100 and Done! (Countries that is...)

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We are back! This last trip brought the total countries visited to 100! It is a crazy milestone. It is difficult, time-consuming and can be (IS) expensive. After I got back from Antarctica in 2007, I started thinking about it. After 2010 I was thinking about it more (as I moved from NY to Georgia) and in 2014 it had become a real goal. Between Angie and I we have been to 109 Countries. We are tied at 100 countries each. We have 9 countries different in our lists. For example, I have been to San Marino. She has not. She has been to Israel. I have not, yet. There has been some fun competition in this area. That's why we had to establish rules. 1.) Must be listed (as a country) with the US State Department 2.) Being in an airport doesn't count. You have to get through immigration somehow and not in a DMZ or a no-mans-land 3.) A passport stamp is not required. I have been to Canada, Paraguay, and Uruguay without getting my passport stamped. There are friendly borders in many places...
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http://www.woodmaster.com/

I am looking at better ways to heat our house. I have some initial ideas of building a large chimney that will have a fireplace and a flue for the coal stove. The coal stove will be in the basement and the fireplace will be in the living room. Bonnie brought me some excellent information on designing and building a chimnney and fireplace from the architect library where she works. So far that information is great.

Unlike many contemporaries, we will be putting the chimney structure inside the heated space of the home. Although you lose usable square footage, you gain a great deal of thermal mass. That means the house will be secondarily heated by the heat slowly given off from the masonry after the fire cools in the early morning hours.

A lot of chimney and fireplace design information is reverse-engineered information. Successful fireplace systems are measured and then those dimensions are recommended. I am looking forward to this project. I like masonry and building with stone so this looks like a lot of fun.

http://www.ovencrafters.com/

I am trying to figure out how I can incorpoarte the brick oven and the incinerator into the same project. It probably won't happen though. I am planning on building a combination incinerator and brickoven. The brickoven will be based on the designs offered by ovencrafters. The incinerator will be around the back of the oven with a separate flue. All masonry construction will be used or course.

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100 and Done! (Countries that is...)

-
Image
We are back! This last trip brought the total countries visited to 100! It is a crazy milestone. It is difficult, time-consuming and can be (IS) expensive. After I got back from Antarctica in 2007, I started thinking about it. After 2010 I was thinking about it more (as I moved from NY to Georgia) and in 2014 it had become a real goal. Between Angie and I we have been to 109 Countries. We are tied at 100 countries each. We have 9 countries different in our lists. For example, I have been to San Marino. She has not. She has been to Israel. I have not, yet. There has been some fun competition in this area. That's why we had to establish rules. 1.) Must be listed (as a country) with the US State Department 2.) Being in an airport doesn't count. You have to get through immigration somehow and not in a DMZ or a no-mans-land 3.) A passport stamp is not required. I have been to Canada, Paraguay, and Uruguay without getting my passport stamped. There are friendly borders in many places...
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Honshu and Okinawa

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I am back. I spent 10 days in Japan, 5 days for work on the main island of Honshu and 5 days of solo adventure in Okinawa. Travel is so invigorating dispite the uncomfortableness. Jetlag, anxiety, crowds, and other discomforts aside, it is mind-expanding and rewarding. Work went well. I flew a new airline (Skymark) from Tokyo to Naha. I am always wary of strange discount airlines and all the traps they set. However, I had a great expereince with "Sky". I was actually shocked. Super easy checkin at the airport, no extra fees even with extra luggage. The primary mission in Okinawa was to visit the Peace Park and the suicide cliffs of Okinawa. From what I understand, at the end of WW2 the inhabitants were encouraged to commit suicide rather than surrender to the Americans and get tortured and eaten. Besides other types of suicide, they jumped off the cliffs at the Southern end of the main island. If you have seen the original color footage taken at the time, I am sure you ...
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Caribbean Trip Christmas 2025

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Before this trip I couldn't spell caribbean... It's a weird one. We didn't have a lot of time for this trip as usual. Other things in life besides travel to get done, like work. We planned Punta Cana Dominican Republic, Domenica, and Antigua and Barbuda. Our visit to DR was shortened by a cancelled flight on Liat Airlines. Our first flight on Liat we were at the ticket counter for 3 hours. There were only 3 other passengers on an Embraer 145 which holds 50. We learned in Dominica that Liat is short for "Leave Island Another Time". Or as I used my very limited Russian swearing vocaulary "Blyat" or "блядь". You can hear this word many times watching car crashes in Russia on Youtube. It is normally compounded with many other intensifiers. Of the three countries we liked Domenica best. It reminds me of Maui without all the tourism and people. Parts of the island might be the densest jungle I've seen. This pic is a improptu ...
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Expidite the expidited

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I am headed to the passport office this AM to get a new passport. I didn't have time to do the expidited renewal after getting back from Japan. So I made an special expiditing appointment with the passport folks in Atlanta. I am glad I only have to drive into Atlanta, not fly up to NY or Washington DC. It seems I have had to do some expiditing everytime I have renewed my passport. Passports are good for 10 years. When you get a new passport it is a time to ponder where you will be and what the passport will look like in 10 years. The pic belows shows the wear on my now cancelled passport. it was a 50 page book (the extra pages version) and 46 pages are fully used. Many countries require 3 empty pages to enter their country. So, I got full use of the larger size passport. If you need more pages, you send the passport in and they will "sew-in" more pages. The thickest passport I ever saw was at the Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan border. A truck driver I saw had a Uzbekistan passpo...
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