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Showing posts from November 27, 2022

Upper Peninsula Michigan and Auction Win Outcomes

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I was up in Wisconsin and the UP (upper peninsula) in Michigan. It was a lot of driving after launching/landing in Appleton WI. I got an item off the bucket list by driving across the "Mighty Mac". Altough it was built in the late '50s. It is still the longest suspension span in the Northern hemisphere. It is a crazy long bridge with a crazy long suspension span. It was good to see the bridge in context of the seemingly endless forests of Northern Wisconsin and Michigan. The culture in the two haves of Michigan are noticibly different as you might expect. Great time meeting with folks both in WI and MI. The tractor I won in auction, seems to have paid off. This time I beat the odds. It was a really good deal. I have the "no-key, non-running, may have hydraulic problems, unknown hours" -auction win, running well with minimal cost and time. I have some more tweaks, maintenance and minor fixes but the major risks are gone.

Middle East 2022 trip

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We are back in Atlanta. We took our Thanksgiving holiday primarily in the Middle East. The country list was France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Lebanon. That made four new countries for us bringing our total to 85 Countries visited. We had 9 flight segments in 12 days and capped the trip off with marching in the Macy Day parade in NYC again this year. We are very strict on what we consider a country and we use the US State Department as the standard. We both lost (and gained zero) "countries" using this standard. Examples: Antarctica is not a country and isn't counted. Macau and Hong Kong were indepenpedent counties when visited, but now don't exist and aren't counted. There are a number of unexpected occurances that happen when using the standard over time. Unfortunatly, we got a bug somewhere in our travels that started providing symptoms in NYC. Black Friday was indeed Black Friday for us. We dont have much more recollection than being home in Atlanta. O...