FYI for the technologically challenged

There is a part of Blogger.com (the host of this blog) called "comments." Comments allow you to give feedback or post your own opinions about each post. I hope everyone knows what a post is, but if not:
Large text on this page is a title of a post. The small text following the title is the body of the post. The title and the body together make up a post. "Post" can also be a verb, as in, "post a comment."
Anyway, at the bottom of each post, there is small green text that says, "0 comments," or however many comments there are on that post. You can click on that link to add a comment or to read other people's comments. If you have a Blogger.com account (like I do), you can log in so people will know who you are. You can even add a picture of yourself if you want. If you don't have an account, you can go to www.blogger.com to make one for free, or you can simply type your comment and then click "other" and type your name in the box. Or, if you like, you can simply click "Anonymous" to post anonymously. But I like to know who is posting comments, so please don't do it anonymously.
At the bottom of this post, it should say "1 comment" because I have posted a sample comment for you to see.
I want to see a lot of comments because that makes this less of "my" blog, and more of "everybody's" blog.

Also, at the bottom of every post, it tells you who wrote it.

errors?

I have ben infourmed that they're are spelling and/or gramatical erors on this blog!  If you find any, pleese comment abowt them.  (Click the wurd "comment" beneth the post)

Pulleys

This is a better picture of the pulley system at the base of the trunk. The trunk is so long that it's impossible to lift from one end. That's why we need the pulleys. We might even need to add 2 more pulleys, because with the trunk extension its pretty hard to lift. The green rope that you see in this picture is supposedly climbing rope that has a tensile strength of 3200 lbs, although when it rubs on sharp metal for a few weeks, I can rip it in half :(

Funraising at True Value

Success! We crushed the competition at this particular Bandera street corner.
By "competition," I mean girl scouts, of course, and by "crushed," I mean they were tired so they donated their cupcakes to us.
True Value was very nice to us, and allowed us use their electricity and one of their parking spaces today.
<3 src="http://www.truevalue.com/App_Images/header/TVSRSHlogo.gif" align="center">
and Johnny Boyle (he was the one who moved the van out of the parking space for us).
We were there from 10:30 in the morning until about 3:30, I guess, and Anthony and I (I = Elliott) screamed our heads off for just about the entire time. (The other people helped too). Our menu looked something like this:

We only sold about 5 pickles, but the sno-cones (how do you spell that?) and sausage wraps sold quite well.
Oh, and we made $295 today, including about $70 from nice people who didn't even want any food. That makes 475 total dollars that we have.

Thanks to all of our supporters; we hope to see you again :)

Thanks d00d

This man works at True Value. I don't know who he is, but he seems to like us. We may stay in True Value for an hour discussing/arguing/demonstrating how we should build the elephant, and he puts up with us the entire time. He offers as much help as he can, but he knows well the dreaded "outside assistance" law. Does anybody know this man's name?

True Value street corner

lousy picture of the pulleys

This is the base of the trunk. You can sort of see the pulley system that we used to make it much easier to raise the trunk.
If anyone would like to donate a real digital camera...

Wow

Is this not the most amazing photo of Anthony you've ever seen?
I have no idea how I did that.

Elephant - trunk - joint #1

This is the first joint of the elephant trunk. There are 2 broomsticks inside the black pipe, connected with a spring so they stay the same distance apart. This lets the trunk bend, and have 2 semi-rigid sections (where the broomsticks are).
We welded a rectangle of galvanized metal (steel?), while not breathing any of the toxic galvanization fumes. We attached it loosely on both ends of the joint, so it can slide. This makes sure the trunk can't bend sideways - only up and down.

The front of the elephant

IT'S NOT FINISHED!!

Team pic

Keep in mind that all these pictures are from a camera phone

PayPal should be working now

OK, I finally set up a PayPal thingamabobber. Theoretically, you can click on the button in this post to donate some dinero (thats spanish for money) to us.

PS: It says the recipient of the donation is Elliott Balsley, but that's just a technicality. The real recipient is Mr. Elephant.

Oops.

Ignore the last post about the donation unless you donated something.

Thank You

Thank you for your donation.
Click here to return to the blog.

World Finals!!

World Finals is expensive, so keep up the support, dear readers.
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And the elephant needs money - see for yourself:

Elephant: "Hi, I'm the elephant. I can fit in an 6' x 6' x 3' box, and I need to go to Ames, Iowa. I need to take all of my props and nine humans with me. They do not fit in a 6' x 6' x 3' box. They also need silly things like food and beds, don't ask me why. Food and beds costs $500 per person, and as you recall from three sentences ago, there are nine of them. $500 x 9 = $4500. I don't know how much plane or bus tickets cost, but I am quite fat, and I know that I would occupy at LEAST 2 seats. I don't want to resort to holding a cardboard sign on the side of the street, but I will if I have to. Send cash or check to "The Elephant, blue trash can outside of 3500 Trinity Blvd, Ames, Iowa." Be sure to put it in an unmarked five gallon white Glad® Force-Flex bag. But seriously, you can donate via PayPal at the top of this page.

Ranatra Fusca!

Hooray!!
We won the Ranatra Fusca award last night at the awards ceremony in Houston. Now we advance to World Finals in Iowa, even though we got fourth place overall.
We were all so excited that we went back to the hotel and got drunk and ordered fifty boxes of pizza and partied with random chicks from the hotel until 6:00 AM.

Just kidding.
But we were excited. We swam at the hotel for a while and then went to the room for a "buffet," complete with do-it-yourself sandwiches and trail mix bars and juice cartons and cookies. That was disappointing, but that didn't stop Joel from yelling, "WE'RE GOING TO IDAHO!!" at least six times.

We won a Ranatra fusca!!! We're going to world in Iowa!

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