I want a used sewing machine. I can’t offer much in the way of money, but perhaps we could work out a trade. (Spud gun? Box kite?) My only requirements are that it is electric (although steam powered would be pretty cool, too), is operated by a foot pedal, features zigzag and reverse stitching, and is not built into a piece of furniture. We already have a machine in a piece of furniture, but it is operated by pressing outward with your knee against a lever. I don’t know about you folks, but my upper legs don’t have incredibly fine motor control. When I tried to use that machine I could manage only two speeds: insanely fast and off. Hence the foot pedal requirement.Interested? Contact me through the normal channels.

Make is my favorite magazine. It’s filled with cool project ideas and stories about people who make amazing things (these people are called “Makers”). I’m thrilled that $30WRC was featured on their blog. Now I just need to come up with a project that will make it into the magazine itself!

In case you haven’t already discovered them (I know that most you check my Flickr pictures daily), a good number of photos from Labor Day’s run down the White River in our junkboat are now posted on Flickr. Just look for all of my photos with the “$30 White River Challenge” tag.

The initial boat building photos appear after the later “on the river” photos because we built the boat a week before we ran the river, and the contruction photos were posted earlier. The comments have a pretty good description of how things went that day.

UPDATE: Jen suggested that I use my third and last Flickr set to organize the photos in the proper order.  She’s a genius.
Randy’s Flickr photos
$30 White River Challenge photoset

Online friend and devoted This or That? player Chris Lohroff asked me today how I manage to raise money for my China trips. I explained that I have never written a support letter, and aside from asking my family to give me trip money rather than Christmas presents that first year, I have never asked people to give me money to fund my trips. A short version of the fund raising story is included in the only Sunday morning sermon I have ever preached. Do to the miracle of modern technology, the sermon is now available for download. I preached it at Faith Community Church in Grayson, Georgia (near Atlanta) on August 28, 2005.

The voice you will hear at the beginning and the end of the recording is that of my old college buddy Pat Hannon, who was the senior pastor. He graciously offered to interject some scripture into the teaching since my sermon had none.

Download Randy’s sermon (8.5MB mp3 format)

I know that you have all been sitting in front of your computers hitting F5 every fifteen seconds to see if I’ve posted any new stuff about yesterday’s junkboat excursion. To that I say, stop wasting your time and just subscribe to the RSS feed!

I will have a full report with photos and director’s commentary coming soon, but since you’re never going to rest without knowing:

1. Yes, we and the boat survived the trip.
2. No, we didn’t make it the whole Muncie-to-Noblesville distance. We made it to Chesterfield after about nine hours.
3. For various reasons, we contemplated changing the boat’s name from “Old Vinylsides” to “Old Leaky”.
4. The end of August is not ideal for canoeing. $30WRC 2008 will probably take place in the spring.

The full story is coming, but I’m so sore I have to type with a pencil held between my teeth. So be patient.

We’ve decided that if we don’t take our trip down the White River tomorrow, we won’t have another chance until October. So please pray for a miraculous rise in the water level so that we don’t have to carry the canoe half the way.

We’ll have a cell phone and a GPS along, so if you want to know our location at any moment, please call us! Adam’s phone is 765-631-2344. Come down to the river and wave as we pass by. It’s fun for the whole family!

Saturday was a fantastically lucky day of dumpster diving. Muncie Tent and Awning kindly left an old Subway Sandwiches vinyl awning in their dumpster, which took a little piecing together, but should make a superb skin.

A giant dumpster next to the railroad tracks contained lots of fiberglass and aluminum railroad crossing drop-arms, featuring the reflective caution stripes. Alas, if we were making a huge boat they would have been fun to use. Instead, we took some 3/4″ plywood pieces that are finding a second life as the cross-sectional formers.

Twenty feet away from Muncie’s old Bob Evans is a brand new Bob Evans under construction, and it yielded two 4′x8′ sheets of 1/4″ Georgia Pacific plywood, held together for some reason by a number of “premium” 2×4 studs. Many of the studs were cut to very sharp angles, and they wound up jutting out of the bow and stern of what now looks like a war canoe. Adam suggested that we use the thin plywood as the floor of the canoe, where as before it was going to be PVC stringers all around the sides and bottom. As a result, we could put more rows of stringers on the sides, making the thing more sturdy.
The only things we’ve had to buy are 11 PVC pipes (1/2″ ID, 7/8″ OD, 10′ long), a wooden curtain rod and a bamboo pole for paddle handles, and a tube of PL Premium construction adhesive. I think we’re up to $25 or so.

We will hopefully be able to run the river in a few weeks. In the mean time, watch my Flickr for more photos from build day.

I hate to disappoint all of you who have set aside your entire Sunday to cheer us on from river banks and overpasses during our trip from Muncie to Noblesville. But the hard truth is that the White River’s water level is simply too low to make the trip. We were hoping that the rains that were forecast for this week would come through, but they haven’t. Adam and I are still going to build our junkboat this weekend, but we will need to make the actual trip later. So if you want to watch the construction, come on over. I’ll let you know the new date for the actual trip as soon as I know what it is.

This weekend, my brother, Adam, and I are going to have a grand adventure. We’re calling it the $30 White River Challenge.

Adam lives in Muncie, and I live in Noblesville. A couple of months ago we noted that both cities lie on the White River, a primary Indiana waterway. We have given ourselves the challenge of building a boat that will carry us from Muncie to Noblesville. We have limited ourselves to using discarded materials (dumpster diving!), along with new materials purchased within a budget of $30.

Our plan is to assemble a canoe-like boat using PVC plumbing pipe as a frame, covering it with watertight plastic sheeting or a tarp.

We will acquire our boat-building materials on Saturday, Aug 25, in Muncie. On Sunday, Aug 26, we will build the boat in the morning and get it on the water as quickly as possible so that we can complete the 50-mile trip before nightfall. Assuming that we complete the trip, we will exit the river at the Logan Street bridge in Noblesville. Watch this space for photos! I’ll post them as soon as I recover enough strength in my arms that I can use a computer again.

On March 1 I got a complaint from a daily This or That? voter that the polls were getting too “froo froo.” He said that he liked polls like “Stalin or Hitler?“, and that ToT was running too many silly polls. I take complaints from my users seriously, so I decided to run a few more serious polls.

I judge a poll by the amount of chatter it generates in the comments. More comments make me think that people enjoy the poll more. Fewer comments mean less interest. Here’s the breakdown:

Serious polls since the complaint:

• George Walker Bush or George Herbert Walker Bush? (5 comments)
• Alone or In a Crowd? (2 comments)
• Doctrine or Dogma? (1 comment (from the person who submitted the idea))
• RIAA or MPAA? (7 comments)

That last one wasn’t terrible. Now let’s look at a few of the sillier polls since the complaint:

• Pancakes or Waffles? (10 comments)
• Pirate or Ninja? (14 comments)
• Dr. Pepper or Mr. PiBB? (7 comments so far–this is today’s poll)

I’m sorry, Mr. Complainer, but it looks like the typical ToT? player doesn’t go for the same polls that you go for.

It made me curious, though. Obviously, I want ToT? to be wildly successful so that I can get rich and retire to Hong Kong. Therefore, I should cater to the types of polls that generate the most comments, right? Here are the top ten commented polls since this thing started a few months ago:

• Smart or Happy? (22)
• Flight or Invisibility? (19)
• Deal or No Deal? (19)
• Overworked or Underpaid? (17)
• Appendix or Tonsils? (15)
• Superman or Batman? (15)
• Pirate or Ninja? (14)
• Scrabble or Monopoly? (14)
• Vietnam or Iraq? (14)
• CDs or iTunes? (12)
• Smart or Happy? (12)
• Lost Ark or Holy Grail? (12)
• Hitch 50 or One Red Paperclip? (12)

(Yes, I know that’s thirteen. But there was a tie for tenth.) There are a few serious ones in there, but mostly they’re silly. And the serious ones are either true dilemmas (Smart or Happy?, Overworked or Underpaid?), or they’re hot-button topics (Vietnam or Iraq?).

What are the least commented polls?

• The Lady or The Tiger? (2)
• Alone or In a Crowd? (2)
• Deaf or Blind? (2; and I thought sure this was a good one!)
• Chicken or Tastes like chicken? (2)
• Smelly or Ugly? (2; the antithesis of Smart or Happy?)
• Caribbean beach or Oregon coast? (2)
• Picasso or van Gogh? (1)
• Heads or Tails? (1; Boring!)
• Peace on Earth or Goodwill to men? (1)

So, what’s the common thread here? What makes a bad poll a bad poll? Uhhh. . .

Incidentally, I have to hand it to the commenters on ToT?. They’ve been very civil so far. I thought sure that there would be blood on the floor after I ran Lassie or Benji?, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Keep the poll ideas coming, kids.