Chazd's (Charles Dowdell's) News Burps

I flew up to the farm in NY. I rented a Kia EV6 Electric car. It was ok. Better than my 2013 Nissan Leaf, but not as nice as my 2024 Tesla Model Y. It had pretty good range and comfort that comes along with an all electric vehicle. They didn't include a mobile chanrger, but did include a useless adapter that plugs into the charge port and allows household electic items to run directly from the battery, crazy. I had to pay 64 cents a kW at the NY sanctioned changing stations. That is 10 times the regular rate for electricity. Totally expected for a NY government franchise that is well known for corruption. https://evolveny.nypa.gov/ . Nevertheless, I felt proud that I could easilty drive a rear wheel drive electric car on my new driveway up to the planned yurt site. I met up with two very old friends that I met in first grade in Irondequoit, NY at Oakview school. Needless to say, that was a long time ago. We remembered some very funny stories of mischief and characterazations of

Relief. Summer seems to be on the way out which means perfect weather here in Duluth Georgia. Gracie the cat being friendly on her "Fun boards". I attached a number of pine boards (fun boards) on the walls in the porch (cat room) afew years ago. She is starting to use them more. I would have thought that a cat would love them. They are up high, great visibility, exclusive use for cats... but the cat makes the final decision. My 2017 Chevy Service Truck just turned over 30k Miles. So I drive it less than 5k a year and most of those miles are on trips, most to the farm in NY and back. Here is a pic of me showing me with a portion of my shop. (It doesn't show my electronics bench or the racks and racks of stuff.) The bench is clean and that was the reason for the pic. It's a very rare situation. I bought a NEW piece of McIntosh audio gear to complement the vintage Mac components. The McIntosh MB25 is a Bluetooth transceiver that allows modern integrations with the vi

Over breakfast today, Angie and I worked out a list of the different airlines we have flown on (that we remember). Some of these airlines are old and long out of buiness, bought-out or done the commercial shuffle. And some are/were very small regional airlines in distant lands. In no order: Malaysia Airlines United American Korean Air Emirates Air Asia MEA (Middle East Airlines) Delta USAIR Copa Aeroflot Ural Airlines UTAir Air Berlin Germanwings Lufthansa Swiss Air Alitalia Iberia PAN AM Alaska Airlines Hawaian Hainan Airlines Air China Norwegian Asiana IcelandAir LAN Argentina Airlines LATAM TAM OceanAir / Avianca Brasil Allegiant Air Avianca Turkish Airlines Buta Airways Azerbaijan Airlines Peoples Express Georgian Air ANA (All Nippon Airlines) JAL (Japan Airlines) Vladivostok Air FinnAir Jet Blue CP Air (Canadian Pacific Air) Dalian Airlines Philippine Airlines A

I took a short business trip to Chattanooga. Actually the Tesla robot car did most of the trip. The artitulated dump truck is sometimes called a lizard truck because the middle bends as you drive and steer. I did some camping as well. I am taking Japanese lessons. The location is show in the pics. 10 weeks of training. Of course, success is mostly about studying. One of my nice deer friends I see almost everyday in the backyard right outside my zoom room. There are a couple of fawns I have been enjoying watching them grow. I saw a nice butterfly just as I had a moment of grief and resentment towards another individual. "Find the butterflies".

I heard some popular traveller YouTube guy bragging about how they had driven a car in over 20 countries. Hmmm. I had to count my overseas driving expereinces. It looks like I have driven a car in over 40 different countries. And that doesn't include Antarctica and a few other places that are overseas territories, not countries (like Gibralter, US Virgin Islands, etc). The most stressful driving expereinces I have had were in Brussels Belgium (the pic is from Brussels), and Upstate NY in a blizzard.

We made another trip to the farm. This time we drove the Tesla. We stayed in a campground halfway and charged the car there. Other than that, 4 stops at superchargers does it. Its a long drive. It is 15 hours or so. I have learned to break the trip up. The supercharger stops are surprisingly fast. The car soaks up a huge amount of electrons ins a very short amouunt of time. Stopping every three hours is normal. Food, Pee and stretching and the far is filed back up ready to go. Amazing. With the Full self drive I have to admit it is fun. The Tesla is my first luxury car.

We went on an overnight to a cool spot on the Tenn-Tom waterway in Mississippi. They don't see Teslas out that way, and I had to answer a number of questions and got some comments on how cool the car is. Camping with the Model Y is surprisingly quite nice. We have a custom memory foam/self-inflating mattress. The camping mode provides air conditioning all night with lots of fresh air and no bugs. Quite pleasant actually. The glass roof on the Tesla helps too. You still get a feeling of being outdoors. Staying in a campground is also very practical since we get AC (it was over 100F and we were at 68F in the car), but we also add about 150 miles to the battery overnight via a 50 amp 220 connection. I don't push the battery hard, never deep-drain and never charge to max capacity. Myself being from the deep-North, trips inside and across the US are interesting and filled with new visuals. Mississppi is at the bottom of most lists as far as US states, but it definately reminds

I had a special and unexpected expereince at work this past week at about 7:30 AM. I glanced out my office window and saw what I thought was a medium size dog. With a closer look it turned out to be a bobcat. Yes, I work in the heavy equipment business, but this was a animal type bobcat not the earthmoving bobcat. I feel privileged to get such a close view of the animal as it walked around and generally checked things out. It was clearly not sick. No rabies, just curious. It also says something nice about the wilderness around my office.

I was on the farm for a couple days. It has been a while for sure. I love the nature. It is perfect without any of my effort. The hayfields look great. The bass pond is great. The woods are great. The new beaver pond appears to be as big as it is going to get. I will be back there in July. I am making plans and funding them.

The Humvee had its first mission in my ownership. It is running well enough to drive it considerable distances with confidence. I wouldn't trust it for a parade yet, but a static display at church on Sunday and Monday was well received. There was also a rare opportunity to capture the entire fleet in one picture (one vehicle is being baby sat as the owner is out of the county).

I stayed on a huge house boat overnight this past week on Lake Alatoona. It was different and fun.

I am amazed at what I see on the road sometimes. I spotted this one in Emerson, GA. It is two tow dollies hitched together (loaded with strapped cargo) pulled with a strapped-on bumper hitch on a rear-end damaged vehicle. It isn't quite a factory setup. I am sure.

Last week I had a number of late meetings for work. My current commute is 50 miles each way and I do it twice a week. The Tesla has been very helpful. It is cheaper to run, it drives itself (yes, I use Full Self Drive (FSD)-Supervised). But also this past week, since I had to make the trip more times with less reason to go home, I decided to rent a campsite at a Bartow County campsite. I would sleep in the Tesla Model Y. It all adds up. The need to be local in Bartow County, a beautiful and quiet lakeside retreat, an SUV with air mattress, specialized HVAC (Tesla "Camping Mode") and electric hook-up to charge the car, and the amenities of a shower, toilets and all the basic domestic requirements. I like my sleep. It went well.

I noticed that often I don't post about things that have been important/changing to me. It's a bit like forgetting to take a picture when something crazy happens, even when the camera is in your hand. Journalists are trained to take the picture first then worry about everything else. I felt I did a better job taking pics in uncomfortable situations when I was in Africa. I was yelled at, threatened, scorned, and vastly outnumbered. It was uncomfortable. But, I did what I needed to do to get the result I wanted. (Video would have better in capturing some of the adversity I created.) Aeroventures is my flying club with about 150 members and about a million dollars in assets. There has been some incredible tension with the board of directors for over a year. I joined the board in that period because of the tension. I figured it would be a skill developer. “Calm seas never made a good sailor.”--Franklin D Roosevelt It was indeed a skill developer. Eventually, there was legal a

Some mornings the birds are so loud it really sets a mood. It is a good mood that should be allowed to saturate. Here is a list of some of the birds I have heard and/or seen between 2014 and 2024. Great Blue Heron Yellow Crowned Night Heron Baltimore Oriole Eastern Bluebird Eastern Screech Owl Veery Red Shouldered Hawk Red Bellied Woodpecker Common Nighthawk Gray Catbird Worm-Eating Warbler Wood Thrush Fish Crow Great Crested Flycatcher Swainson's Thrush American Crow House Finch Belted Kingfisher Carolina Chickadee Pine Warbler House Wren White Throated Sparrow Brown Headed Cowbird Carolina Wren White Breasted Nuthatch Mourning Dove Ruby Throated Hummingbird Eastern Towhee Blue Jay Northern Cardinal Pileated Woodpecker Chickadee Eastern Catbird American Robin Downy Woodpecker Song Sparrow Brown Thrasher Green Heron American Goldfinch Chipping Sparrow Kingfisher Canada Goose Mallard Duck Mocking Bird White Crowned Sparrow Black-hea

We took the new Tesla Model Y up to Tugaloo State park on the border of Georgia and South Carolina. I bought non-OEM cross bars for the canoe. The install was a bit tricky since the mounting is in exact places under the roof glass. The test was successful since I was driving up to 80 mph with 50 mph winds. No issues whatsoever. I did put a line from the bow down to the truck for some additional piece of mind. We did some canoeing, but not as much as hoped due to strong currents in the Tugaloo river. Cooking and eating out in the woods always makes food taste better.

I remember the first "Earth Day" in 1970. I remember it well. I was in third-grade at Oakview Neighborhood School in West Irondequit, NY. We had energized school lessons regarding care for the environment and there was a common thread in our cultural changes that we all need to care more about nature and ourselves. There was almost no opposing dialog. We had seen large fish kills, weird colored skys, and bodies of water we wouldn't even think about swimning in, including Lake Ontario. This was almost 10 years before the awakening of " love canal " in nearby Nigagra Falls NY. Generally, in 1970 the dialog was about polution and what we can do to reduce polution. Polution consisted of many things, trash along the highways, untreated sewage and industrial dumping and runoffs. Don't forget about sound polution, also part of the polution spectrum. We were also significantly concerned about needlessly cutting of trees and wasting paper. Since 1970 we have made g

I have almost two weeks at my new job and they are trusting me with some expensive product :-). I got to operate an excavator and a large off-road dump truck. It was a fun bit of training and since I work out of a training center, quite convienient. That is me in the cab.