Date: March 11, 2007
Total hours spent today: 8

What a totally crazy day this turned out to be. If you refer to yesterdays blog entry, you'll notice that i worked all night. Well, I continued working all day today also. All told, I was awake for something like 37 hours, and all of it R2 related. Man, the things I do for this little droid!!

I glued in a few magnets behind the skins so that the magnetized restraining bolt would stay on. This was a little idea I got from a friend, and it worked like a charm. (you know, that expression always confused me. Just how do "charms" work??)

I also glued back into place a door on the back skins. I removed this to put hinges on it to allow for access. But then when I put the skins on, I noticed that the door doesn't really open all the way, as it is blocked by the leg. That, and the hinges were kind of in the wrong place, so I decided to just seal it up. It's a little messy, but it works good.

I also cut a plate of PVC to sit on the back of the frame. This is the perfect surface to mount electronics to that I might need easy access to. Probably unnecessary, but it was something to pass the time.

So that was about it for building. By this time, it was about noon, and it was time to hit the road. I loaded R2 up into my car, which interestingly enough was dubbed "the Sandcrawler" years ago by my good friend Bill Fischer. Very prescient, considering its finally earning its namesake by transporting a droid. Though the drive from San Francisco to Orange County could never be referred to as "The Jundland Wastes", it certainly does present its fair share of challenges.

There's baby R2 sitting on the top of the comforter, and there's even a reflection of Matt Munson in the car.

Here's the lovely couple now, all sealed up and ready for the ride.

It was a pretty uneventful drive down to Orange County, but it was peppered with fascinated fellow travellers who really freaked out when they saw R2 riding shotgun. A good time.

I finally got back to OC later on in the day (notice that I do not call it "The OC". That's because any self respecting souther Californianer would NEVER refer to it that way. Don't start!!!) and spent lots of time getting R2 into the garage and cleaned up. I made it to be a couple of hours later. All told, the day started at 11:00 AM on the 10th, and ended at about 8:00 PM on the 11th. Jack Bauer, eat your heart out.