Greetings from Maryland

As mentioned in my post yesterday, today I had the really cool experience of driving 300 miles on the U.S. east coast during Fall, when all of the tree leaves are changing colors. Up to central New Jersey from Philadelphia for a meeting, then back down to Maryland, where I have more meetings tomorrow morning. The photo here at the left is taken along the East Coast Greenway near the Raritan River. The East Coast Greenway is a 3,000-mile-long traffic-free trail connecting cities from Maine to Florida - pretty cool! My little rented Ford "EDGE" SUV - I think that stands for "piece of junk" - did well enough, and it was a very pleasant drive. I sure wish I had my regular digital SLR camera instead of my simple point-and-click camera, but these pics will have to do.

Here (pic on right) is one thing I really love about traveling on the East Coast: things are OLD. On the West Coast where I'm from, if something has been around since 1950 it is considered "old." Just in case you're wondering, I have NOT been around since 1950, so I am NOT old!!! But I love this township (what did they do to the cat???), established in 1666. Do you think that things have changed at all around there in the past 343 years.

And finally for this posting, I saw this (pic on left) customized license plate from the province of Ontario. Based on this, the question goes begging... Do they really allow mummies to drive in Canada???

All 22 photos from today's drive are posted on Facebook (click here) and on Flickr (click here).

Greetings from Philadelphia

Driving my rental car on I-76W late last night after arriving in Philadelphia, I found a retro rock radio station that I really liked, WYSP. "The Rock You Grew Up With" was their catch phrase, and they played some great stuff. Unfortunately, even with the stereo at max volume, I could barely hear it. Cheap rental car stereo? Actually not. It was raining SO HARD that the rain pounding on the car was deafening. Not to digress, but to introduce the pic on the right (a random photo of some really nice homes in a Philly neighborhood - I love the Fall colors in the surrounding hills), you can see that the weather cleared up nicely today. But last night's storm was WICKED!!! It caused my connecting departure from Denver airport to be delayed, and I got in too late for a industry VIP party I was supposed to attend last night.

At the PHL airport, though, as you so often see in many cities in the U.S., there is a big welcome sign (pictured at left) from the city mayor. I had previously not known the name of the Philadelphia mayor. Michael Nutter. Man oh man... especially if I went in to politics, I think I would change my name. My guess is that this guy is a real nutter!!! :-)

Today I spent that day at the GameX trade show here in Philadelphia. A very nice little local show, featuring some talented local developers, as well as some of the larger players in the industry, as well. There were the usual characters dressed up in, say, Star Wars garb playing with light sabers (video here on YouTube), but one of the more entertaining parts of the show was a performance by Buffalo, NY based metal band "ArmCannon" (their MySpace page here). They have done a bunch of stuff for videogames, and they were pretty good. Check out the video below, though. The guitarist in the middle, particularly toward the end of the video, gets in to some serious head-banging. With his long hair, he's quite entertaining to watch. But man... I would have a SERIOUS dizzying headache after this!!!



So anyway... tomorrow I drive about 90 miles to my first meeting in New Jersey, and then about 200 miles to the Maryland destination of my Tuesday morning meeting. 300 miles of east coast driving tomorrow. It's a beautiful time of year here, and I look forward to the drive. Hopefully the weather will hold. Then flying up to Boston Tuesday afternoon.

I've posted more photos on Facebook (click here), and I'm still uploading photos and more videos to Flickr (click here).

Andrew's Eagle Scout Project

For Andrew's Eagle Scout project, he has been building and installing benches along two trails down at the Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge at Lake Lowell in Nampa, Idaho. To the right here is a panoramic view of part of the refuge, with part of one of the trails in view, plus two of the four benches, and even my favorite mother-in-law walking the trail (you'll have to click on the pic to enlarge it to see the detail). :-)

These benches did claim a victim. I had just returned from a business trip to San Francisco and was helping Andrew with the benches in our garage last Friday evening. Now... these things are made of very high quality (and heavy) Trex board and cast iron steel - in total I estimate each bench approaches 200 pounds. One of them fell, and like an idiot I tried to catch it. I would like to claim that my actions saved Andrew from a broken toe or foot, but I think he got out of the way in time, anyway. Emergency Room x-rays later that night revealed no broken bones, thankfully; however, the tendons are severely strained, and it's just a bad sprain. The E.R. doc was talking about surgery it's so bad, but I'm just chalking that up to crazy talk!

Andrew "sold" the benches to sponsors at the refuge's 100th anniversary celebration back in June (pic at left). We've been building the benches at our house, where they had take over our garage. This past Saturday, though, was the big day when we installed the benches down there. With a small crew we installed all four benches in about three-and-a-half hours. I went back there yesterday to remove the "caution" tape now that the cement has set, and to cover the cement bases back up with dirt and rock.

Other than Ma & Pa and Gran'Ma, the two adult scout leaders to come and help install were Delynn Searle and Scott Ableman [pictured at left eating pizza, supplied by Gran'Ma (also pictured) - thank you!]. They're both a crackup and made things really fun, so thank you! Thank you also to Lloyd Lumber of Nampa and Kuna Machine Shop (of Kuna - go figure) for all their advice and at-cost supplies to help make it all possible.

Enjoy the photos in this blog entry, and check out even more that I've posted online. To see them on Flickr, please click here; to see them on Facebook, please click here. And more below.

Working on the Trex boards.

More work on the Trex boards.

Check out the sparks fly as Scott angle-grinds off the protruding bolts.

Delynn pouring in the Quick-Crete for mixing.

Work that post hole digger, Scott!

Steven on one of the installed benches yesterday.

Mark Spitz Watch Out!!!

OK... so perhaps the next Mark Spitz he is not, but he does swim, he does spit, and his name is Mark. :-)

This year, Mark joined the YMCA swim team, and yesterday was his first swim meet, an invitational out in Nampa. He did the 50 freestyle and the 100 backstroke, and he did very well. I've posted a picture of his fine form here, and we look forward to catching Mark at some great swim meets this year!

Christopher and I went to watch the swim meet, while the rest of the family was at Andrew's soccer game in Meridian. Christopher had fun being back in that environment, since he was on his high school swim team.

Go Mark!!!

Family BBQ

Since PFC Christopher J Goodale is home for a four-day weekend, we got the entire family together for a BBQ. It was FAR TOO COLD out to do a swim party/BBQ, but with temps in the mid-40s, I stood outside and BBQ'd, and our nearly-adopted-son Andrew Clark was my "runner" taking food inside to all the warm eaters. :-)

We have had SO MUCH FUN living here in Boise, near where so many of Michelle's cousins (the Dillons) live. Of Steven and Ruth's nine kids, five of them live in this area, and we always have a GREAT time!!! And since the Dillons do this GREAT Haunted House every Halloween, we used the opportunity tonight to plan for the big event. The panoramic photo here is stitched together from five shots taken in our family room during the planning. We planned, and we laughed until we cried. :-) Very good times.

Michelle's cousin Mike took a good half of the photos tonight, as I was pretty busy BBQ'ing for some 30 people. Thanks, Mike! To take a look at all the pics, please click on the Facebook photo album here.

Willing Winter Here

Saturday through Monday the high/lo temps here in Boise were about 49F/34F or so and we got lots of rain. Which meant that we got snow in the mountains around us. Though it's been sunny and warm for the last two days, there's still a little bit of snow visible up on Bogus Basin, our local ski resort. On Monday, snow was all the way down on the foothills immediately around us, at about the 3,500 foot level (our house is at about 2,800 feet). But as you can see, all of that has melted away. :-(

I am willing winter to get here. I love winter!!! And seeing as how we have our Bogus Basin season passes already, let's hope for a Thanksgiving weekend season opening!

Meanwhile, this weekend is supposed to be sunny and low-to-mid-60s. Pool party!!! :-)