Chazd's (Charles Dowdell's) News Burps

Angie and I decided to go hiking rather than flying this weekend. The sports car ran well through the mountain roads. We had to put the top up for a while for rain. We hiked on the Appalachian trail from Tesnatee gap almost to low gap and back. Lots of vertical climbing. Very tiring.

We were in a car wreck today. Thankfully we were not in the middle of it and most of all we were not hurt. There were injuries in the primary accident cars. We were sitting at a light a car or two back from the intersection. The damage to the fish car is minimal.

This weekend we are catching up on sleep and recuperating. We did lots of yard work as well.

I am back from San Francisco. I spoke at a conference. I like the public speaking and sharing. I also like the learning at conferences. It is pretty weird working for an Ag equipment manufacturer and being in the midst of mostly software and more information focused folks. It is particularly fun in some dimensions. In the last month I have been in Atlanta only a few days. On the plane on the way back this time I was working on my next speaking privilege in Florida in Sept. As a special treat, my two dearest friends from Antarctica met me for dinner. 12 seasons on the ice. Stars of documentaries. It was a great feeling to relive some of the experience I forgot. Even after all these years they said my experience was "charmed" because in just one season I had a combination of great experiences ranging from mountain tops, penguin camps, south pole, ships, whales and so on. I was reminded about how we jumped (no tethers, no photos) across ice boulders from the ice breaker to the s

I was in NY. One item was to get the corn started on 50 acres. The Ford Edge did pretty good in the fields. I know where the trouble spots would be; it did pretty well given street tires. It seemed weird using the backup camera in the field. It was very good to walk the property. I can confirm the woods does not need my help knowing how to grow. Spring is sprung on the farm. It was a really tough winter.

We are back from a complex trip in Western and Eastern Europe. In ten days it included the following countries: Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Finland, and The Netherlands. Angie was in Moscow and we met in Poland. On the weekend, we drove across the Lithuania/Russia border. We weren't sure about the realities of crossing the border and we had several different contingency plans. We ended up executing a form of our plan C. We had to spend extra time getting processed since the guards had likely never seen a US passport and Visa. Actually it took two tries. We were refused exit at a backwoods Poland-Russia border. Needless to say it was quite interesting. All the guards at all sites were pleasant and helpful. Only one guard of the 6 sites spoke any English. It was all a trip through part of the Prussian empire in my thinking. Looking at the very nice architecture from the Prussians in disrepair was very evident. We saw a number of structures that were destroyed in WWII, never t