Road Trip

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I am back from my most recent roadtrip. I loaded up the Tesla and started letting the hands-off Full Self Drive (FSD) supervised take me to points North. First stopping in a campground in Tennesee and up to Pittsburgh for the CIDM Convex Conference (which was the best conference in years). There was a celebration of the 20 years of DITA XML. I was an earlier adopter. My presentation went well and I semi-stealth launched wisdomino. I demo'd some extra cool software we developed and will be selling in weeks to come. It's truely game changing. Of course, there will be much more than that to come. After that it was on to Franklin, PA. to meet with some colleagues in the mining division and onto the farm stopping in Olean NY for the night. I am pretty sure it was the first time I had driven across the entire Allegany National Forest. I ended up driving through the very dark forest expanse during a night time thunderstorm. Although I normally trust the Tesla FSD on the Interstat...
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We are off to Chautaqua lake a for a few days. I am fishing for walleyes.

The rabbits and birds really enjoy not having Tioga the cat around. We don't hear all the danger shrills from the birds and the bunnies are pretty much coming to the back door. I haven't really looked at cats yet. I am thinking a Maine Coon cat or two this time. We know we want a big cat.

I have gotten serious about losing the 10 pounds I put on in Antarctica. Food is always on my mind. I am running the 5k running race next Thursday for the corporate challenge. Every pound I don't have to carry with me helps. I will run it about 25 minutes.

The Subaru has been in the shop. It blew a head gasket and it is getting a new catalytic convertor, brakes, tires, and I am sure a few other things by the time it passes inspection.

I have had a couple of great flying lessons. My last lesson was the usual mix of good and bad, pride and shame, and other elements of learning. The exciting part was on one of my takeoff rolls a deer ran out in front of me! I was going about 30 or 40 MPH. I am really proud of how I handled it. I killed the throttle, got on the brakes, braked evenly and straight. Then turned around to try again without the deer part. My instructor was very surprised. It had never happened to him before. We both (and others at the airport) have a new story to tell.

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