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Showing posts from December, 2011

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...
Look at this ticket I booked for February: Airfare quoted amount: $365.00 USD Taxes and fees: $617.50 USD Total Estimated Cost: $982.50 USD
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Success! I did my "long cross country" today. 3.1 hours (includes all the taxi and run-up time) and 215 nautical miles. I had a cold when I started. Now I have a bit of cough from the stress and dry thin air. I wasn't in the best shape to do the flight, but it was manageable. Now that I am looking back, it was worth pushing through. It was a very memorable view and experience descending over Lake Hartwell South Carolina. I forgot to take a picture.(This pic is from the web but represents my memory well only at a bit lower altitude.) Flight Planning at SkyVector.com
From Bloomberg 12-3-11. Try and tell me this isn't scary. We would all be in "occupy wherever" if we could allow ourselves to understand this situation. The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing. The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue. Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of th...
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Eric took a few pics of some property he is looking at today. We had the window open. The open window caused more drag that I thought it would.

My normal routines in Atlanta and NY

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I have been busy at work. It is getting to the end of the year. There are a lot of things to finish up. I am working a lot this weekend. This weekend is the first weekend of the month. My favorite weekend when I am in Atlanta. I have all the regular aviation activities that happen on the first Saturday. I am flying after the EAA 690 pancake breakfast tomorrow. Always a good time. I am going to miss a presentation from a new turbine engine manufacturer and the class down at American Eagles flight school. My leadership class is going well on Thursday nights. I certainly have got to know a bunch of people in the area a lot better and the spiritual context gives me a lot to think about. We had some conversation about Sir Edmund Hillary this week. Our paths crossed in Antarctica, spiritually a couple other times. It looks like I am not traveling that much for a while. I am headed up to Boston after Christmas and I have some trips somewhat emerging for Europe, North America and South ...