So we were having a faculty lunch on the lawn in front of the Math building and its giant pink tie. There was a group there that had converted a main campus vehicle’s engine to run on either pure ethanol or pure propane, changable with the flick of a switch. Ethanol is theoretically a renewable resource, but the fact is, they told me, is that to power every car in Canada with it, we’d have to cover something like half the earth’s surface with corn plant. And we’d have nothing to eat but mashed-corn-with-ethanol-extracted at mealtimes.

What really stole their thunder, though, was the Waterloo Motorsports booth. The had a fantastic car there that they’d built with the engine block of a Honda bike. Everything but that was hand-crafted and welded in the machine shop. All the sparks and injections were controlled from a computer that could monitor the exact position of the engine with a rotation sensor. Talk about an opportunity to fine-tune. All four wheels had rotation monitors as well, so that if the drive wheels ever lost traction, it could automatically release the gas. The thing was very cool. It was great seeing it rip up and down the pathways they’d blocked off.

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Briefly looking about the internet, it appears that the main purpose of a toga party is to consume copious amount of various… beverages. Being that it’s frosh week at the Wa, ours will be completely dry, so I’m not entirely sure what the planned activities are.

In spite of the many toga-party-fan-sites out there, I had a great deal of trouble finding actual step-by-step instructions on toga-creation. One thing did seem quite clear, however, and that was that bedding is not the best choice, since the piece of cloth is supposed to be long and narrow, not a square. So I popped up to the local Waterloo fabric store (the girl on the phone informed me she was a toga professional…) to buy some fabric. I ended up going with four yards of the blue you see on the right. All that was just $8, although I think it was a clearance sale. Something like denim would have been very cool, but also significantly more pricey.

As it is, I’m facing the horrid prospect of book-buying this week… an expense I’m not entirely sure how to cover, given the ’student’ limits on my charge and credit card. Maybe I’ll just write them a giant personal cheque. Don’t think that’s accepted anymore, though.

Mike

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