Finally updated!

Alright, I know I haven't updated this since my second day, but give me a break! I've been biking all day, everyday for 25 days.
That excludes rest days.
Today, Friday, July 24th is the 26th day of my trip. It is currently a rest day. I am in Rapid City, South Dakota, and am pretty interested in seeing Mount Rushmore's evening lighting ceremony. I have seen Rushmore a couple of times before. Once during the day, and once during the night. I have never seen the lighting ceremony, however. Every time I see it I think 'Man! I should make something like that!' Unfortunately, even though I think I'm pretty good at coming through with whatever I set out to do, no one would believe that I could do something like that. I guess I'll just have to do it all by myself... :)
Tomorrow I bike to New Castle, Wyoming. It's about 78 miles, and my route goes right past Mt. Rushmore, so I should have a lovely (Albeit difficult) ride out of South Dakota. It's hard to believe I've been in this state for 5 days already! That won't be anything compared to the 8 days spent in Montana I'm sure!
Anyway, until next time!

-Gabriel

Ps. I'm going to try to keep this thing updated better, and hopefully start uploading photos as well!

Second day finished.

I am sitting in my hotel room in Farmville, Virginia after sitting with my legs in ice water for 15 minutes, napping, and then taking a luke-warm shower. I biked about 72 miles today, through the back country roads. It was very very nice ride! Everything was beautiful. Farms, woodlands, plains, fields of corn, and very few dogs chasing me! It was too good to last however, for I came upon a gravel road that I was not expecting, and couldn't ride on it because I put street tires on my bike. After I went through the hubub of putting my bike in the back of a Toyota Camry, I drove on a couple of miles until I found pavement again. I got my bike out, put the front wheel back on, biked around and the corner, and..... More gravel. Oh well.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll have more to share in my video blog in the next few days. Thanks for reading!
-Gabriel

Training continues!

Today I am going to try to bike 40 miles. The day before yesterday I biked 33.7 miles fairly comfortably, excluding the immense heat of course. After that I intend on going to more restaurants and asking for gift card donations to pay for my food on the trip.
Thanks so much to everyone who has sponsored me so far!

Wooden horses and LEDs

Alrighty.
These I made a while back, but I figured they would be interesting pieces.
The first here was an attempt to create a pine chess set. I never finished of course, but here's one of the three pieces I made. I lost the others.

































I first sketched the profile of the horse on a piece of paper, then traced it onto the wood.
I then cut out the basic shape with a band-saw, and rounded everything with a Dremel tool.
Pretty fun... :)

Anyways, this one here is a stage lighting project that is top secret.
The only thing I'm telling is that it's made from LEDs, and is awesome.
There are 198 LEDs to be exact. Each putting out about 2000 MCDs. So it comes out to about 400 Candelas. Not extremely bright, but bright enough.
Here's the pictures:

































Anyways.
Thanks for reading!
-Gabe

Blue Keyboards and PVC Pan Flutes.

Alrighty,
I thought this was an excellent idea. I found this keyboard in the dumpster, and it worked. So I painted it.
Anyways, I'm going to start using it for shows, playing both it and drums at the same time.




































And for the second (and by me, less impressive) project. The PVC pan flute.
It's made from 1/2" PVC tied together with standard hemp.
I tuned it to the key of C, but after adding the end caps, the pitch lower by about a half step.
Anyways, loads of fun. :)












-Gabriel

So so Blue....

This is a painting I did about a month ago. It's called "Blue." Click on it to see the full image, in full quality.

Creativity Blog

This blog will now become basically a blog about the nifty (as I see them) things that I make. :)
Anyways,
Here's a few things that I've made in the not to distant past.
This is a book bag that I made from lawn chair strapping material that I bought from a thrift store about 4 years ago that I never used.
This first photo is before the top edge and straps were added.
This second one is the finished product.
Sorry, I don't have better pictures. These were taken with my cell phone.











The second featured creation for this post is a little treasure chest kinda thing I made for my sister for her birthday. Pine wood with brass hinges and latch.
It was a difficult build, as I didn't have all the appropriate tools. All I had was a jigsaw, miter box, hacksaw, and drill.
I had to cut the angles for the edges with the miter box and hacksaw, which as you can imagine was a large task. Then, after gluing it together, I had to miter the trim that I put around the edges.
The trim you see around the edge of the lid was the most difficult, as I had to cut two different angles on the ends, that were not complimentary or supplementary. Since this was one of the first wood working projects of mine, I didn't know that wood glue wasn't stainable. Therefore, after staining it and seeing all the splotches, I realized I had to sand down the entire thing, remove the surface wood glue, and re-stain it. Then I sprayed the whole thing with Polyurethane. My original intent was to build three of these, but the first was such a project, I've been a little wearisome of trying it again.









Ah, last but not least. A simple project that I did for my band's booth in the NACA and APCA conferences that we go to to get booked at colleges. The CD display. Basically a small display box that holds 5 CDs, a CD player, and a set of headphones. Here basically is a short photo diary of each step of construction.