We are preparing for an exhibit at the Indiana Welcome Center. For the month of April the city of Whiting will be featured and we were asked to participate. My basement car will be on display as well as the air powered vehicle that Robert Evans entered in last year’s race. I want to especially thank Robert and his family for supporting our effort and loaning us his vehicle for the month. Many different aspects of the history of Whiting as well as life in the “Little City on the Lake” will be celebrated. Many groups have gone all out to make this month long event a success. The School City of Whiting has a full size, walk in display featuring their long history and contributions to the city. The Symphony in the Park event and Pierogi Fest are represented and the town’s art galleries are displaying their works. If you have an opportunity in the next few weeks;  come out and visit us. The address of the Welcome Center is 7770 Corinne Dr. Hammond, Indiana. It is located on just off of Kennedy Ave. one block south of 80/94.

View of the Welcome Center

The basement car arrives, my brother Mark and his wife Jenny in the background

This week I have been busy working with Inventor’s Digest and the folks at Make Magazine setting up advertising for our “Race for the Future” 2012. I think that we are embarking on an important mission; that is to gather the creative minds of the nation, perhaps most especially those who are not formally trained engineers and scientists, to work together and inspire each other to solve our energy problems. This heavy advertising is designed to reach those very people and spark their interest.

Another goal for this year is to gain the support of local schools, both primary and secondary, to encourage their students to cultivate creativity in the fields of science, engineering and art.

Joe Markovich related an interesting story to me this week. You may remember that Joe and his family built a car that competed in the 2011 race. His son, Chris, is a senior in high school. Chris’s goal is to go on to college next year and major in engineering; he would like to be accepted to a school that is recognized for its outstanding engineering program. These schools can take their pick of students with excellent grades who are applying each year.  Only the top students are invited for admission interviews, but the field is still large so the interviewers are looking for something special in the students that are finally accepted. Of course the interviewing professors are interested in Chris because of his work with robotics as a high school student but when he mentioned that he had competed in our race in Whiting last year the interviewer’s ears perked up. They were very curious about Chris’s vehicle, how it was constructed, what fuel it ran on, and how it performed. Chris and his father even showed them a You-Tube clip of the machine in action; this fairly bowled the interviewers over. Chris made an impression that will be remembered.

This story illustrates the importance of going above and beyond to be noticed and might spur local high school students and their teachers to field a team for our 2012 competition.

The broader point is that in order to solve the problems that our nation faces, technologically, socially and spiritually we must all go above and beyond our normal routine and “reach for the stars” so to speak, for the solutions.

It takes extra work and effort to turn our ideas and inventions into reality. Our Race for the Future is a call for this effort. If we are going to remain strong as a nation and become energy independent we must be bold and get up off our keasters, roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Helen Keller remembered talking to a friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods When she asked her friend what she had observed, her friend replied, “Nothing in particular.”

“I wondered how it was possible”, Helen said, “to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing of note. I who cannot see find hundreds of things; the delicate symmetry of a leaf, the smooth skin of a silver birch, the rough, shaggy bark of a pine. I who am blind can give one hint to those who see: use your eyes as if tomorrow you will have been stricken blind.

“Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, and the mighty strains of an orchestra as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow.

“Touch each object as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail.

“Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never taste or smell again.

“Make the most of every sense.

Glory in all the facets and pleasures and beauty which the world reveals to you. “

“My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement”

When we met last August we saw four vehicles each created to accomplish the same goal but each designed from a different prospective. Each of the builders brought their own expertise to the problems at hand, and each vehicle looked radically different from the others;

Joe Markovich and his family designed a vehicle based on their experience building robots,

Tom Kimmel is a man steeped in steam and his car was a marvel of valves, tubes and whirligigs,

Robert Evans works with his father in the automotive field and his vehicle reflected their view of how to power a machine most efficiently,

My vehicle, as I have mentioned, looked like a wooden version of a railroad car owing to my engineering background of 40 years.

We came together and learned from each other. This is creativity at work.

Our goal for the Race for the Future is to encourage creativity and bring together people who dare to explore uncharted territories of design and invention. We are looking for the next great breakthrough in energy creation and storage.

Steve Jobs said that “creativity is just connecting things”. It is the ability to transcend the ordinary. Of the folks who have joined us thus far none could be described as ordinary and we all connect on race day to challenge each other to greater innovation.

We are working on a set of revised rules that will allow us to expand our challenge even more and I hope that by attracting a greater number of racers for the 2012 race we will have a larger and more varied field of designs and inventive minds to learn from.

If you know of anyone who would enjoy this challenge and who is curious about what can be done, who would like to learn by doing and mixing it up with other creative minds; invite them to join us.

We are a friendly bunch, and we are going to invent the future of transportation in Whiting, Indiana.