The first ICE Run of Spring...

Compared to the last two times, this time was a cakewalk.....complete with cake! The cake was for Bredo's Party. We celebrated his 107th Birthday in good style and excellent comraderie!

After picking up the ice in commerce city, I headed towards Nederland. The weather was partly cloudy but temperatures were in the 50s. Up in Ned, it was still pretty warm and I got a really warm reception at the Visitors Center. There were reporters and Festival organizers and Mayors and Construction supervisors and some just plain folk....all there to help Bredo celebrate his Birthday. We all drove in a caravan up to the Institute and this time, I was able to drive all the way in to the Shed, although it definately required a 4-wheel vehicle to traverse the three foot (still) drift at the bottom of the driveway.

Although most of the snow had melted, there were still a few drifts around.

 

So, here's part of the crew checking out the conditions at the Shed. Young Jack was more interested in the surroundings than the Shed...

 

Once the path was opened and the shed door cleared, we were able to get right to work....business before pleasure! There was approximately 80 pounds of block left, with about 210 pounds of pellets and maybe 60 pounds of mass around the sarcophagus giving us about 350 pounds total. Initial temperature reading was a comfortable -85F. We added 1600 pounds to bring up the ice weight to about 1950 pounds. Below is the crew, dumping a half ton of ice...

Everyone at work, including the Iceman and Little Jack.

An interesting observation: Normally, the ice crystals formed in the cryonic chamber are very wide and flat, sometimes reaching the size of quarter, although much thinner. Six sided, much like a snowflake, the crystals are formed when moisture from the outside is sucked into the cryonic chamber and condenses instantly into huge (relatively) crystals in the cryonic temperatures. This time the crystals were unusually long and thin with a squared off termination, like truncated spikes. The crystals themselves appeared to be four sided and small, but built up into long slender spires. In all the years I've been doing this, I've never seen crystals quite like these.

After off loading all the ice, we set out the refreshments...Naturally, we had a frozen ice cream cake, frozen ice cream, and for the non-designated drivers, a slug of frozen Old Grandad over dry ice.....

 

We all trooped inside and closed the door and lit the candles.....

 

We sang Happy birthday to Grandpa Bredo, and when he made his wish and blew out the candles, not all of them went out....

Only the people at Grandpa's Party know how many years it will be til Grandpa gets his wish......

 

 

 

 

Well, the Party went on for a while....the 107th cake was very tasty, but there were only a couple of intrepid souls who opted to try the Millenium Cake from 2001. It wasn't that bad.

Note to self : Although it does make milk cold, dry ice carbonated milk is not all that tasty. Blechhhh.... Not to mention the fact that it makes it froth like a bubble bath! Little Jack got a kick out of it, though...."Ewww...That's gross! Cool!!"

There's something about having Old Grandad over dry ice...with Old Granddad on dry ice....on Grandpa on Dry ice. Old and Cold....that's us.

 

We wrapped it up and locked the place back up until next time.....

Hopefully, another 10 days of reasonable weather will help melt the four foot drift in front of the Institute door in time for the Festival. We will be hosting visiting Cryonicists from around the world at this years get together, and it would be nice to be able to get into the building. The next scheduled visit will be Friday, March 9th when the Smithsonian people will be there. I will probably be looking for volunteers to help shovel snow, so if anyone is interested, they can contact me at ICEMAN-AT-FROZENDEADGUY-DOT-COM (don't address harvesters suck??)

 

Stay tuned for updates on the festival......

 

Bo Shaffer, Chief Cryonicist

International Cryonics Institute