The 2007 event was held on Oct 6th, and 7th, at the Pioneer Valley co-housing, in Amherst Massachusetts.

Saturday evening, over pizza, 10-15 of us talked about what we'd like next years event to look like. The consensus was to expand the event to include other vehicles that were consistent with the ultra-efficient, green theme (or at least that was how I interpreted it), and we even got some volunteers to form a committe to work on the event for next year! Below are a couple of posts to the Human Powered Vehicles listserv that should provide an overview of how things went:

Many thanks to all who came out for making the event a success, and particularly Josh Kerson, and John Fabel of Coho for making it happen!

In response to a query regarding the NE HPV Rally, John Tetz (Self built Zote Foam velomobile driver)wrote:

...It was more a HPV event. There were three VMs. A Mango (don't remember his name - local boy - rode to the event) [Ed. note: that was Kelly Slough], Merrill Gay with his Coroplast Vm (excellent design), and me with my Zote shelled VM.

There were a couple of E-assisted vehicles but I didn't have much chance to try them out. Too busy fielding questions about Zote shells and my 4.2 pound E-assist.

I had a terrific time with the folks from the Pioneer Valley Co housing and Ethan Davis. We had wonderful long discussions about the environment and Ethan introduced me to what some people are doing to look ahead to see what may happen and to prepare to make changes ahead of time to reduce even worse problems. [ Ed. note: please see Transition town Wiki]

It was refreshing to hear discussions on the need to improve efficiencies, and how to change the mind set of the public about HPVs. My light weight vehicle designs were used as an example of going in the direction of a higher vehicle efficiency.

They showed two wonderful Videos. One was on the hot air, engine powered blimp that the local people had designed and built. Its ultimate design goal is to haul cargo form one inaccessible place to another. Things such as lumber out of woods. There is a one page write up in the Oct issue of Popular Science.

The second Video was on building the Gossamer Condor. Excellent film about some of he design challenges and disasters over a three year period of time. Again, efficiency was a main driver for this vehicle.

After dinner discussions on how to include the public in some of these HPV event.

All good stuff. Well worth going to and supporting.

John Tetz

And from Kelly Slough (Mango velomobile Driver)

The New England Velomobile/HPV Rally was held the weekend of Oct 6/7 in Amherst, MA. As in 2006 the weather was perfect, and John Fabel and the rest of the Amherst Co-Housing host community were very accomodating. Several riders camped on-site Friday and Saturday night.

We had a good turn-out for the Saturday morning ride with around two dozen riders making the ~25 mile rolling loop in the Connecticut river valley. There were only two VM's in attendance on Saturday's ride: me in my Mango and John Tetz in his remarkable zotefoam machine. I had my first chance to examine his elegant 100 watt power assist that adds less than 5 pounds to his vehicle, including batteries!! Very impressive. Also on the Saturday ride were all manner of recumbent trikes, bikes, a couple with power assist.

Saturday afternoon was an opportunity for people to get a close up look at all the bikes and in some cases take a test ride. I noticed that John Tetz had a steady stream of pilots in his VM. My Mango could accomodate a few of the taller rally participants for test rides, but being set up for my 6'3" frame, shorter riders were out of luck. Saturday afternoon also saw the arrival of another VM on the scene: Merrill Gay with his impressive, completely homebuilt VM and tow-behind tadpole trike for his son (details at http://carfreechallenge.blogspot.com).

There was a dinner/bonfire planned for Saturday night that I was not able to attend. We added a ride on Sunday morning this year and had a group of 10 riders that did some or all of a ~35 mile loop. Parts of Sunday's ride were filmed by a film maker who is in the early stages of a documentary on alternative transportation.

It was a great weekend of riding and chatting. Unfortunately I did not have a camera and have no pictures to share. Perhaps Josh or Ethan or somebody else has some pictures that will eventually find their way onto a website.

[Ed. note: so far I haven't turned up any pics! If you have some, please let me know!]

Kelly.