in the eight years we have lived here this is the first time we have attended this free, volunteer sponsored event. It features live music, foods of all kinds, a children’s bicycle parade, a hot air balloon, a 5K road race, radar baseball toss, K9 unit drug sniffing dog demonstration, 911 fire house (simulated fire, kids with a real fire hose) and all manner of activities for kids of all ages. Later in the day the family minus Kyle (spending the weekend on Cape Cod with Hannah and her family) attended a Fourth of July party at the home of Tom Metzold, my high school wrestling partner and life long friend. This year there was enough interest to have a 5 team 4v4 volleyball tournament. Nico asked me to join his team with Tom’s son Evan and his friend. Nico has mad volleyball skills and I thoroughly enjoyed playing with him. Our team played five matches and prevailed as champion defeating a quad of young bucks who thought they were going to dominate the team with the old guy on it. Very satisfying win and entirely enjoyable day with an old friend, pictured here chatting with Nico. Tom and Karen have a lovely home in Westwood where they are joined by family and friends every year for a celebration that includes swimming, soccer, volleyball, delicious foods, and a fireworks show that rivals some small towns. This year there was enough interest to have a 5 team 4v4 volleyball tournament. Nico asked me to join his team with Tom’s son Evan and his friend. Nico has mad volleyball skills and I thoroughly enjoyed playing with him. Our team played five matches and prevailed as champion defeating a quad of young bucks who thought they were going to dominate the team with the old guy on it. Very satisfying win and entirely enjoyable day with an old friend, pictured here chatting with Nico.

I spent 14 hours working on the kayak today. It has been a long time since I did so much manual labor and my hands and arms are extremely sore. Progress has been rapid and the deck is starting to take shape. Maya continues to be a great help and we are pushing to complete as much of the boat as possible before she leaves to visit her cousins in Minnesota next weekend. Jeanine returned yesterday from her writing retreat to Vermont and was looking very relaxed.

The electronic containment fence which keeps Nala in the yard has a break in the wire which circumscribes her roaming territory. We were not aware that the technician who came earlier in the week had left the system off after he was unable to complete the repairs. It took two days for Nala to figure out she was a free dog and seized the opportunity to roam the neighborhood. Fortunately a friend spotted her and was able to secure her until Kyle was able to retrieve her. She is now secured to the end of a long rope (pictured here although difficult to see) and it is quite obvious to us that she does not appreciate this new arrangement. I have ordered a wireless system which we will test later next week. Hopefully it will work as advertised and we will no longer have to deal with repairing the buried wire on which our current system depends.

Jeanine’s roses are in full bloom giving both us and the local Japanese Beatles great enjoyment.

We received this photo today of Nicolai and SideStix co-founders Sarah and Kerith with their niece. Nico reports that he is having a great time and we are looking forward to more details when he returns. He tried and had success with an adaptive bicycle about which he was quite excited until he learned the price tag was $7,000. Hopefully he will discover more new adaptive technologies and make many connections for the future.

Jeanine left yesterday for the mountains of Vermont to spend a few days working on her writing at the ski cabin of a friend. When she returns on Friday I hope to add one of her photos to this post. Nico arrived safely in Winter Park, Colorado and will be attending the No Barriers Summit with the founders of SideStix. Every couple years the No Barriers Summit brings together adventurers and outdoor enthusiasts as well as scientists and innovators for an outdoor summit for the physically challenged. It combines hands-on clinics, product demonstrations, nature excursions, films, art and music, keynote addresses, leadership exercises and a scientific symposium. Back in Concord, Kyle is busy with his landscaping business and Maya attended dance camp (ballet and jazz). I had a busy day at work but found time for a lunch time walk on which I encountered this very photogenic motorcycle.

I pass through Concord Center twice every work day. On Fridays a large group of parishioners from First Parish march around the flag pole in support of those who suffer due to war. Every other day there is a kook waiving at drivers and holding an Impeach Obama sign. Today, I noticed a wood ladder strapped to the flag pole and looked up to see this painter going about his business. In this day and age of bucket trucks I was very surprised to see such a rudimentary approach to this very dangerous looking job.

Nico leaves tomorrow for Colorado where he is doing a one week internship with SideStix, the company that manufactures his forearm crutches. Nico has been a beta tester for their new crutch designs and has successfully broken every part at one time or another (handle support, articulating foot, cuff retainer, shaft, and handle grip) through his normal (extremely active) use of the crutches. Each time they improve the design until it is, using their phrase, Nico Proof. During a soccer game this weekend, Nico broke the cuff support on one of his crutches rendering it completely unusable. Sending him to Colorado on a competitors crutches was not an option so this evening I devised a very clever repair. I inserted a large headed screw into the crutch shaft, drilled a couple of holes in the retainer (to create little wells) and filled the entire cavity with epoxy. Even though the epoxy does not bind to the retainer material it fills the wells and surrounds the screw to make a very strong mechanical retainer. Hopefully this will be good enough to get him to his destination where the failed component can be replaced.

This evening we enjoyed a family outing to Faneuil Hall where we dined at Quincy Market’s MMMac & Cheese (they use Cavatappi pasta and a yummy blend of cheeses for an out of this world comfort food experience). We also took in a very entertaining street performance by the Red Trousers. Jeanine and Maya can be found in the background admiring this feat of strength and balance which was nothing compared to the humor of these two characters. Earlier in the day I survived the first half of our playoff finals before my injured quad/groin gave out completely. Although I was operating at half speed and could only kick with my left foot, I did contribute to our first goal when I crashed into the keeper on a 50/50 ball which squirted out towards the net. A defender used his hand to stop the ball and we scored on the resulting penalty kick. They equalized shortly before the end of the half knotting the score at 1-1. With 35 minutes left to play one of our players was given a red card (ejected) on a ridiculous call by a control freak referee who had no business officiating a league finals match. We had to finish the match with 10 players to their eleven and with no remaining subs to their 8. It was only a matter of time before they secured the winning goal. A disappointing end to an otherwise brilliant season. Thankfully I now have some time to heal from my accumulated injuries.

Maya and I made great progress on her kayak today. Strips of 1/4 inch plywood are stitched together with narrow steel wires to form the shape of the hull. We drill holes into adjacent panels, Maya threads the wire through the holes and I twist them tight, first with my fingers and then with a set of pliers. My fingertips are raw after several hundred iterations of this tedious procedure. Once the final shape has emerged we go back and adjust the wires until we get a straight keel line and just the right contours. Tomorrow we will epoxy the joints after which the wire stitches will come out. Spending time with Maya on this project is reward enough for the effort and I enjoy watching her problem solving like a true engineer. Both boys also pitched in for a few minutes during a critical step that involved passing several 15 foot strips across my router table.

I modified my home built router table fence in preparation for a beveling operation needed for the kayak project. Half the fun for me in such projects is figuring out how to employ jigs to reduce the amount of manual labor needed or improve the quality of the resulting work. My router table fence mounts to my table saw top using powerful magnets and is equipped with a wood dust/chip collector that couples into my shop dust collection system through the saw.