Index of /Content/Rev War

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	[Parent Directory]	-	Sat May 23 11:18:18 2009
	2009 Dragoon Annual Dinner	-	Sat Dec 05 22:41:45 2009
	Cath and I (with Rich in the background) at the 2009 annual dragoon dinner. Placeholder for the 2009 Dragoon Annual Dinner. Not much to say about the dinner, really, other than the food was great as always. Filed under: Rev War. No comments.
	Last Dragoon Event for 2009	-	Mon Nov 16 21:13:36 2009
	Me presenting at Putnam Cottage November, 2009 The 15th was finally the last Dragoon event of the season, wrapping up a hectic schedule for 2009. The year closed out at one of my more favorite venues, Putnam Cottage and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect. Since this event was more of a school show format rather than the usual cavalry demo, I dragged out the currency exhibit again along with a few new props that I acquired (coins!) since I did the first demonstration at the beginning of the year. All in all, things went much smoother this time, though I suspect that the reason was the quality of the crowd rather than the quality of my presentation (those Greenwich folks are much more polite than school kids). Filed under: Rev War. No comments.
	Making a New Pick and Whisk	-	Sun Nov 08 21:37:30 2009
	Making a new pick and whisk chain. Note that the links are about 1 and 3/4 inches long before bending. After bending into a figure eight the final links are just over 3/4 on an inch. At some point of riding around in the tall grass at Old Store Fort I broke my pick and whisk chain and managed to lost most of the chain and the whisk. Given that the chain was made of small gauge brass wire this was inevitable. Given that you really need to have one of these when you do battles, I decided to make a replacement, but with much heaver gauge wire - and not just any wire, gold plated wire! I figured that if it was gold, it would be one less item that I would need to polish before each event. It turns out that all you need to make a pick and whisk chain are wire, wire cutters, pliers with duct tape on the jaws to make a soft grip, a fork, and some spare time. I’ll write out the instructions for the process of making the chain and whisk another time. Suffice to say, the whole project turned out better than expected, though the tips of my fingers hurt for about a day afterward from all the wire bending. Final result of all that link bending. Later on I might solder the links closed to further reduce the risk of the chain breaking, but for now I’ll leave it as it is until I make sure the length is where it should be. Filed under: Rev War. No comments.
	Two more Dragoon events	-	Mon Oct 12 09:12:05 2009
	Placeholder for the Saratoga National Historic Park event and the Old Stone Fort event. Filed under: Rev War. No comments.
	Constitution Island Event	-	Mon Aug 31 21:05:11 2009
	I did not enjoy this event one bit, plus there are no pictures to boot. It rained late Friday and some on Saturday preventing us from using the horses. We still showed up, but were not able to do our program due to the damp ground. Thankfully “MJ” and Mark SR. represented us at the “timeline” presentation so none of the mounted (or rest of the unit) group had show up on Saturday. The fact that I was sick on Friday/Saturday didn’t exactly help, so I was more than grateful when it was too wet to bring the horses out, though that meant they had to spend the day in the trailer. While we did offload and graze them for a bit at an abandoned shopping center in the morning and later in the evening on the hotel lawn when the weather cleared again, it was still not enough, and I knew Orion was going to have issues on Sunday. On Sunday the weather improved a bit, but it was yet another hot summer day with high humidity. Getting to and from the island meant riding on a one lane causeway while trying to time avoiding the shuttle bus traveling at irregular intervals on the same single track road. To top it off, Orion was every bit the problem I expected once we got to the island, and had to be removed from the formation when the battle started. It was expected, given the size of the field we had to preform in (the venue was small), but still disappointing, and proof that while Orion has made great improvements in being around other people, he still has a long way to go before he is comfortable around people outside the mounted group. Even more so for people outside the unit, like the 5th New York - our partners in this event. All in all, I’d have to say that while we did the best we could under the circumstances, I would prefer not to do that even again next year. Had the weather been better and Orion better behaved, my experience would probably have been more positive. Still, the crowd seemed to enjoy the presentation and battle afterwords on Sunday, so I guess that is all that counts. Filed under: Rev War. No comments.
	Dobbs Ferry Event	-	Mon Aug 17 09:05:08 2009
	Trying to stay cool at Dobbs Ferry Another event done - and man this was a HOT one. The humidity was near 100% and the temperature actually did hit 100! To say that this was not a fun day to be dressed in 3 layers of clothing - including a coat - while working on a horse is a bit of an understatement. Filed under: Rev War. No comments.
	230th Anniversary of The Battle of Norwalk Event	-	Wed Jul 15 21:02:03 2009
	Brits taunting the crowd as "Norwalk" burns. Thankfully there was not much rain at this event, though quite a few people did pick up an leave after the rain on Saturday night. The 2nd Dragoons had a big part in help planning this even, so in some ways, this was a “home game” for us, so we had to make sure everything went right. Kudos to our own Eric Chandler for his part in arranging this event. Better pics and an article about the event can be found here. Filed under: Rev War. No comments.
	Mount Washington Resort Event	-	Tue Jul 07 20:37:51 2009
	Picture of the mounted group in the hotel carport. I'm on the far left. This was my first event on Orion, and to say I was a bit nervous is a bit of an understatement. Orion has major has some issues as of the result of his previous owner and to say he does not trust people now is a bit of an understatement. We’ve worked together a few times before, but he’s a long way from trusting me like Beau does. Between the rain, the cannon fire from the UTA guys, and the crowds of people so close, I’d say he did amazingly well. Eric gives final instructions for the trooping of the colors before the formal dinner on the second night As for the actual event itself, it went as well could be expected to the near constant rain the entire weekend. It was a good thing that we were used to doing programs indoors or outdoors, so we were flexible. Cath in front of the Mount Washington Resort Hotel. The resort staff was first rate and treated us EXTREMELY well. This was one event I’m going to look forward to doing next year. Hopefully the weather will cooperate a bit better next time. Filed under: Rev War. No comments.
	Crunch Time!	-	Fri Jun 12 19:32:52 2009
	Well, there hasn’t been much activity lately due to the fact that it’s Crunch Time in the Dragoon schedule. Last weekend we did a show up near Albany, NY and this weekend we’ve got a smaller parade in CT. Between that and work, there’s not much time left in the week for projects, so the pewter smiting project will have to wait another weekend. Filed under: Rev War. No comments.
	School Show Poster	-	Wed May 27 21:42:18 2009
	Well, I did my first school show with the Dragoons last Friday, and I must say that it went better than expected for working with kids. Since I didn’t have any coins to show, I worked up a poster mounted on tri-fold foam core showing the paper money in use during the American Revolution to use as a prop… While it seems to have helped keep a few kids interested, I think most of the kinds really wanted to see coins. It also doesn’t help that this was my first time giving a talk on this subject, so my delivery kinda sucked the first two times. I suppose I’ll need to make another poster featuring various coins of the same period or choose a more interesting topic. Filed under: Rev War. No comments.