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Showing posts from June 10, 2007

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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Probably took a while to climb to the start altitude. Just watch. Most impressive at start. Real living. These guys have some spirit.
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I watched a great show last night on PBS, "The Sidewalk Astronomer". It was basically a biographical piece on John Dobson, the extraordinary amateur astronomer. He is very well known in astronomy circles. The "Dobsonian Mount" is named after him. His specialty is building very inexpensive powerful telescopes. A Dobson construction will typically include the base mount (2-axis swivel) of his name sake and a concrete construction tube known as a sonotube (perhaps 10 or 12 inches) for the body of a reflector telescope. He is known for setting up a one of these great scopes on a sidewalk in a city and inviting people to look thru it to a celestial body. What a great thing. He has a great philosophy. I caught a great tidbit in the program last night where he said something like, "People only know the food they eat, the tree, the monkey, the grass, the cat and the dog. People only think in the extents of biology. If we could only get people thinking outside their o...
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A lot has been going on. The weather has been nice. A couple of big things happened as well. Douglas and Becky got married. The wedding was nice and it was good to see folks. Everything went pretty well. They planned well and there was a lot of attention to detail. We ended up putting Rosey down. She was not getting better. In fact, her rear legs were getting worse. She couldn't move her legs at all the last few days. The asprin helped for a while. We took a chaulk gun filled with ground-up horse aspirin and unflavored yogurt or milk and we could get a few asprins into her at a time. She was eating and alert, but she just couldn't stand up, even when we lifted her. Bob and DJ drove their backhoe over to dig the grave. That was big help. RIP Rosey. Bonnie and I both weeped. We are one of the few people who own a llama sling. We have used it on three llamas. Two llamas we lost eventually, one Bonnie saved using the sling and the TLC. I have my tractor ready for mowing. I l...
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