Kingfisher Tour February 2025

post by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2025-02-27T02:20:04.988Z · LW · GW · 0 comments

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Last week Kingfisher went on tour with Alex Deis-Lauby calling. Similar plan to last year: February break week, rented minivan, same caller, many of the same dances and hosts.

This time our first dance was Baltimore, and while it's possible to drive from Boston to Baltimore in one day and then play a dance, we decided to be a bit more relaxed and do it over two. We also decided to repeat what worked well during our summer tour and stop interesting places.

Tuesday we stopped to go sledding:

This is Henry Park in CT, which was nice and steep with a big flat area at the bottom. It was so icy that you couldn't get back up the hill without walking in the existing footprints:

The ice also made for very fast sledding, though possibly a little too fast: while no one got hurt it was much harder to steer and stop than usual. We also ended up making a hole in the sled:

This was the only time all trip we ended up using the sled, but minivans are big and the sled is light. It actually ended up acting a bit like a drawer, where I put a bunch of light things on the sled and it was easy to get in and out.

Building on our success last time with the miCARwave we also brought a toasCAR:

Warm tatertots with sour cream on a cold day are pretty great!

The inverter died in my lead acid setup, and modern lithium batteries with built-in electronics have gotten cheap enough that I little while ago I got a Anker SOLIX C1000. Much lighter, and probably more reliable too. With its solar input functionality I think it could even be used for emergency residential jury rigging. Here is is powering the toaster at 1,272W:

We spent Tuesday night visiting my aunt in Philly, and the next morning Lily and I went to the Franklin Institute (Philly's science museum). Here's Lily in the enormous Baldwin 60000 steam engine:

On the way to Baltimore we stopped at Longwood Gardens, which has two large greenhouses full of flowers:

It was fun to get a bit of summer in February, but even better was the organ. Here's a small section, including an teleoperated piano:

This was probably a bit ambitious, but we were planning to do Baltimore, Asheville, and DC on successive nights. I do think this would've worked, with a lot of driving, but it really depended on clear roads. Unfortunately, we didn't get this: it snowed Wednesday and Thursday along the route, and I don't think it would have been a good idea to make the trip. So after the Baltimore dance (which was great!) we ended up taking a day off.

Thursday we slept in and played Splendor, which Lily and Cecilia had learned at Chattaboogie:

Lily and I spent the evening with DC friends, and the next morning we visited the Udvar-Hazy Center. This is part of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, but is out by Dulles where there's room for a lot more planes. I was especially excited to see the SR-71 Blackbird:

And one of a very small number of planes from a flying aircraft carrier:

Also Apollo 11's Mobile Quarantine Facility, for isolating returning astronauts in case they'd acquired lunar pathogens:

I like this, as an example of people taking low-probability high-consequence risks seriously, though even given the science of the time I suspect it wasn't actually worth it?

After lunch Lily continued to be full of energy, and wanted to see big things she'd heard about. So we went downtown to see the Washington Monument:

Lily found the White House very unimpressive, and thought the design of the Treasury Building was much better:

That evening we played Glen Echo, which as an unheated building in February was super cold, even with radiant heaters:

It was definitely hard to play as well as we wanted to, given the temperature, but I think we still did pretty well and the dancers seemed to be having a good time!

Lily fell asleep in the keyboard case:

Saturday we stopped at Indian Echo Caverns, a cave outside Harrisburg. Here's some interesting flowstone:

And a small pool:

Whenever I visit a cave, I get a story like: "A very long time ago, someone thought they could make a lot of money showing people this cave. They came in and did some horrible things to make it more suitable for tours: blasting to make passages, larger, removing rock formations that impeded access, flattening floors by adding gravel or removing rock, etc. Then they went bankrupt, and, possibly after a few changes of ownership, we ended up running this place. We are good stewards of this wonderful place and would never harm it like they did." Except, without whatever that long-ago person did we would all be having a much worse experience of the cave, if it were even commercially practical to display it.

Above ground, we got to help feed the animals, including alpacas:

That evening we played Bethlehem, which was really nice. There are still a bunch of folks I remember from when we used to drive up there from Swarthmore, nearly two decades ago. They also fed us dinner before the dance, which is even better than portable heating equipment in a car!

Lily really wanted to see the Statue of Liberty, so we decided to take the Staten Island Ferry round-trip before heading into Brooklyn to play our last dance of the tour. We parked at the Staten Island end, which was free on Sunday. It was super windy on the boat:

We wore our snowpants, which was an excellent decision: despite the wind, we were plenty warm.

On the Manhattan side we explored Battery Park a bit, and enjoyed the horizontal climbing wall:

There was also a slide that did well at being long and fast, but not at minimizing jerk. In a way that kids are quite resilient to but I did not enjoy.

After riding back to Staten Island we drove to the Brooklyn dance, which was great as always. As an early dance we were able to drive home that night, and I was in my own bed by 1am!

Travel expenses were $626.69 for the rental (including a flat $75 for tolls which I think was money-losing for Hertz) and $151 for gas, split four ways. Housing was free (thanks to our wonderful hosts!) and food was similar to what we would have spent at home (grocery store food). We made $904/each in pay, plus $122/each in CDs (we also sold four shirts, but materials costs are way higher, netting only a few dollars per shirt).

I'm glad we went, though I'm still sad Asheville didn't work out!

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