Tag: feats of engineering

Here’s a zip line update for all of you who have asked about it.  You may remember last week we showed you John’s improved zip line (see here if you missed it).  Well the neighborhood kids decided they wanted to see how fast they could go.  Wow!  It helps to be a gymnast.

Starting tomorrow, we’ll have a week-long preview of Gloucester’s first Blues Festival on August 11.  We’re all hoping this will become a tradition as Gloucester welcomes some of the world’s best Blues musicians to Stage Fort Park.  Stay tuned for some great music and video of blues musicians young and old.

There’s music going on right now all over town (11 choices today and tonight).   If you missed Orville Giddings last Thursday or Allen Estes last Sunday, you can see them together tonight at the Rhumbline — and that’s a great show!   Check out the full Sunday music lineup here.

Last Sunday we showed you a video of our son’s homemade zip line built with stuff found in the garage.  He used a PVC elbow in place of a pulley because we didn’t have one.

As the week went on, friction cut a ridge in the PVC, slowing down the zip.  John noticed that it worked better in the rain (yes, moms, neither he nor his friends care about being out in the rain).

Finally, he started nagging us to get a pulley and on Friday after school we stopped at the Building Center and bought a good, strong one.  He offered to buy it with his money (earned from working various jobs) but we figured he deserved this one on us since he’d engineered the whole thing, witnessed first hand the effects of friction and figured a pulley would solve the problem.

There’s simply nothing like hands-on experiment and experience to spark a child’s thrill of discovery and inspire his quest for the best!  Here’s a video of the first zip line so you can see the improvement:

This experience also offered a chance to overcome his fear.  The first run on both zip lines was terrifying.  He simply didn’t know what would happen.  It took real courage to take those first leaps off the ladder.  Congratulations John!

Plenty of true Gloucester sounds tonight from Sea Shanteys to Bandit Kings.  Check out the music lineup here.

Well we don’t usually like to brag about our super talented son 🙂 but today we will.  Not only did he come up with the idea, design and test this zip line himself, he even gave us credit for the tiny amount of work we did, which consisted of getting the rope up in the tree and tightening it enough to work.

Some people think of Sunday as a slow entertainment day, but not on Cape Ann.  There’s music playing RIGHT NOW and it will continue through the night.  Nine events to choose from.  Check it out here.