Hello from Houma, LA

Hello from Houma, LA

Monday evening,  June 9, 2014   (First post of this travelogue)

Well we got home from Iowa on Friday and I flew to New Orleans on Sunday.  I am currently staying at the Wingate hotel in Houma (map).  This trip is do teach a shaft alignment class at the BP training headquarters.  It is a two day class and I fly home tomorrow night. 

The BP training facilities are fantastic.  The building appears to be very new and  training rooms are very well equipped.  They provide free a buffet breakfast and lunch for the folks attending the training classes (several going on at once). 

There are five students and they are really great to work with.  This is the second shaft alignment class I have taught with the new laser alignment equipment.  It makes a huge difference in the quality of the class.  Besides that, the student love to play with our new “toy”.

Last night and tonight I have eaten Cajun food (I am in the heart of Cajun country).  Sunday night was an OK tourist type place, but tonight another instructor and I went to a well known local restaurant (1921 Seafood bar (link) ).  I tried the boiled Crawfish (see photo below) and it was great.  I also had two (!) bowls of fantastic “After the Boil Soup” which is kind of a seafood gumbo.  YUM!  And I am not a seafood lover!

That is all for now (been up since 3:00 and getting very tired).

Hello from Prescott, IA

Hello from Prescott, IA

Wednesday Evening,  June 4, 2014   (Second post of this travelogue)

I wanted to make another couple of observations about the truck show.  As I was walking the rows of trucks for the third day (Saturday), I did something I hardly ever do at these shows – looked at some of the attendees.  I could not believe my eyes - our next door neighbor (diagonal to the rear from our house) was walking down the aisle with his wife.  He is a truck nut as well.  Small world!  He told me that at the dinner the night before, they announced that there were 687 trucks at the event!

My trip back to Prescott was uneventful, albeit a bit long.  Sunday we went to Guthrie Center, IA to attend a pig show that two of our young relatives were participating in.  It was a really fun event.  They also had a goat and sheep show as well, but we did not stick around, as it was getting pretty warm.

As we normally do, we have been making the rounds of the relatives.  That is always fun!  They are great folks back here and I always enjoy learning about the lifestyle and hearing some of the fun stories.

We love to travel here in the bus.  Each morning we wake up to a beautifully view of the rolling Iowa hills and the beautiful crops.  We have literally been watching the corn grow.  Since we arrived, the corn has grown perhaps 10 inches.  The photo below does not do justice to the beauty of the area.

Last night was a bit eventful.  The national news had been talking for two days about a huge storm that was headed our way.  Indeed, it was huge and created quite a bit of damage in the area.  At our location, we only got a small amount of hail, but we got almost 4.5 inches of rain in a very short time.  South of us they had softball size hail, very high “straight line” winds and some places got over 7 inches of rain!  Today Bill and I drove around the area south of Prescott and saw some of the damage.  Many of the fields were stripped by the hail.  We saw one machine shed that had been blown across the road and two silos that were destroyed.  The TV showed many cars that had large amounts of damage.

Tomorrow we start home.  It looks like we will be travelling in the rain a bit.  Hopefully the wind will not be a problem.

That is all for now.