Hello from Orange County Airport.

Hello from Orange County Airport.

Saturday afternoon April, 23 2011 (First travelogue of this trip).

I am making a quick post that is sort of a travelogue – the main reason we started this blog. Wednesday I flew from Denver to Orange County Airport and then took the shuttle to the Embassy Suites (map) in Anaheim. This trip was to work with our customer to do some further fire detection/suppression system testing. I wrote about the last trip (here).

The actual testing took place Thursday, Friday, and this morning. I believe the testing went very well. I have been asked by the customer to not discuss details.

The weather could not have been better. They have been having a lot of rain in the LA area. It was overcast, but we did not have rain, The temperatures were in the mid 60s. Those temperatures are unseasonably low which made the working conditions ideal.

I had been concerned about the possibility of spring break and a huge number of school kids at hotel. It was not all that bad. The hotel has an Anaheim address, but it is not located in the tourist area of the city. Indeed, it is in a pretty industrial area. They do, however, get their share of tourists. The kids I saw this morning at breakfast were well behaved and were from some school band.

We got finished today at about 11:30. I had arranged for late checkout, so I was able to take a much needed shower before traveling to the airport with two other people involved in the project.

Pat tells me that they expect snow in Evergreen tonight, so it will be a bit of thermal shock. It also snowed on Thursday at our house, so I missed that as well. At this point in the game, our drought is so bad that we will gladly take moisture in any form. There have been at least three small forest fires within 25-30 miles of the house, so we are concerned.

Well, as I was writing this, they called me to the podium and asked if I minded if they switched me to stretched seating so that they could accommodate a family. I told them that I would sacrifice {grin}.

That is all for this trip.

Hello again from Anaheim, CA

Hello again from Anaheim, CA

Friday morning   November 12, 2010   (second travelogue of this trip).

If you have been following my posts in the past week or two, you know that Pat and I were not very thrilled with some aspects of the Norwegian cruise ship – mostly design issues.  However, after following the terrible situation on the Carnival ship Splendor, I guess my bitching pales in comparison to what those folks had to endure.  At least we were not served Spam and our toilets worked {grin}.  I  also want to re-emphasize that the overall cruise was quite fun – primarily because we were with some wonderful family and friends.

As we were departing the ship last week, I began to develop all of the symptoms of a cold.  Indeed, it looked like I would be under the weather for this trip (not fun to fly when you are congested).  However, I started my regimen of  Zinc and Vitamin C and it seems that I avoided the worst of the cold symptoms.  I feel pretty good and have only minimal evidence of a cold.

Yesterday was a fun day.  Gary (the person we designed the new system for) is a drag racing fan, so we planned on going to the Thursday qualifying session of the final NHRA  national race of the year.

Before we did that, we went to the location where we will be doing our testing to make sure they were ready for us.  This is a huge facility with probably 100 or more trash truck.  Most are powered with compressed natural gas engines.  When one thinks of a trash truck, the picture is not pretty.  However, these trucks are immaculate and most look like they are brand new.  Each truck is washed each day and the maintenance seems to be top notch (we briefly toured the maintenance area).  They seemed ready for our testing.  We will do quite a bit of the setup this  afternoon and the actual tests will be performed tomorrow (Saturday) when the yard will not be as active.

We then went to Pomona and I had a blast at the races.  I met up with a very good friend (a good Gates customer) and we spent most of the day together.  Steve and my customer hit is off well, so it all fit together nicely. I even got to put on my “blower belt hat” on and worked with Steve in one of the pits of a top Fuel Funny Car.  Steve was delivering a test belt and we got to talk quite a bit to the crew about the operation of the car and the installation of the test belt.  Gary, my customer, had a great time in that pit area.  I also got to say hi to a good friend/racer that I worked with many years ago.  Lou, has terminal cancer and I really wanted to talk to him before it was too late.

My relationship with Steve started out as a customer/vendor when I worked for Gates.  That quickly changed to great personal friendship.  Some folks say we look like twins (he has more hair) and to a degree, I think we both feel like we are twins.  We have kept in touch over the years and this year we  have gotten together twice.  We must act like a couple of old ladies trying to catch up on all of the events of the past few years {big grin}.

We got to see one round of the nitro car qualifications and that was icing on the cake!

That is all for today.