First Time Riding Reagan

Today after work Noah and I left the office and headed to Reagan Park in Medina.  I've never been there before and often thought about making a visit.  Noah, proud new owner of a Trek dual sport bike, had ridden some of the trails.

Noah on the Huffman Trail.

We rode the Huffman Trail first, it was ridden in and dry.  There were plenty of twists and corners but not much in the way of rocks or roots.  With the Paragon awaiting fork service I was on the Karate Monkey.  I quickly realized this was going to be fun riding on the quick handling Monkey.

Creepy tree on the Annex Trail.

The Huffman Trail connected us to the Annex Trail and the Annex Trail connected to the River Trail.  This is where things got interesting.  It was not so obvious how these trails went together and the few trail markings I saw were more confusing than helpful.  No big deal, we had fun finding our way.  It's less than 3 miles of trail in these two loops so a wrong turn or backtrack here or there is of little penalty.  I'm sure it makes better sense after several rides.

Noah pedaling hard out of a corner on the Reagan Park Trail.

It took a couple tries but we found the trail to cross the road and deliver us to the Reagan Park Trail loop.  The trail direction was obvious for a while but there were a couple confusing intersections.  Mostly there was more dry, dusty conditions with plenty of curves.  An occasional, short uphill or downhill kept it interesting but there were certainly no climbs.

Somewhere along the way, after I repeated a particularly curvy section of trail for the fun of it, I had Noah board the Karate Monkey.  I think he liked it as he took off and tore around on it pretty good.  Meanwhile I rode his dual sport and tried to not to crunch myself on a bike with saddle 2" too high for me.

I think it was Ray from Ray's Indoor Mountain Bike Park.

Back to our vehicles the bikes were covered in dust.  It's not like mud where you have some clumps in the expected places, it was solid dust over the whole bike.  I can say there is some fun to be had at Reagan Park and having a little better idea of how the trails link together will make it more straight forward next time!

Back on Campus

Ten years later I made it back to campus.  Noah and I went to represent the company at a career fair.  We arrived the night before and had some time to walk around campus in the dark.  After the career fair the next day, where we met some solid students, we had another walk including a visit to the ol' engineering building.

Found some bikes in the dark.

 

 The meeting and proposing place for KT and I.

It was nice to see the campus and meetup with some of the faculty again.  I realized how much I under-appreciated the courtesy, cleanliness, and professionalism of Northern when I was a student.  The efforts of the faculty and staff really showed in the students we met, plus the students are a notch above your typical college student.

I remember an engineering professor who rode to work

everyday.  I'm 99% certain this is his new ride.  Nice!

At some point in our visit we drove down Main Street to find the houses me and the guys lived in our last two years.  Well, we must have been hard on them...

The former location of 911 & 915 S. Main.  Lots of fun

was had where these empty lots now stand.

Noah's Speakers

Last fall Noah, buddy from work, and I decided to build a pair of small, single driver, desktop speakers.  In the past I have built numerous subwoofers, a nice set of towers, and a similar pair of single driver, tiny speakers.


For the driver we chose a Tang Band W3-1053SC from Parts Express, it's a 3" full-range speaker.  Noah designed a vented enclosure with internal dimensions of 4" x 4" x 13" and a 1" x 3" port.  The enclosure is made of 1/2" MDF.  A 500uF NPE capacitor is wired in series with the driver to attenuate low frequencies that would not play nice with the small speaker.

Half a year later, I finally finished the speakers and gave them to Noah.  Here's a look at the project:

Almost finished... soldering terminal cups to the

Tang Band full range drivers.

The finished speakers.  Noah picked a

slate blue paint for the cabinets.

Port and driver on the front, terminal cup on the back.

How do they sound?  We've only listened to them once so far and that was in a less than optimal setup, prior to the speakers having any break in time.  First impressions were good.  Noah played a piano only track that was very clear and detailed to my ears.  I think the lower frequency response will improve as the speakers break in, but they are showing potential to play lower than their size would suggest.  I look forward to listening to them more!