Here's this week's "Engineering Challenge"!

Below is the top view of the proposed treehouse platform. It's 8' X 16', and will be nestled between 5 trunks.



How can I suspend the platform via chain by four connection points, and have it "float" between the trunks, without touching any of them? The four chains will connect to the platform via one of the bolts that connect the cross members. The four connection points will not be a constant distance from the trunks, due to the trunk placement. The other end of the chain will be attached to the tree at any necessary angle.

The simplest solution would seem to be to have the chains run almost parallel to the ground. Then it seems to me that it would only be a matter of tightening and loosening the turnbuckles to get the desired orientation of the frame. However, trees are going to be a lot stronger in the vertical direction, so I'm nervous that this could pull the trunks together as the treehouse gets built and becomes heavier. Plus, I'll need a little vertical slack, so that as the tree trunks move independently in the wind, the treehouse can raise or lower to take up the slack. If all trunks moved outward at the same time, the treehouse would need to be able to rise a bit.

At the other extreme, I could hang all chains nearly vertically. I think this would make centering the frame between the trunks a lot more complicated, since all chains would be at slightly different angles, which I believe would cause the frame to want to twist unpredictably. Also, this would allow the treehouse to swing back and forth a lot more easily, which doesn't seem preferable.

Any ideas? I suspect that this is a non trivial problem, especially given the organic nature of the tree trunk spacing. If they were all equal distance apart, and I used the exact same angle for all four chains in both dimensions, it would work. Is this a hopeless problem to solve? Should I just moor one corner of the platform to the trunk, and let the other three corners float?

Any suggestions or comments are welcome!

Our garden has entered it's senior era. The peas, lettus, and cilantro are pretty well done. The cukes are finally slowing down. However, our carrots, onions, perppers, and tomatos are starting to ripen up.

All our carrots so far are a little funky looking. We don't think the ground was tilled very deeply, as our carrots are always about 4 inches tall. They taste good, so we're not complaining.

We did a lot of running last week, starting with a 4 mile time trial on Tuesday. We survived that, and then did a 13.2 mile run on Saturday. We barely survived that, and got to run in the rain a bit. I made a bad route decision, and we ended up running along a road with too much traffic. Luckily that was only for a few miles.

We went and saw "Little Miss Sunshine" on Friday which was a hoot. I was hoping to see "The Descent", a horror flick about caving that got good reviews, but we apparently missed it by a day.

Sunday consisted of making large quantities of Potato Salad for a BBQ in the afternoon. 10 pounds of potatos dedicated their lives to the project. We ended up with about 5 pounds of leftovers, lesson learned.

I'm pointing my brain back toward treehouse thoughts, since the time is nearing to head back to Indiana. I've sent off some drawings to Dad for review, and will probably fire Becky & Jason off an e-mail with a few mech-e questions that I can't quite think through.

Busy end of week, slow weekend.

Kristen and I had a 1 mile race last Thursday. It was called "The Pearl Street Mile", the race was along the Pearl Street Mall, so there were a lot of onlookers. My friend Morrissey ran it as well, and beat me by 13 seconds. I thought he was behind me, and started really thinking I whooped him as the minutes clicked by. Kristen ran a good race, afterwards we had a beer and dinner on the mall.

Friday we headed up into the local hills to cash in one of Kristen's birthday presents from years past. I'd promised to take her to a murder mystery at an old hotel in Gold Hill, a little old mining town above Boulder. I'd never driven up there before, and we both were getting pretty nervous about the dirt road and sheer cliffs. Not a guard rail in sight. The clouds were rolling in, so we had a very atmospheric beginning for the evening. The murder mystery experience itself was a lot of fun, much more than I expected. Afterwards we went to the bar next door for a beer and people watching. Lot's of fun. I didn't bring a camera, and really regret it.

We stayed at the old Gold Hill Inn. Kristen may or may not have heard a ghost in the middle of the night, but I suspect it was a combination of the alcohol and creepy atmosphere. She did shake me awake pretty sternly in the middle of the night, and was very seriously scared. I kept telling her it made for a better story, but she didn't seem to care.

The rest of the weekend was laid back. I went on a bike ride with a buddy who just got a mountain bike, so we've been exploring a few trails here and there. We're trying to get him ramped up before the season is over, but the end is approaching rapidly. We're going to try one ambitious trail before the end of October, but haven't selected one yet.

Since I have no relevant pictures to post, here's one of Zack, who hasn't been feeling too well lately. His eyes strike me as "Fishing Lure Green" in this picture.

This last weekend was one of the slowest of the summer. Kristen's sister Katie was in town a bit, and we went on an 11 mile run Saturday morning. The rest of the weekend was basically a chance to recover. Not much to report, just lots of napping and sleeping in.

We've had a non-running week. After the brutal run last weekend, we haven't felt much like running. It was supposed to be a "recovery week", and if by recovery they meant "eat a lot, and don't exercise much", then we nailed it.

The garden has been producing more and more food. We have more cucumbers and tomatoes than we can eat. I'm hoping to hand a bunch off to co-workers, but haven't done that yet. We're getting sick of salads, so we're trying to find other ways to consume the produce.

Friday we went on a bike ride in the mountains with a bunch of co-workers. The trail was a bit more technical than Kristen was ready for, she took a pretty good tumble down a slope, with the bike smacking her in the head a few times on the way down. She survived, although she was a bit scraped up.

Saturday we attended a Wagner reunion. Lot's of people that Kristen barely recognized. I seemed to be a magnet for conversation for anyone over the age of 60. We heard some great stories about farm life in Colorado in the 40's.

Kristen and I kept fairly busy this weekend. Saturday morning was our big 12 mile run. We did four laps of three miles, with a four minute rest in between. Kristen made three of the four laps, I managed to make all four. We're both still a bit sore from the experience. Something strange is going on with one of my feet, I'm hoping it'll clear up in the next couple of days.

We ate a big lunch, and took a long nap. Then we headed down to Denver to catch up with Kristen's sister Katie and her boyfriend Jordan. We thought we'd rented a room at the same hotel they did, it turned out we were at a different Hyatt, 3 blocks away. We were right next to the 16th street mall, so the location was good.

We walked down to Coors Field to watch a Rockies game. The game was relatively close, we lost by two points, but we still had a lot of fun.



Later on, we met up with my friend Morrissey, who happened to be in a wedding that was at the same hotel we were at. So we stayed up until the early hours being social and drinking. Kristen broke out some of here amazing "Footloose" dance moves I didn't know she had.

Sunday we took as a recovery day. Not only from the late night, but from the run the day before. It was a scorcher, so it was good to stay inside, laying around the house.

Another relaxing weekend has passed. Saturday we had a big 9 mile run. Both Kristen and I had been dreading it all week, but it turned out to be a lot more enjoyable than we expected. It was in south east Boulder, on a beautiful bike path I didn't know existed. I had a few moments of feeling like a true Boulderite, exercising hard early in the morning on a weekend, beautiful weather, and a beautiful view of the Flatirons.

Afterwards we headed to Moe's bagels for breakfast, and picked up an order of some REI gear, to continue a very Boulder day. We took it fairly easy for the rest of the day, since we didn't know how our bodies would react to that much exercise. A nap was involved.

Today we headed to Lyons to check out their "Sculpture Hike". The "sculptures" varied in quality, some were pretty bad, but we still had fun. Here's a picture of me imitating Jason's blank stare talent.

At one point the guide book told us to walk past the "Blue Snake". We assume they meant this, which looks a lot like a blue bicycle rack.

Our garden is really starting to produce produce (heh). Our salads tonight had lettuce, cukes, carrots, chives, cilantro, broccoli, peas, cherry tomatoes, and radishes all from the garden. For a while the salads were simpler, and we had to wait for the garden to catch up between meals. Now we can't keep up.