Pat and Kelly are in Burbank, CA

Kelly (daughter) wanted to celebrate her birthday and her 4 year cancer free anniversary in a special way. She decided that she would try to obtain tickets to both The Price is Right and the Ellen DeGeneres shows. She applied for 4 tickets so that Pat and her sisters could go if they wanted.

The good news is that she got both sets of tickets. The bad news is that Judy and Lisa could not attend.

Sunday Pat and Kelly flew to Los Angeles and then took a long taxi ride (maybe not in miles, but took a long time because of terrible traffic) to Burbank where they stayed in the Courtyard (map).


Monday they got up about 4:00 and went to the studio where The Price is Right is filmed. They were 12th and 13th in line. They did not get called down, but had a great time.

Today the went to the Ellen Show and were 13th and 14th in line (see a pattern here?). Ellen's guest were Candace Bergen and Wanda Sykes. Candace has written a book and each member of the audience got one. But, the great thing was that Ellen gave each member of the audience TWO $500 gift certificates to Best Buy!!

Tomorrow they will tour the huge Warner Brothers Studio lot. After that they will head to the airport to return home.

Hello From Sumner, WA

Hello from Sumner, WA

Friday Morning,  April 17, 2015   (First post of this travelogue)

First of all, I wanted to let folks know that I (we) are still alive and kicking.  This blog is predominately a travelogue and we have not traveled since November of last year.  We are really anxious to get the bus wheels turning and will do so next month. 

This trip, I have traveled to Washington to teach Mechanical Drives and Shaft Alignment classes at Boeing in Auburn WA.   I am staying at the Holiday Inn Express (map).  From my hotel, I get a beautiful view of Mt. Rainier (see photo).  It is unbelievable how majestic that mountain is!

These classes are debuting new hands-on training units.  They are significant improvements over our old equipment.  That said, we anticipated “teething problems” and we have encountered quite a few.  The manager of my NTT group traveled with me and we have worked together to resolve the mostly minor issues.

I am teaching the second shift (2:30 – 11:00).  I rather enjoy that shift, as it gives me all of the morning and part of the afternoon to catch up on some computer projects.  Probably the only drawback is that I have to travel home on Saturday.

My assignments at NTT have been rather sparse in the past year.  That is a mixed bag.  I have really enjoyed being home and working on my car projects, but the hobby/travel fund has taken a big hit.  I have been offered quite a few classes for the second half of this year, but they are public classes, subject to cancellation if they don’t get the minimum number of registrations.  I was scheduled to do a few the first half of this year and none of them met the minimum registration goal.

As I write this, I have been communicating with Pat and we have over 20 inches of snow at the house and it is still snowing hard (see photo).  The weather here has been a bit chilly and there has been some rain, but that is a whole lot better than what is happening in Evergreen!

That is all for this trip.