The Greensboro Christmas Balls

Greensboro, North Carolina has a unique Christmas tradition. The Sunset Hills neighborhood hangs large balls made of chicken wire and Christmas lights hanging high in the trees. It all started with one family in 1996, spread throughout the neighborhood, and in 2007 it became a project to collect food for the local food bank, called Shine A Light on Hunger. Learn more about it at the Christmas Balls blog.   

(YouTube link)

Greensboro also has an annual race called the Running of the Balls, which raises funds for the Second Harvest Food Bank. In the video from this year’s run, you can see drone footage of the Greensboro Christmas Balls from various distances. In a video from 2009, Jonathan Smith tells the story of how it all began. And how do they get the balls so high up in the trees? With a potato gun! -via Metafilter


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Very cool designs.

Still, it's pretty hard to improve on a vehicle that:
-is the most efficient form of land travel (at the equivalent of 500-1000 mpg)
-when set up and tuned properly, achieves about 95-98% efficiency of energy transfer
-costs only a couple days' wages, and is easy to maintain
-extends the life expectancy of the user

Unfortunately, many of the designs sacrifice some of those benefits, in favor of weirdness.
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Cool designs, but none of them seem to be suitable for frolicking in the forest...or dealing with the inevitable gravel road, ripped up for repaving street, etc.

The Schweeb is more like an amusement park ride, and I want a spin on it. But not after "Bruno the Bean-Eating Wonder" just got out of it.
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Check out the rides at www.bentrideronline.com

My favs:
www.whike.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72NI-P1zP1Y

www.steintrikes.com
http://sg.sevenload.com/videos/ohRtxfd-Downhill-auf-dem-Semmering
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"With the fear global warming taking over the minds of Americans everywhere..."? What world do you live in? Our climate has been cooling for quite a while now and global warming has been thouroughly debunked. Furthermore, these bicycle designs are mostly useless conceptual exercises that don't improve on the tried and true traditional bicycle design. Toys for the rich? Our lazy news providers need to get off their butts and screen the items they are presenting to us as news.
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