The Think Tank

A couple of years ago I made a skeleton that sits up out of a coffin in the yard and yells at unsuspecting trick or treaters.  I used a wireless remote that we use for Christmas lights later in the year and I used the soundboard from a cheap halloween prop to power his voice.

The wireless remote worked perfectly in every trial I put it through, but became very sketchy both years at the height of Halloween night: half the time it would not pop up, and when it did it often did not play the audio like it was supposed to.   My theory for the two problems are these: I think the wireless remotes are getting interference from lots of cell phones in the vicinity, and the voicebox I rigged up was always pretty hokey and needed redoing.

(continue reading…)

We’ve been busy busy busy!  As always I am behind schedule but all in all I am doing pretty well.  We managed to get the vast bulk of the outside decorating done over the weekend, leaving only the spiderwebs (which we usually wait to do in deference to the weather) and the building of new projects and repairing/updating of the new Voicebox for the Coffin Popper and the continuous fog machines, and the construction of the new crypt I want to build.

Full photos are available at thinktankgallery.com and will be updated as I get the new pics taken.

This weekend was the Great Pumpkin Snatch of ’09!  We went with the Janes and their neighbors out by Champoeg park to a field owned by the same people we have been getting our pumpkins from for 10-12 years now, and what a day for it!  About 70 degrees and bright and sunny, this was without a doubt one of the best pumpkin hunting trips we have ever taken.

We finished up with about 1/2 ton of pumpkins, which is a ridiculous amount but is in fact about half of what we hauled out of there last year.

The hunting itself took only about and hour, and then it was back down to the little shack to pick up some produce while I took pictures of a bicycle event that was taking place, headquartered across the road at Champoeg park.  I really liked the fall colors, the quiet country road and the bicyclers.
(continue reading…)

Tim, Joel and myself took part in the first ever Hood River Harvest Ride, a bike ride through the back roads Around the Hood River / Odell / Parkdale area. There were a total of four loops to choose from and riders could do as many or as few as they wanted to make the ride more challenging. We chose to do the main 28 mile Parkdale loop and 16 mile loop out to Panarama Point and back.

It was a good ride and turned out to be a bit more challenging than any of us had anticipated, but we had a good time nonetheless and I for one would love to do it again next year.

Since I was busy riding I didn’t take any photos, but Aleks took some at the event.  I’ll be posting those as soon as I get them.

You can get all the details after the bump…

(continue reading…)

Well, as always we are a little behind the curve on getting the Halloween preparations started, but at last they have begun!  We started putting up lights and what-not last night, and we should have that finished by tomorrow.   My goal is to get the lights and smaller, easier stuff up by the first of October.  Then I can start putting out the yard decorations and working on the projects I have for this year, namely:

• I need to fix the voice box for the Grave Jumper, since it kept flaking out last year.  I may even change how he works a little bit, so he works in better concert with the crypt I would like to make
• Make a crypt.  I’m thinking it will go at the end of the yard under the apple tree and will hopefully accommodate a floating ghost in the doorway and a perhaps a new and improved Grave Jumper.  I’m thinking maybe he will jump up off a chair or something.
• I want to build a number of poseable PVC skeletons to serve as the base of some props
• Gauntlets and Boots for my costume.
• New and Improved fog chiller for front yard with at least one constant fog machine (possibly requiring the creation of a constant fogger)

That’s probably all I can manage.  We’ll see.  Hopefully I will have enough time to make some more corpsfied hands and faces for some of this stuff as well.  We’ll just have to see how everything pans out.  I’ll try to keep the Halloween page updated as things come together.