Hammers and Heartbeats!

Hey Gents!

Haiti - Days 3-6...

Fasten your seat belts because the past couple days have been one heck of a ride. In three days I've fixed laptop computers, worked on two vehicles, driven my first Haitian motorcycle, ridden in the back of a dump-truck, saw Jason spit up his lunch over the side of the dump-truck, experienced some amazing views, and been involved in a health Clinic. Yes. A health clinic...My mom would be proud, I was taking blood pressures and everything. You'll be able to read more below! Feedback on the blog would be great :)

 So, where to start? Well the other day I explained in the blog that I had been working on some Haitian electronics. Simple stuff like replacing hard-drives and general servicing. As I worked my way through the stack of computers, it continued to grow. For a minute I was nervous half of Haiti would bring their computers to be fixed...(Okay - a bit of an overstatement, but you get the idea).

On Thursday we made our way to the school and found out we would be traveling up the mountainside to a health clinic. So we hopped into the back of dump truck with ~15 other people and hung on tight. Traveling in Haiti can only be described from first hand experience. There is a mix of adrenaline, fear, and joy all at the same time. Well I'm not sure which of those 3 words got the best of Jason, but after the 1 hour ride he leaned over the side and let loose. There went his lunch....(Sorry for the people with weak stomachs.)

When we got to the health clinic the nurses tried to find a place where I'd fit to help. Well they found just the job, counting... I was in-charge of placing ~50 Haitians inline based on their given prescription cards. Easy right? Not really. I've found that organization down here can be a bit challenging - especially when you don't speak their language. I found a young lady to interpret for me and made it work. Soon after we got the people in line they gave me another job. Record blood-pressures, temperatures, and some visible symptoms (Vitals). For those out there who don't know me, I'm not a nurse... not even close, but my mother is. She'd be proud! When I was in high-school I remember her teaching me how to record blood pressures - it was like riding a bike from there...

After lunch we cleaned up shop and headed back down the mountain. The view was gorgeous. Haiti, despite being considered a "third world country" has such an inner beauty. A beauty one may feel when present in the elements. I guess all I can say is words can't describe it.

Ok - So now I've made it to day 6, which is Friday... Woah. My days are becoming blurred. Hang on readers, I'm almost done. Friday left Jason feeling a bit under the weather so he had to stay back at the beach house to rest. I made another journey up the mountainside to work my final day with the health clinic. Same as yesterday - counted & took vitals. The fun began when I got back into town from the mountain.

When I got back I was able to drive my first Haitian motorcycle. It was quite the treat. My buddy, Ricardo, was driving at first. I leaned over his shoulder and said, "Hey - wanna let this Blanc drive your moto?" he smiled and said of course. Well I drove through the city and rode past a crowd of people who pointed and laughed. About a mile down the road I asked "why were they laughing". He quickly said, "They've never seen a Blanc (American) drive a motorcycle...especially with a Haitian on back." Well lets just say I'm happy I could give them a treat. Rode that motorcycle through a river and everything. Dad you'd enjoy the terrain down here, its wicked!

For those out there still reading, I'm impressed. (Sorry for writing so much.) This will be the last paragraph before I head to bed. Tonight was awesome. Len Gengel, the founder of the Be Like Brit organization made it to Haiti. Why is this important you might ask? Well, first he is such unique person, whom I respect very much. (If you don't know Len or haven't heard of Be like Brit, please look them up on facebook!) Secondly, he brought steaks with him from Massachusetts. Tonight we dined like kings. Steak, Potatoes, Veggies, homemade lemonade, and homemade cookies! What. A. Treat! Now that I have your mouths watering I'm going to watch the sunset.

Good night friends,

--Ben!

Sea Breeze, Sunshine, & Hardwork!

Good Afternoon! or as they say in Haiti, Bon Swa!

Day’s 1-3,

Jason and I made it to Haiti safely Sunday afternoon. Mission of Hope sent a ride to pick us up at the airport, but we almost jumped into the wrong vehicle. The jeep would have taken us to the opposite side of the Island….Pa Bon. (Not Good) Luckily, Ricardo, our Haitian friend recognized my bald-head from our last trip and flagged us down before we motored off into the dust.

 In Haiti, most Haitians normally refer to American’s as Bla’s or blanc’s…This means “white” or a white person. However, when riding down the road I normally hear someone in the distance shout “Tet Kale!” This means The Bald Guy. My bald head is recognized by the Haitians very fondly. Their president, Martelly, is referred to as Tet Kale. Anyway, just thought I’d pass on that interesting tidbit. 

On Monday we began helping with the new school they are building at MOH. Jason and I hammered wooden cages that will be used as forms for main support columns. Cement will be poured into these forms later in the week and will take about 7 days to cure. Once they cure, the forms will be removed and used for the next section of the column.

Later in the afternoon we headed back to the beach house where we are staying. After showering I laid down on the bed not realizing how tired I really was. The sun down here is very intense, it beats you up.  I put a random picture below from out breakfast. Gotta love fresh fruit and homemade bread!

 Today, we got up early, had a refreshing breakfast, and headed back to the school. As we walked through the gates, Pastor Lex pulled me into the office immediately. I was a bit nervous as to why, but it was to do some mechanical & technical work. I was in heaven… I started off on the phone with a Mitsubishi dealerships back in the States trying to locate a crankshaft for a blown engine on their Montero…For those out there who know me, you know that I love fixing things. While bouncing back and forth on phone calls, I was replacing a power supply on a desktop computer, looking over some laptops, and fixing whatever else I could get my hands on!

Well that’s about all I have for ya…I hope to grab the internet sometime later in the week, but until then I’m sending my Love from Haiti. Miss everyone.

Bon Swa,

--Benny!

Shifting Gears!

Good Morning!

Wow...Where to began? The last 4 days myself and the Zips Racing team have been competing in a Collegiate Design competition called Formula SAE. 120 teams come from all over the world to show off their engineering skills and abilities to build a formula 1 style racecar. OK, now that I have your attention...Lets sum up the event. Yesterday, was the final day of the competition, which means the MAIN event! The endurance race is what we all work for...120 cars were apart of our competition this week, and only 49% of the cars finished the endurance event. Below you can see a picture of the race team shortly after the car finished the endurance race.

Later that evening we attended the awards ceremony, and were awarded 13th place overall out of 120 schools. We burnt up a clutch during the autorcross event and scrambled to fix the car for the endurance race. If it wasn't for the breakdown mid-week we most likely would have finished in the top 10... Below you can see a picture of the racecar being torn apart in our paddock.

Ok. Ok. As always, I try to wrap these blogs up pretty quickly...So let me conclude here. This morning I was very lucky to have two amazing friends drive me to the Detroit airport at 4:30am! You might be wondering what for? Well, for the next 9 days I'll be serving in Haiti. I am so excited to head back to their country. It impacted my life so much the last time I visited in 2011. I will try my best to update my blog, but internet is very limited in Haiti. No matter what - know that this is what I love to do... Serving others and seeing people smile!

Well, stay tuned!

--Benny

Formula SAE Competition - Day 1. The early bird gets the worm.

Good evening Ladies and Gents!

After 9 months of anticipation, the ZR-12 made its debut in Michigan this morning.

Zips Racing hit the ground running and proved that: "the early bird does get the worm". The competitors made their way to the track this morning and were a bit surprised when they found the giant Fear The Roo symbol at the front of the line to enter the track. Eager to show off our prized possession (The ZR-12) four brave young men camped out at the gate the night before the track opened... Call it crazy, call it passion, whatever you want to call it... just know we're on a mission!

The first day of competition went fairly smooth. The car passed technical inspection with no major problems. For you "Newbies" out there reading this, Technical Inspection is a one hour rummage through your race-car to find any unsafe parts, vehicles, or drivers. The formula SAE vehicles are built to a set of rules or specifications, and the students are free to design a car in any way, shape, or form....just as long as it meets the rules and passes inspection.

Tonight we are hitting the books preparing ourselves for the "Written-Exams" of our competition. We have 3 static events tomorrow to test the knowledge of our race-car. The events are: Design (150pts), Cost (100pts), and Marketing (75pts). We have been preparing for several weeks, making sure to dot our i's and cross our t's for these Static events. Sometimes the Static events may be overlooked at competition, but let me tell you the points in these events are very important!

Well for now I'm signing off... Finishing the night by studying braking calculations, reviewing tire data, and familiarizing myself with the fundamental vehicle dynamics of our race-car. YAWN. Are you sleeping yet?

Racing starts in two days....Be prepared for the rumble!

--Benny D

"Remember"......Haiti 2 years ago today

Hey everyone,

So I haven't posted since my recent visit to Europe, but today brought a lot of remembering to the country of Haiti. If you didn't know, I traveled there last March with a group of 16 college students to aid in earthquake relief. In May 2012 I am leading my first trip back to Haiti with a group of 8-12 people from my home church. Very excited for this!


As I was going through some of my old photos I came across this video I watched nearly 2 years ago. This video was my first inspiration in serving Haiti. Hope you can check it out.


--Benny D

 

This video is one of the first things that opened my eyes to "GO" and serve the people of Haiti. It's hard to believe the earthquake mangled the country 2 years ago today. Since the earthquake I have been fortunate to meet so many amazing people, and had the opportunity to work with organizations like Mission of Hope International and Be Like Brit! As the song states, "You are not alone"...Some may feel alone at times, but there is always Someone out there! Please remember the people of Haiti today

Successful Finish

So this will be the final update regarding racing.... Zips racing finished 12th overall at formula student Germany! A solid performance for our first year

We started the day on Saturday running Acceleration and Autocross. Keven and Logan drove acceleration. Our drivers drove the same time, putting us in 14th place! Solid performance.

Later that afternoon we set the car up for autocross. We planned to get our runs in before the rain. Michan ran the first lap and posted an average time of 58 seconds with 1 cone. He lined up to put the hammer down for his second run. About 15 seconds into the lap the car came to a hault! Schiezen... We pulled the car into the pits trying to diagnose the problem. It was a wiring issue, but unfortunately it took us about 1-2 hours to fix. We were the final car to go out in Autocross that afternoon, and it had just poured rain... This left us middle of the pack for our endurance run on Sunday.

Sunday we prepared the car for endurance. Checking every nut, bolt, connection. The car was ready to go, and we headed up to the line. We proved to be out of place in our endurance position because we were running about 6 seconds faster per lap. But hey, stuff happens. Our car was one of the fastest cars of the entire day. We ended up finished 9th place in Endurance, but the traffic really killed our time...

We chilled out the rest of the day waiting for the awards cermony later that evening.... Now that competition was over it was time to celebrate. We had a blast and were rewarded with Music, Beer, and free mugs! We danced until about 1am and then headed to the campsite for the ''after-party''

Monday morning we packed up our camping gear and headed to one of our sponsors facilities, LUK, for a tour! They welcomed us so gernously and head a great presentation prepared.

Later that evening, around 11:30pm, we arrived back in Munich where we crashed from exhaustion! We plan to tour Munich for the rest of the week. I was given a Fordors book before we left and it is proving to be a huge help! THANKS : )

Chao!

Time to compete!

Hey everyone!

So yesterday marked the first "official" day of competition. The team competed in 4 events... 3 of them were static, and the other was dynamic. Static events test our engineering and business mindsets. (The car is not racing for them.) And the dynamic events are pushing the car to the limits in different areas. I will give you a quick breakdown of our finishes and then go into more detail if you have time to read...

Design - 33rd
Cost - 14th
Marketing Presentation - 28th
Skid-Pad - 18th

Team Photo FSG 2011

I actually competed in all the static events yesterday so I'll try to give you the best personal recap of them. First we headed to our Design event where about 6-8 engineers from Germany go over our car with a fine tooth comb. This event lasts 1-hour and is worth 150 points. The judges ask each engineer on our team questions like:  A.) Why do you run these Goodyear tires instead of Hoosiers? B.) Show me calculations of your suspension system. C.) Explain your choice of engine.... Etc. The questions get harder as the time goes on. I was incharge of the Brake Design system and Driver Ergonomics. A couple questions I was asked were: 1.) What adjustments do you offer in your cockpit (Pedals, seat, brake bias). 2.) Why did you choose this rotor material? Overall the event went well, but we are a young team and our knowledge is still growing. We placed 33rd in this event out of 73.

5 Akron Engineers - 7 German Design Judges

Preparing For Design

Our second event was the Cost event. For this event we construct a 200 page excel document which is used to calculate the cost of every component. From the Shocks all the way to the smallest zip tie. I have actually competed in this event since I was a freshman. (hence why I am bald now...) This was our best static event, we placed 14th out of 75.

Lastly we competed in the presentation event. This event is actually really fun. Maddy & and I provide a 10 minute mock marketing presentation for our car. The overall goal is to market the car & produce ~1000 per year. We calculated all the production costs, return on investments, etc. We were hoping to do a lot better in this event, but we ran in to a few problems. One particularly was our "slide-clicker" stopped working before our presentation : ( Overall we were ranked 28th.

Finally we competed in the Skid-Pad event for the first dynamic event. Logan and Kevin drove this. It tests the cars steady-state turning capabilities. They are both young drivers, but are proving to become comfortable in the car! The placed 18th in this event, which was really good!

RIT running Skid-Pad in the "WET"

This afternoon we competed in Autocross, but ran into problems. I will explain more in tomorrow's post when all events are completed and scored.

Have a great night!