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Monday, April 13, 2009

The Easter Droid



This weekend we loaded up R2 and went to visit relatives on the East Coast of Florida. They have 3 girls ages 10 - 16 so we decided to use R2 to deliver their Easter Basket. Everyone was pretty surprised to see R2D2 walking up to their front door on Sunday.

R2 traveled well in his Escape Pod and loading and unloading him was a piece of cake with the Spitz lift. Of course there were a lot of looks going down the road with R2 looking out the back window of the Escape Pod. A lot of thumbs up signals and smiles.

The girls loved R2 and he was a hit going up and down their street. Something that amazed me though was these girls have NEVER SEEN STAR WARS !!!!!! When I heard that I threatened to turn the parents in for child neglect. So I decided it's my civic duty to send them the original Star Wars movie and they all promised to watch it. I'm still stunned by this news.

My wife had a lot of fun decorating R2 for this trip. She made a big fluffy puff ball tail and found the ears and basket. While she was shopping she informed me that she had a few other holiday outfits stashed away for R2 for the future. Gotta love a wife like that !

5 comments:

FordFun said...

Jim,
I've been following your blog and your previous problems with the front foot. I finally made up an ankle that has no pivot point. The front is still tapered to give the proper appearance, but I changed the back of it so that I have a 2.5 inch flat at the bottom, instead of a rounded tip. The bottom is cut at 18 degrees to match the angle of the foot. It fits flat against the foot channel bottom and should prevent any tipping. Anyhow, the main reason I am here was to ask you how big a caster you finally went with on your front foot. You are one of the few people I've seen using only one caster and I wanted your input before I buy one.
Thanks, Gary

Jim said...

That sounds beautiful Gary !!! I wish I had something like that as last night I tore down my front ankle/wheel assembly to tighten everything up again as the droid is going traveling again. But the assembly loosened up a little and was sloppy so I had to tighten things and use loctite. I'm still thinking about redesigning mine someday soon with a little better method. I use a 4" caster from caster city in Las Vegas but I have oversized (1") feet like the ones Daniel uses in the Disney droid. But one caster is definitely a headache at times and I still think about switching to two or at least experimenting with 2 casters. The important thing to remember about 1 caster is it must be perfectly level or it will bob a little when moving front to back while the caster swivels around.
Thanks for the note Gary

Brenda's blog said...

Jim, That is way tooo coool R2 make a good bunny ;o ) Tell yvonne she did a great job!!! and I said hello. Can;t wait to see the next outfit.

Brenda

Jim said...

Hey Brenda. Yvonne said to say thanks regarding your Bunny comment. She's elusive about what the other costumes are so we'll have to wait and see. R2's excited !

BTW, hope Calvin is doing well with his surgery today. We were both thinking of you guys and put a few prayers out there.

Brenda's blog said...

Hey Jim & Yvonne,Crissy and I just got home Phew!!! Calvin is doing great Thanks,as long as everything goes well tonight he will be home tomorrow.

Brenda