Chazd's (Charles Dowdell's) News Burps

Relief. Summer seems to be on the way out which means perfect weather here in Duluth Georgia. Gracie the cat being friendly on her "Fun boards". I attached a number of pine boards (fun boards) on the walls in the porch (cat room) afew years ago. She is starting to use them more. I would have thought that a cat would love them. They are up high, great visibility, exclusive use for cats... but the cat makes the final decision. My 2017 Chevy Service Truck just turned over 30k Miles. So I drive it less than 5k a year and most of those miles are on trips, most to the farm in NY and back. Here is a pic of me showing me with a portion of my shop. (It doesn't show my electronics bench or the racks and racks of stuff.) The bench is clean and that was the reason for the pic. It's a very rare situation. I bought a NEW piece of McIntosh audio gear to complement the vintage Mac components. The McIntosh MB25 is a Bluetooth transceiver that allows modern integrations with the vi

Over breakfast today, Angie and I worked out a list of the different airlines we have flown on (that we remember). Some of these airlines are old and long out of buiness, bought-out or done the commercial shuffle. And some are/were very small regional airlines in distant lands. In no order: Malaysia Airlines United American Korean Air Emirates Air Asia MEA (Middle East Airlines) Delta USAIR Copa Aeroflot Ural Airlines UTAir Air Berlin Germanwings Lufthansa Swiss Air Alitalia Iberia PAN AM Alaska Airlines Hawaian Hainan Airlines Air China Norwegian Asiana IcelandAir LAN Argentina Airlines LATAM TAM OceanAir / Avianca Brasil Allegiant Air Avianca Turkish Airlines Buta Airways Azerbaijan Airlines Peoples Express Georgian Air ANA (All Nippon Airlines) JAL (Japan Airlines) Vladivostok Air FinnAir Jet Blue CP Air (Canadian Pacific Air) Dalian Airlines Philippine Airlines A

I took a short business trip to Chattanooga. Actually the Tesla robot car did most of the trip. The artitulated dump truck is sometimes called a lizard truck because the middle bends as you drive and steer. I did some camping as well. I am taking Japanese lessons. The location is show in the pics. 10 weeks of training. Of course, success is mostly about studying. One of my nice deer friends I see almost everyday in the backyard right outside my zoom room. There are a couple of fawns I have been enjoying watching them grow. I saw a nice butterfly just as I had a moment of grief and resentment towards another individual. "Find the butterflies".

I heard some popular traveller YouTube guy bragging about how they had driven a car in over 20 countries. Hmmm. I had to count my overseas driving expereinces. It looks like I have driven a car in over 40 different countries. And that doesn't include Antarctica and a few other places that are overseas territories, not countries (like Gibralter, US Virgin Islands, etc). The most stressful driving expereinces I have had were in Brussels Belgium (the pic is from Brussels), and Upstate NY in a blizzard.

We made another trip to the farm. This time we drove the Tesla. We stayed in a campground halfway and charged the car there. Other than that, 4 stops at superchargers does it. Its a long drive. It is 15 hours or so. I have learned to break the trip up. The supercharger stops are surprisingly fast. The car soaks up a huge amount of electrons ins a very short amouunt of time. Stopping every three hours is normal. Food, Pee and stretching and the far is filed back up ready to go. Amazing. With the Full self drive I have to admit it is fun. The Tesla is my first luxury car.

We went on an overnight to a cool spot on the Tenn-Tom waterway in Mississippi. They don't see Teslas out that way, and I had to answer a number of questions and got some comments on how cool the car is. Camping with the Model Y is surprisingly quite nice. We have a custom memory foam/self-inflating mattress. The camping mode provides air conditioning all night with lots of fresh air and no bugs. Quite pleasant actually. The glass roof on the Tesla helps too. You still get a feeling of being outdoors. Staying in a campground is also very practical since we get AC (it was over 100F and we were at 68F in the car), but we also add about 150 miles to the battery overnight via a 50 amp 220 connection. I don't push the battery hard, never deep-drain and never charge to max capacity. Myself being from the deep-North, trips inside and across the US are interesting and filled with new visuals. Mississppi is at the bottom of most lists as far as US states, but it definately reminds