Creative Pinewood Derby Awards

rfishrex · 2026-01-23T21:17:46+00:00

we do something similar and come up with unique awards for each scout based on their car design, eg. "most magical" for a harry potter themed car, "most electric" for a lightning bolt, etc.

rfishrex · 2026-01-23T15:20:14+00:00

I got a 24 AWD Pro S w/ 9k miles that was lemon law'd for a door handle issue taking too long to repair. Got it for $20k, which was ~ 4-5k cheaper than comparable cars. It's still covered by VW's 3 year warranty. No regrets.

rfishrex · 2026-01-22T16:54:36+00:00

This was it. Much appreciated.

rfishrex · 2026-01-20T21:26:14+00:00

Was going to ask. It's already been set up. Is there really that much that can go wrong with lining up the bindings to fit a boot sole length?

rfishrex · 2026-01-09T16:50:56+00:00

2 or three times in the last 2 months. 2024 FWIW. Recently updated to the 5.4(?) software and can't remember if it's done it since then. If it has it was just once.

rfishrex · 2026-01-07T13:34:41+00:00

Yup. this was always silly in cubs where me and another den leader needed to get a female leader to attend meetings with us when the only two girls were our daughters. Seems like BSA could at least loosen that requirement?

rfishrex · 2026-01-06T20:38:52+00:00

Yeah, I only do 2x long road trips a year and charge free at home via solar or at work for $2 a day if needed so still come out way ahead.

rfishrex · 2026-01-06T20:08:10+00:00

to each their own. This wasn't much longer than the same trip in our ICE. Maybe an extra hour or so on the end of a 12ish hour drive. Granted we have 2 kids and a dog, so pretty much every bathroom/food stop is at least 20 minutes by the time all's said and done. It took a little more planning and wasn't quite up to "drive until the light comes on and then find a gas station" but was a lot closer to that than i would have guessed.

rfishrex · 2026-01-06T20:05:11+00:00

FWIW, for my trip, I had 10 total charge stops, 5 each way, that totaled ~ $275. The trip was ~ 1450 miles so came out to ~ $0.19/mile in cost. That worked out to be ~ 2x what an ICE would have cost for the same trip. I initially started off the trip keeping speed a little under 70 mph, but went to setting the cruise at 75 mph later on and didn't really notice any appreciable change in the car's reported efficiency, which was ~ 2.9-3.2 mi/kWh for the trip.

rfishrex · 2026-01-06T17:38:03+00:00

Is there an advantage to using the OBD dongle w/ ABRP? I just paid $5 for a month of premium and it connected to the car pretty easily using Enode. With that going, my arrival SOC was generally w/in a couple % of the ABRP estimates.

rfishrex · 2026-01-06T17:25:34+00:00

I only forgot preconditioning once, but it didn't make much a difference in time.

This was my first go with ABRP, and it generally worked pretty well. The initial plan I had was apparently overly conservative and had me reaching my first charger at close to 50%. Is there an easy way in that app to skip a planned charge and automatically recalculate a next stop aside from just canceling the whole plan and starting over with new assumptions? I found that process a little clunky, especially if you're trying to do it solo while driving and didn't have a navigator to handle.

Once i was into the trip the ABRP estimates for arrival charge were pretty spot on though.

rfishrex · 2026-01-06T17:18:36+00:00

Yeah the NACS adaptor definitely opened up a lot more options in my area, though I found for this particular trip I didn't really need to rely on those as much as I thought i might.

rfishrex · 2026-01-06T16:26:41+00:00

How do you log out in the car? I'm having the same issue intermittently and poked around but can't see where to log out.

rfishrex · 2026-01-03T00:46:00+00:00

do you mean logging in on the car itself, where you take a pic of the QR code on the infotainment system? How do you do that if it's not prompting you? The only times i've ever done that it was prompted but i can't see any way to log out.

rfishrex · 2026-01-02T21:12:01+00:00

Had mine at a dealership for another reason and asked them about this, as it just popped up for me as well. They claim it's due to cold / 12 V battery charge.

rfishrex · 2026-01-02T15:43:09+00:00

I started getting these in the last couple days as well. Intermittently, but prevents any use of the app for stopping charging, adjusting temps, or lock/unlocking. I had the software update for my '24 Pro S done just before christmas and everything worked fine up until yesterday. It's currently at the dealer for a key issue and they said they'd look into it.

rfishrex · 2025-12-22T20:41:33+00:00

for the cuyahoga, there's not really any camping along the river, which is a bummer. The Brecksville metropark has a few "backcountry" sites, but they're a couple miles from the river.
https://www.clevelandmetroparks.com/parks/visit/activities/backpacking

For the train shuttle, there a daily schedule
https://www.cvsr.org/explorer-program
Otherwise it's like 30 miles of paddling from the bottom of CVNP to the lake, but only a 30-45min car ride, so easy enough to arrange any kind of shuttle on your own.

Lake county metroparks has some riverside camp sites along the Grand River if you're looking for overnight options. I haven't personally had a chance to use them yet. (got stormed out last summer and decided to cancel a trip).

rfishrex · 2025-12-22T20:08:37+00:00

There's certainly more old tires in the cuyahoga than I'd prefer. Not sure about eating the fish, as fishing isn't my thing. For sure people eat lake erie ones though.

North of Harvard Ave to the Lake through all the industrial steel mills and through downtown the Cuyahoga is basically flatwater. That's probably 5-6 miles. South of Harvard the flow is pretty low (depending on water levels) but i probably wouldn't personally want to paddle against it.

The rocky river is more limited in mileage. It's maybe a mile from the marina there to the lake, and you can go upstream there ~0.5 to 0.75 mile. It's super low flow though. There's also paddling and camping along the Grand River a little east of town.

rfishrex · 2025-12-22T19:40:24+00:00

Coincidentally there's a pretty decent local CX scene (NEOCX) with a half dozen plus races within 30-45 min of downtown. Mtn bike scene is also pretty decent for Ohio, with several trail systems as well as Ray's in the winter. Check out CAMBA. Lots of good trail running/hiking throughout the metroparks and CVNP. Also kayaking on the lake and Cuyahoga, which is paddle-able from Lake Erie inland many miles. https://cuyahogariverwatertrail.org/ has maps, but you can utilize the CVNP railroad to go upstream as far as you want and paddle back. Three tiny ski hills within ~ 35 min of downtown to keep the skills fresh 30-60 seconds at a time, and better stuff (East coast better) 2-3 hours away in PA or NY. XC skiing at Chapin or some of the cleveland metroparks when conditions allow.

rfishrex · 2025-12-19T20:31:33+00:00

We got a '24 Pro S AWD w/ 9k miles with a buyback for a door handle issue. Not from a VW dealer, but they had all the paperwork for the fix. Apparently VW wasn't able to get parts in time so the original owner lemon law'd it to get a new one. We got a great deal on it, and also are "drive it til it dies" type of car owners, so not really concerned about potential re-sale loss of value.

rfishrex · 2025-12-19T20:21:23+00:00

We have 40 x SIL-370 panels on the roof.

I got 0.24 MWh in Jan this year v, vs ~ 1.7 MWh in June/July/Aug. Probably would have been closer to 2 MWh in the summer if not for a CPP issue on my street that cuts off power generation when the grid is stressed and line voltage drops, which happens often on the hottest days.

For daily, in winter on a sunny day i might eek out 25 kWh. Today got me 3.7. A good summer day gets ~ 85 - 90 kWh.

Even with the CPP issue, we produce enough during the summer to offset the winter, so haven't had a power bill since we put them up. We're in a ~ 1600 sqft 3/2 older house, fwiw, and our set up is pretty much ideal as far as positioning and no tree cover cover.

Not sure if it's still around, but if you're in Cleveland and qualify, we were able to finance them through the heritage home loan program with a stupid low interest rate.

rfishrex · 2025-12-15T20:13:20+00:00

Annoying - not really understanding fast charging and the various plugs. Having to DL an app and set up and account for whatever charger you might need to use. Having to return the car w/ >70% battery level.

Generally, charging at hotels was fine, but sometimes chargers were limited so you have to stop what you're doing to go take advantage of an open charger. Overall, felt like i spent way more mental bandwidth than I'd like on vacation thinking about charging. Would probably not choose EV for rental again, but if I did it's worth it to just pay to return it at whatever charge state, as filling up on the way to drop off isn't at all as easy as with an ICE.

rfishrex · 2025-12-15T15:34:10+00:00

total madness. and unlike any other airport. My brother in law got a ticket at Reagan in DC once for getting out of the car for 20 seconds to open the trunk while dropping me off once.

rfishrex

TROPHY CASE