Daddy / Daughter Campout 2008

On Top of The World!

Every year my friend Lynn Martin and I have a campout with two of our girls. We are sad since they are moving to New Hampshire in a couple of weeks but we were able to get our camping trip in this year with Erika and Morgan. This is always a special time and I think the Dad's love it as much as the girls. This year we found a really nice campground not too far away and had a wonderful weekend. Some fun pics below!

Lot's of Rocks to Climb

Daddy and Erika - How do we get down?

Lynn and Morgan - nice!



They found the Geocache - nice hike and a perfect day

Geocache goodies in front of an old miners cabin

Our campground and "Old Bessie"

More adventures of Curious Jim and George!

It has been another busy week. I flew out on Friday morning to Montreal for the annual Montreal Grand Prix. Our distributor, Future Electronics hosts a very nice annual executive event and also have a great suite in the paddock club above the pits at the raceway. The Formula One is an amazing race and it is difficult to describe the sensation of being there and feeling and hearing the power of these cars. We also have access to the pits so we can go right up to the cars and check them out - pretty cool. Last year Angela joined me but felt that she could not go this year and as it turns out with all of the illnesses that the kids are experiencing - she was right. The event is nice but it is actually work - especially if your spouse is not there since you are talking about work the entire time and always have to be "on". On Monday morning George and I flew to Detroit for some additional customer meetings. We stayed in a very cool historic hotel which was built by Henry Ford on the Ford campus in 1931 and is now a Marriott property - very nice. Here is a picture of Henry Ford in the early 1900s. The picture was in our room and George climbed up for a closer look. This morning we got up early and flew from Detroit to Des Moines, Iowa. These are places I have never been before so it is interesting to see. Right now it is a little iffy since there are floods everywhere. They are sandbagging the road in front of our hotel right now - good thing I am on the 11th floor. I just hope I can get on a flight home tomorrow after our last meeting. Today one of our meetings was in Oskoloosa, Iowa. We visited a customer that does a lot of stadium lighting, most of the major baseball and football stadiums, racetracks etc. are lit by them - they also do a lot of set lighting for Hollywood. George and I saw a cool statue in the town square of an Indian Chief so he wanted to get his picture taken - I obliged him. Below is some information on the Chief that I got on Wikipedia.

Mahaska, or White Cloud, (1784 – 1834) was a chief of the Native American Iowa tribe.
Mahaska became chief at an early age after killing several enemy Sioux to avenge his father’s death. He was later imprisoned in St. Louis, Missouri for killing a French trader, before he escaped and led a raid against the Osage. Afterward, he decided that his father’s death was finally avenged, so he laid down his arms and adopted the lifestyle of the white settlers, building a log home and farming. He refused to let his braves avenge the death of an Ioway chief named Crane at the hands of Omaha Indians in 1833, and when several Ioway killed six Omahas, Mahaska assisted in their arrest.
The next year one of the Ioway escaped from Fort Leavenworth and killed Mahaska.
Chief Mahaska became a symbol of the virtues of his native lifestyle and of the possibility of peace between natives and settlers.

Barnstorming through Europe with Jim and George!

I have been a little hit and miss on the blog and will likely always be so... only so many hours in the day. At any rate, I am back in Europe again this week, UK and Denmark. I visited some customers in the UK on Monday and then conducted business reviews with my sales team and distributor in London on Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday I was in Denmark seeing customers and heading home today (Friday)! Because I had to be in London early Monday morning I flew in on Sunday. I had some time when I arrived on Sunday afternoon and visited Windsor castle, weekend residence of the queen. I have not been there in probably close to 15 years so it was nice to go back. The castle is great and is the oldest continually inhabited castle in the world, and yes, the Queen was in residence although we did not have tea together. I was able to get a quick tour of the castle in... it's pretty big so I skipped the royal doll room! As usual, I have some challenges follwing the rules and was reprimanded for taking photos of the portrait of Angela's great, x,x,x,x, Grandfather, the Duke of Wellington in the Waterloo room. No worries, if you just go around to another room and then duck back under the ropes quickly you can still take a picture without being seen :-) I also wanted to see St. George's Cathedral which is on the castle grounds but it was closed on Sunday unless you attended a service... therefore, insta-catholic! Seriously, I decided that since I was unable to go to our church it was best to at least have some kind of worship so I attened the evening mass or "Evensong". It was a memorable event filled with pageantry and tradition, although I am not thinking of changing teams I am glad I attended. You were also not supposed to take pictures in the chapel but I found that if you crossed your leg and surreptitiously held the camera under your knee you can get a few good shots. Angela swears this was punishment but later my telephone (incl. camera) froze and I had to reset it thereby losing all of my ill gotten photos - serves me right!

Angela and Brock asked me to also take a few photos with his curious George so I did! I suspect that this may be an ongoing tradition. Below are a few photos of him.

George on his 1st Ferrari George on a mailbox in Denmark

On Thursday evening I had a wonderful visit with our friends and former neighbors Michael, Helle and Cornelius Hasselris at their beautiful estate in Birkerod, Denmark (approx 20 miles outside of Copenhagen). This was a last minute addition to the agenda as I had some time that evening and they were fortunately home and invited me to visit them. They have a beautiful estate on 25 hectares with thousands of trees, 38 horses and several lovely ponds. In fact, they also have deer on the property and shot one the previous evening which we enjoyed for dinner! The visit was a highlight for me and I was very glad that we were able to get together. Both Michael and Helle work for IBM and were formerly on assignment to the US where they resided across the street from us. It was fantastic reuniting with them again and enjoying a wonderful meal together on one of their patios... it is a world away from Mead! The days in Scandanavia are quite long and the conversation was good so before we were aware it was already 10:30pm. Some photos below... of course, with George.

Michael and Helle - thanks a ton it was great to see you!

One of their ponds viewed from the patio yet another pond!

It turns out Michael is a fantastic carpenter (I had no idea) He built a fort for Cornelius which is far too large to capture in this photo but very cool nonetheless - way to go Michael!

One last anecdote and then it is time to get on the plane... I took the train back from Michael and Helle's to the airport Hitlon where I was staying. Needless to say, it was very late and I was very tired after a long week. I fell asleep on the train - Uh Oh! I was fighting to keep my eyes open and finally succumed. Needless to say, I missed my stop but only by one station. However, that particular staion was an important one since it was some distance from the previous one... when I woke up I was in Sweden, just in time for meatballs and lingonberries! Not a great situation to be in when it is 12:30 in the morning and you have no Swedish currency but I perservered and eventually got back to the hotel OK - a little chagrined but definitely wide awake!