Houston TX

Instead of heading home on Thursday, I headed to Houston instead. Yesterday I traveled to car down to Galveston and visited a port facility that is planning on adding a ship loader. I had bid this 2 months ago, and now they area ready to go ahead with this. We talked a bit, but they are not going to actually buy until the end of July. I drive over to th beach, where the temp was 100 F or more. Really hot. People were splasihng in the waves, and sloshing on sun screen. I overnighted in downtown Houston, and visited another customer there this morning who is planning a biomass pellet plant in Alabama, among other locations. I had a good meeting, and then came here to the airport. I'm sitting in the cafeteria area writing call reports and now sending out updates on my blog. I've signed on to the internet here through Boingo. I had a mongthly subscription to this a few years ago, and it was helpful from time to time. Today I am only on for an hour, so I am typing fast. I wanted to send in my call reports while they were fresh on my mind, and so everyone could see them over the weekend, if they were so inclined. I hope you, my readers, are still with me. My intermittent posting probably you are not checking all that often. OK, you can find this later.

June 25 - On the Road

Today is Judy's birthday. I am in an airplane flying to Atlanta for my monthly office trip and not home to treat her well on her special day. Poor timing on my part, I can tell you. Sorry dear. This past weekend was spent with Mark and Anne in Olympia. Judy and I traveled down Friday afternoon, in the terrible Seattle area traffic. It was raining, and this slowed things down a lot. It took 3 hours to get there, when without traffic it takes 90 minutes. That wears a person down a bit. On Saturday Mark and I played golf with Galen Wright and Ken Thompson at Indian Summer Golf Club where Galen and Ken are members. This is a challenging course under good conditions, and we didn't have good conditions. It rained all the damn time, and very hard at some times. We all got soaked. There was a friendly sort of competition organized by Ken, which added to the enjoyment of the day. We played a sort of rolling team structure, so we all got to play with the other guys in a 2 on 2 format. It was fun despite the weather. Judy and Anne toured Olympia, including the Farmer's Market, and found some parks, although they said it was too wet to actually tour the parks. We all met back in the afternoon for a hot shower, and then dinner at Galen and Rondi's house. Very nice. We had a hearty breakfast on Sunday, then a short visit back to the Market where I bought oysters and mushrooms for dinner. Both were excellent. We traveled home in the early afternoon and were able to work in the garden a bit before the end of the day. Shannon came over and shared in the oysters and mushrooms, and did I mention steak for dinner? All her favorite things. This week I'll be in Alpharetta through Thursday, home about midnight. Guests on Friday for dinner with little kids. Should be fun.

Wenatchee Century, or a bit less...

Yesterday was the annual Wenatchee Century ride. It starts at Walla Walla Park in downtown Wenatchee, and now runs up the Wenatchee River valley to Leavenworth, then to Plain, and to Lake Wenatchee and back. It travels on the margins of Highway 2 in just a couple of places, but mostly takes place on back roads, farm roads, and other places high on the sides of the ridges. I rode with 4 others, including Kendall Kreft. My asthma was keeping me from getting full lungs of air, I think, and I was really slow. I am also in great shape for sitting all day in a car, plane, or at my computer, so that may have had something to do with my slow progress. We all met at Leavenworth at 25 miles, but they took off. I rode towards Plain for a while, but eventually turned around and headed back. I did Deadman's Road (huge hill climb) and crossed over the new bridge into Monitor (a first for me) and finished with just over 60 miles overall. KK showed up about an hour behind me, which is tremendous considering he did the full 100 miles. That shows you how different our speeds are. Anyway, it casts a doubt in my mind about the wisdom of trying to do the STP (200 miles) until i get into better shape. Less glf and more cycling? That is what it will take, but I sure do like to play golf...

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.