Forgiveness??

My dear readers, if three are any of you left, my sincere apologies for not writing sooner. I have been everywhere and I've not written a thing to you. Hopefully you are on FB and my occasional anemic postings have given you a clue. Tonight I am in Roseburg, OR. I've traveled here today from home, with stops in Salem and Eugene (2). Tomorrow I travel to Klamath Falls, another 170 miles down the road, and then turn around and head for home. I departed at 5:00 am and arrived at 6:00 pm, so another 13 hours on the road and in offices visiting. Tomorrow should be about the same. On the Good News side the weather here is fabulous - sunny and low 80's. But, I have no bicycle and no golf clubs in the trusty Prius, so it is all work, work, work for me. Last week I was in Atlanta, the the BRUKS offices. Week before that it was Houston at a conference, plus a bonus day visiting 2 plants that have BRUKS equipment. I really liked that part. Next week I will be in Spokane for a day, and then down to Oregon for a day, then home. Busy schedule. Two of the folks I visited with today turned out to be golfers, and one was a U of O scholarship athlete in the sport. I have no allusions of being competitive but they both offered to play with me next time if I can bring my clubs. Score! I considered going back home and retrieving them!

April has zipped by...

To my many readers (or are there any left?), I apologize.  I have truly been on the road, and I have failed to blog about it for a month.  I should be flogged.

Let me give you a brief run down of where I have been recently.

This week:
Monday    I visited the TransAlta Power Plant in Centralia, WA.  They have equipment from BRUKS Rockwood and I was there to see about a disquieting noise it was making.  The plant was completely down, and has been since January due to the abundance of water in the Columbia River (see the Big Questions Cafe blog about this from a month ago), and the low price of natural gas.  Coal power is not currently cost effective in this climate, it seems. Anyway, I was able to offer some good service during their visit and all now seems to be OK.

Wednesday    I flew to Houston, TX, to the IAH airport (George Bush), which is on the north side of town.  I then rented a car and drove to Galveston.  I stayed in the Holiday Inn on the Seawall, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico.  Ordinarily this is no big shakes, but a steady wind was blowing at 20-30 MPH, and there were dozens of ships lying off the harbor, waiting their turn to get into port.  Very pretty sight.  The temp was 86 when I landed, and didn't get below 72 the whole time I visited.  BTW, Hobby Airport is way closer to Galveston that IAH, but I couldn't get good tickets to HOU without going through Atlanta, or some other inconvenient place.  The irony is that I had to drive right by HOU on my way to Galveston.  IAH is about 30 miles north of HOU, and about 70 miles from Galveston.

Thursday     I visited one of these ports, who want to buy a ship loader to export fertilizer and soda ash.  My meeting time was 1:00, so I worked in my room until about 11:00, then checked out and drove around old downtown Galveston, and presented myself at the port at 12:45.  Then I sat and waited in the small room by the door until the company president and the GM were done with their other meeting and were ready to let me in, which happened at about 2:25.  When I did get in we had a good meeting, and I think they are interested in an offer from us for their project.  I had to depart by 4:00 to catch my plane, and I made it fine because there were no traffic problems at that time of day.  So, I spend 48 hours of travel time for a 1:30 meeting.  I hate to put the costs into an equation in this case, the cost per hour would be too terrible to think about.  I got in to SEA at about 11:30 pm PDT, and was in my bed at 12:40 am.  Long day.

OK, so today I'm home.  Sunday Judy and Marilyn depart for a conference in California.  Monday I head to Portland area for a conference.  We all get back on Wednesday, and Thursday Judy and I head to Washington DC for a wedding next weekend.  Wow, what a lot of air time.

I'll try and be a bit better at keeping you all up to date with where I am and where I am going.  I've been a bit lax.  - Des

Heading Home from AB

I am now nicley at home, in fact I am getting ready to head out for the weekend. I typed a bit in the plane on my way home, but have not had a chance to get it posted. well, here it is. I would comment that for some reason, when I compose the text using Pages the paragraph spacings get lost. Sorry about that. Even if I insert estra Returns, it comes out as a block. 20 March 2012 Grande Prairie: it was -15C this morning when I got to the car at 5:50 am. The frost on the windows scraped off easily, thank goodness, and I was at the airport at 6:10. I love these smaller towns with straight roads and no traffic! Last night I watched a movie in my room, Jumper. I liked it. The idea is that there are special people called Jumpers that haven figured out a way to teleport themselves. They can go anywhere they can think of, and they need to spend a good bit of time figuring out where they want to go. Another group thinks the Jumpers should all be dead and are trying to kill them, which sets up the conflict in the film. Although it is a bit predictable the scenery is nice since they go all over the world, and the action can be hectic. The characters on the bad guy side a cardboard cut outs of real people, but the British Jumper is a good relief character. The star is the guy who played young Anakin Skywalker, and although he is sometimes very subdued, he is good wheat counts. 3.5 Stars For dinner I went to Mr. Bills, a local steak restaurant. I has the NY Strip and it was very good. Much better than the last steak I had in Eugene OR at the Outback Steakhouse. Caesar salad and a beer makes a lovely dinner. I was still full this morning when I woke up. Great dreams, I must say. Maybe the combination of the movie with the steak? I'm now in the plane between Edmonton and Abbottsford. I should be home shortly after noon. This has been. A good trip although I would have prefered to be able to get home yesterday.

Grimshaw AB

I am now in my final spot for the day, Grimshaw AB.  This is a small farming/First Nations community in the nothingness of northern Alberta prairie.  There is a large hotel in which I am staying, and a few roadside restaurants and gas stations (often together).  I had a delicious dinner of KFC watching the NCAA BB tournament on TV in my room. 

I had an epiphany on my drive up here this afternoon.  I have seen infinity.  Infinity means something that goes on without end, right?  Well, that is what I saw.  It is either the endlessness of the prairie, or the number of abandoned homesteads and sheds that litter the countryside up here.  If I chose to change my vocation and took up taking pictures of old sheds and old abandoned houses in northern AB I would be at it for the rest of my life.  Literally.  It is amazing.

En Route to Snow

Edmonton, AB: the weather here isn't as bad as I expected. The ground is mostly bare, and it about freezing. I am going to be on the ground here for about about an hour between flights, on my way to Grande Prairie. My flight Fromm Abbotsford here was packed, as always, but the WestJet flight attendants we good and the flight was fast. No complaints from me. Even the border crossing was a quick and painless.

I ordered replacement headlights for the Prius. The first real problem I've had with it, the HID headlights go out while I am driving in the dark. You can flip them off at the switch and then back on, and that will get them going again for a while, but now they are mostly off. Normally this is a simple matter to change, but in the Prius the recommended method to change them is to take the front cowlings off, and disassemble major parts of the front of the car. I've seen UTube videos showing shortcut methods that don't require this degree of work.

The second problem is that the parts store price for the bulbs is $100 each. I've ordered mine on Amazon for $53 each, and they will be delivered on Tuesday. Still not cheap, but moving in the right direction. I should mention that my Prius has fog lights that stay on, so having the headlights go out is not good but does not mean I have no light by which to drive. I just have less light than I would like.

When I get to Grande Prairie I have about a 2 hour drive north to Peace River where I will be tonight. I drive by Sexsmith, which I have always considered to be a strange name for a town. Where did it get that name, anyway? I'll blog more later when I get to my room.

The Madness Begins!

Am I really back in Atlanta? Has it been a month since I've posted a blog about my travels?

I apologize, my patient readers, and can only hope you are Facebook friends with me so you can keep up with my daily (sort of) activities. I've had a busy time at home but not so much with travels as with doing things in my relative neighborhood. I have found that posting pictures on FB is pretty easy, so keeping up with me there is probably a better way as long as you don't mind really short communications.

I am back in Atlanta, and I arrived on Monday evening in the rain and relative cool. My flight was fine, and no problems. I mention this because of the news this morning of a plane that skidded off the taxi way and into a ditch. I was not on that plane. However, I often take a flight that arrives at about that time, so it is possible I will be in the ditch at some future time.

Tonight starts the crazy time of March when the national championship tournament begins - so called March Madness. Missouri is highly rated as the only team where I attended for any time. UNH and OSU are not in the Big Dance, so this is at least one reason you should attend more than one college. I'm currently watching Oregon play LSU in the NIT on TV, which is the alternative post-season activity. Washington plays in an hour. While UW was a pretty good team this year and they won the Pac-12 regular season, they lost in the Pac-12 tournament and so were snubbed by the selection committee for the National title. O well. Feelings were hurt, but at least they get to play on.

I'm going to write the BQ Question next, so I encourage you to have a look. This time I'm doing a question that is a bit different, but one that means a lot to me, and should mean a lot to all people who live in Washington and in the Pacific Northwest in general. I hope the discussion is a good one. It happens on this Friday.

Oregon and Logging?

Once a year a group of people interested in the act of cutting down trees for the good of mankind gets together in the city of Eugene for the Oregon Logging Conference.  It is happening right now.  It goes on for 3 days, and ends on Saturday.  I chose to attend today, or at least to make a showing.  I don't really have a role to play at the Conference this year, but it is good to see people I know and to "wave the flag" for my company.  Jeff from Birmingham AL flew up to be the official representative of BRUKS.  I just showed up because it is my territory and I know everyone.

Today was the day schools organize field trips to the Conference.  Busloads of 4-6th Graders were trooped around to look a the big machines and to have them explained to them.  I don't think they really care about feller-bunchers and slide delimbers, but you never know.  Perhaps their dad's work on one, or maybe a grandpa.  The intent is to make forestry accessible to youngsters, and perhaps to spark some interest in what we all think of as "a nasty, hot, sweaty, cold, muddy, noisy, and dangerous profession that doesn't pay all that well but you do get to work with some pretty cool machines" career.  After all, it is all about the toys, right?  the kid's favorite part is the chainsaw carving demos, when the guy carves owls and fish out of wood as they watch.  Sawdust everywhere, the smell of 2-cycle engines, and lots of noise always attracts a crowd.

We Old Timers just shake our heads and talk about the old days when the Oregon State Fairgrounds was awash in high line yarders, donkeys (machine type, not the animals), and skidders all over the place.  Today it is maybe 20% of what it was "in the day".  True, the new machines are computerized, mechanized, can climb steep hills without slipping, and send the day's work production data to the home office using telemetry in real time, with all the trucks being tracked by GPS!  But is that progress?  Hell, YES!  And you don't even get dirty.

Tomorrow I head home.  The weather today was sunny but cool.  Tomorrow it will rain becasue I have to be out driving in it.  Thanks, Weather Gods!