I have had a serious of "near zero days" (reference hiking jargon), but I think they mostly just seem like zero days. I am getting stuff done, just not at 100% efficiency. Not sure anyone can move with 100% efficiency... Anyhow, I am planning on starting my next journey on May 1st. -- more details as they unfold. I know what I like and dislike. I know what turns me on and off. It's time for that knowledge to be guidance. We booked a trip to Wyoming/Yellowstone park in a few weeks. It will tackle at least three items that have been on my list 1.) Visit Yellowstone (in winter). 2.) A longish snowmobile trip. 3.) A visit to Wyoming. That will be my 50th state. That will make it all US states, 100 countries and all continents. I will likly be getting involved with MTP (Most Traveled People) https://mtp.travel/ where they break countries into regions. I decided I like this music. DiDuLa - "On the way home"
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I haven't blogged in awhile. I guess I am still decompressing from our most excellent, but crazy vacation in SE Asia. Things really went as planned. We first started considering the trip and these counties over a year ago and bought the transpacific flights 6 months prior. We were making reservations up to the day before we left.
We had 10 flight segments in 14 days. For clarification, we made no tight connections. We did have one long connection in Seoul (12 Hours). We didn't need a hotel since we landed at 5:00 AM and left at 6:00 PM. We had breakfast/brunch in the 4-seasons hotel downtown. I used their business center for some personal business. Never stayed in the hotel. Although the Royal Brunei ticket was to/from Brunei, it was not a layover, but still a a single ticket. Also, we had no morning flights. All flights were in the evening, so we could sleep, albeit in economy. Early morning flights were invented by the devil to totally "F" you up. The money you save is easily taken from your soul.
Airlines: Delta/Korean Air, Thai-AirAsia, Laos Airlines, Vietjet, Scoot!, Royal Brunei, and Philippines Airlines.
All the airlines were great for the most part. It was my second experience with AirAsia (first time was Kuala Lumpur to Chennai India a couple years back). We aren't going to use them again. Scoot! was a better than expected experience. They are a Singaporean LLC (Low-cost Carrier). They called us "Scooties!". Funny enough, but you start to see the utopian Scootie persona and motif in Singapore in public service messaging---I am ok with a sub-utopian life.
We are planning the next trip to Egypt (transoceanic). Then Malta and the Balkans (Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia, etc.).
A pic we got after we got back from Singapore. Gotta love the "hokiness" of Singapore. Like in Korea, we did not stay in the Sands hotel. We had a great/better hotel a short walk away, actually with nice view of the Sands.
And for something totally different: (The Good Bad and Ugly Danish National Symphony) Ennio Morricone
I am back from a speaking engagement at a familiar conference (CIDM) in San Jose California. Afterwards, I met Angie at the ATL airport and headed to the farm and to see my cousins, Aunt and Sister (and my newest relative) in Baltimore and Washington DC. It was a densely scheduled trip, but nothing compared to our typical overseas vacation trips. I have been having educational fun with my recent birthday gift. It is a Radiacode 103. It is a very sensitive scintillation radiation detector. Loads of fun. The 1k µS/hr spike shown is what the carry on baggage x-ray machine doses out. I am glad I wasn't inside the x-ray equipment. Stopping at some antique stores along the way, I found a number of uranium glass pieces. Yes, they are radioactive. Yes, the dose is comparable to that you get from riding in a commercial airplane. I took a couple of pics of property in Upstate NY. Unbelievable. It will beat out images of the best trailer trash anywhere. And yes, the vehicles are systemica...
I am back in SoCal after a complex trip back east. A stop in Georgia for 16 hours, and several stops across NY State. Gracie the cat likes California. She is big on relaxing and enjoys the sunshine. A while back I drove by these people picking up water bottles that fell out of their truck at an intersection. After I took the picture, I decided I should help them pick up the bottles. I spent time working on the farm. We have grasses planted this year. Elsewhere in the Catskill mountains, I ran into this sculptor's show room. I think he has a good eye.
I went and looked at the Solon Pond Mill. I was mistaken last time when I was up there in 2000. It was Summer and everything was overgrown. The mill is about an 1/8 mile from the building I thought might have been the mill. The mill is in rough shape. But everything is still there. I couldn't get underneath to see if the turbine was in good shape. I had heard that it was buried in muck. I suspect it is there, but probably in rough shape as well. It is a combination grist and saw mill, and could be restored to do exactly that. I am going to pass. I was thinking it would make a great homesite however. There is 3.9 acres (a lot for a mill) and you could build a nice house that looked period and work on getting an awesome water powered workshop out back. There is a planner, and it looks like a jig saw and I bet a few other pieces of woodworking equipment in there. All the shafting looks good. It is fun to think about the coolness of starting with logs and making furniture all out in th...
Today was an interesting day. I got up at 4:30, had an hour teleconference. Went to work. Flew to Mt. Aztec and got picked up 3 hours later. The geology, rock formations, ventifacts and views were great. The most interesting thing about this site (in the dry vallys at 6500 ft.) is that it is a new site. It is likely that only 6 people have ever been here. I know them all. We repaired the repeater (I was paged Saturday night when it went down) and it is back up and running. An Astronaut stopped in the shop this afternoon. Don Pettit who spent 3 months about the Space Sation is working with the meteor hunters down here. He stopped by in particular to discuss his needs for a pilot project for the just-announced moon base. They are planning on building a pilot moon base here. Why build it? It is already here. Sounds interesting. You never know who you sit down to dinner with down here. A world class scientist, an Astronaut, Mt. Everest guide, they are all here.
I am looking at new opportunities with the plane. This is the best 172 I think I have flown. It runs very very smooth, climbs like crazy. We will see what we can do. Spring is clearly here in Atlanta, although we are having a cold snap here. It barely got above 40 F today. We have plenty of firewood, and we have been using it. Great Quote: "Fear is not a barrier. It is just a point of departure." --J.A Gamache
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