Pat is back in Evergreen, CO

Pat is back in Evergreen, CO

Wednesday evening January 19, 2011 (third travelogue of this trip).

Thought I would summarize Pat's trip.

The convention was very hectic for her. They normally schedule 3 days, but a booking problem forced them to condense everything into two long days. The convention ended late Friday. Pat stayed over Saturday and flew home in the evening. I picked her up about 7:30 PM. She was one tuckered lady.

There were 1000 attendees (limited by the hotel booking). 600 Managers attended the Manager's dinner at the Wildhorse Saloon (they booked the whole facility).

As is always the case, Pat comes home enthusiastic about building her business. This time was no exception. She has started her Stampin Lady blog (here). In addition, she has subscribed to a great email marketing service that makes sending professional newsletters much easier.

We hope that you will visit her blog and sign up for her newsletter.

That is all for now.

Hello from Nashville, TN – Number 2

Hello from Nashville, TN – Number 2

Thursday morning January 13, 2011 (Second travelogue of this trip).

Hey, this is kind of fun. Pat has been sending me some photos from her phone and I will include a few of them. We have not been able to talk much, but I am gathering from the photos that she is having a wonderful time – as usual.

My wonderful wife of 47 years!

First, she has described the Gaylord hotel as “unbelievable”. It must be spectacular and very luxurious. I asked her if there was any signs of the flood damage from this the terrible floods this spring and she said that she did not see any. 

Pat at the hotel

A view of the hotel

For those of you who do not know much about Pat's association with Stampin' Up!, I need to give you some background. First of all, the Stampin' Up website will tell you a bit about the company (click here). Pat has been a demonstrator for them for over 11 years. She maintains the executive level and has almost 80 other demonstrators in her organization. She has earned eight wonderful cruises/trips. The last one was in 2009 to Hawaii (documented in our blog starting here). She has a website that ultimately links with her page on the SU website (here).

Stampin' Up! is a wonderful company with fantastic products. But, more importantly, they truly appreciate their demonstrators and treat them very well. I often say that it would be difficult to earn a large income with the company, but the experience is unmatched. It is wonderful to attend one of the conventions, or go on one of their cruises, and see how much positive impact that the company has on these demonstrators.

I mentioned the fact in the last blog that Pat was invited (as were some of her downline who have achieved the manager level) to the Manager's dinner  last night. Stampin' Up! always makes this a “big deal”. They do not tell the managers where the dinner will be held until they board the buses. Last night's dinner was at the Wildhorse Saloon (link). I have not talked to her since that dinner, but one of the photos suggests that they had a lot of fun {grin}.

I probably need to clarify “fun”. When we attend the functions, it is interesting to note that there is almost no drinking (indeed, Pat can not drink alcohol because or her Rheumatoid Arthritis medications). We often laugh at the fact that when SU charters a large ship for the cruises, the ship companies must cringe – the bar charges must be almost nonexistent.

The ladies at the Wildhorse Saloon

I mentioned in the last post that the ladies love to swap cards. The photo below shows that activity, but not the frenzied level that I have witnessed {grin}

Swapping cards

I had intended this post to be a simple introduction to some photos that Pat sent me, but I have rambled on – as usual.

That is all for now.

Hello from Nashville, TN

Hello from Nashville, TN

Wednesday morning   January 12, 2011   (First travelogue of this trip).

Well, this will be a strange travelogue.  You see, I am writing this from Evergreen, CO, but Pat is in Nashville for a Stampin' Up! Leadership Convention. 

Yesterday, I drove her to the airport so that she could attempt to get to Nashville.  I use the word “attempt” advisedly, as that part of the country is having terrible weather and Nashville was basically shut down Monday and the airport was closed.  It turns out that her flight was only delayed about an hour.

The snow and ice have played havoc with the area.  Several of the demonstrators came in early with the intent of doing some sightseeing on Monday.  With the weather conditions, that did not happen.

Pat is staying at the Gaylord Hotel (link) in the Opryland complex (map).  Actually she spent last night at a different hotel, as the Gaylord was booked up for another convention.  She is getting ready to move today.

Apparently, the hotel adjoins the conference center so the demonstrators will not have to brave the elements.  That said, she will be attending the Manager's Dinner tonight and that is off premises.  I think she said that they will have buses.

I have only experienced these kinds of gatherings a few times.  Obviously, there was a lot of similar activities on the cruises.  I did go with Pat to a Stampin' Up! Convention in Salt Lake city a couple of years ago.  I can not begin to describe to you the energy that is involved with these events.  There are hundreds of demonstrators, all having a huge amount of fun and learning all kinds of neat stuff.

One activity that really defies description is what they call swapping.  The demonstrators make up items with the Stampin' Up! products  and then swap with each other to get new ideas.  Pat typically does 100-200 cards and or decorative items (this year, a neat candy holder).  I witnessed one swapping session that was nothing short of a fish feeding frenzy.  That is not a great picture, but I think you get the idea {grin}.

She is usually very busy and only has a few minutes to talk on the phone.  I will try to pass on some details as I get them.

That is all for now.

Hello from Dillon, CO

Hello from Dillon, CO

Wednesday morning    December 29, 2010  

We are at our daughter and her family's great townhouse in Dillon, CO (map).  They bought this townhouse as an investment/get away.  The townhouse is currently leased by a company to house one of the working families.  They are between families and Kelly and Damon have been able to enjoy their town house for the holiday season. 

Their town house is wonderfully decorated and very comfortable.  We are so glad that they invited us to stay with them.  We came up Monday afternoon and will leave for home today.  We would like to stay longer, but things have been quite hectic for the past few weeks and we have quite a few things that need to get done in the next couple of days.

Yesterday morning we just plain vegged out.  That was good for all of us.  Our daughter and her family are always on the go and they need to relax a bit.  In the afternoon, we did a bit of driving around and then Kelly and Damon and the two girls went sledding while Pat and I watched from the top of the hill.  They had a ball.  After that we went snowshoeing into the campground where we will have our family vacation around the fourth of July.  We scouted out the campsites that we have reserved and they look great.

The granddaughters (5 and 7) are great at snowshoeing.  The day was beautiful, and the snow was great.  They have had a lot of snow in the area and we were in “virgin” snow.  I was glad that I could keep up with them.

This area has been devastated by the pine bark beetle.  This beetle attacks the lodgepole pine trees.  I was happy to see that there were pine species that have survived and there are also some aspen in the area.

Today we may try to get in a quick snowshoe session and then we will head home this afternoon.  We will take the scenic route home.  That will take us from Dillon to Breckenridge, then to Fairplay and home via US 285.

As our readers have noted, we have not posted in quite some time.  We created this blog as a travelogue and we have not done much traveling lately.  Our travel plans for next year are up in the air.  We have canceled our trip to Quartzsite in January.   We have made the decision that we will not be attending trade shows for the foreseeable future.  The RV market is in the toilet and the trade show attendance is way down.  It just does not make any sense to speed a lot of money getting to the shows and then not selling enough to pay for the trip. 

Instead, we have a few great personal trips lined up.  The first tentative trip is to the California and Nevada area in March to attend a couple of races and “veg out” in our favorite remote area south of Death Valley:  Shoshone

As I have noted in the past, if you want to follow our travels, it might be best to sign up for email notification so that you will know when we post.

That is all for this trip

Hello from the Orange County/John Wayne airport

Hello from the Orange County/John Wayne airport

Sunday morning November 14, 2010 (third travelogue of this trip).

I wanted to do a quick update on our testing. It went very well!!

Because of a confidentially agreement, I am not able to include details or photos.

I can say that we did several tests and our modules performed flawlessly! The person we are working with seemed very pleased and is quite anxious to develop the market.

The weather has been so nice here. Not sure I am ready to head back to the cold weather in CO {grin}.

That is all for now.

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.

Hello from Anaheim, CA

Hello from Anaheim, CA

Wednesday night    November 10, 2010   (First travelogue of this trip).

I am in Anaheim, CA without the bus and Pat.  I flew here today.  More about that in a paragraph or two.

I did not get a chance to finish the last travelogue.  When we left off, we were at sea and running several hours behind.  The problem was that we were not able to leave the pier in Cozumel due to high winds.  About half way from Cozumel to Miami, the captain announced that they would arrive in Miami at 10:00 AM on Saturday (over two hours late).  That caused us considerable concern about making our flight.  I got on the internet and started corresponding with our travel agent.  She did some work with South West Airlines to see what our options were.  As it turns out, we were at the pier by 9:00 AM and easily made our flight.  Everyone noted the much faster speed of the ship on that leg of the trip.  I would hate to pay the fuel bill for that trip!!!

In the last blog I was discussing the fact that this was not our favorite ship.  Indeed, it was not our favorite cruise line.  Pat loves the formal dining format where you have an assigned table in a very fancy dining room.  Everything on the  menu is included and you can order as much as you want.  After dinner you can order a cappuccino – also included.  Dress code is pretty strict.  Most have at least one “formal” night.  I, on the other hand like the Norwegian Cruise Line “Freestyle Cruising” where you go to one of perhaps 10 or more restaurants.  The dress code is informal and you don't have assigned seats.  It seemed neat to me the last time we were on Norwegian.  Not so this time.  There were 13 restaurants (including the pool bar).  Out of the 13 only 4 were no cost.  The rest cost between $10 and $30.  The beloved room service pizza for the kids is now $5 and the cappuccino is no longer include in the cruise fee.  That just goes against our grain.  A major enjoyable feature of cruises is the fact that the food is great and included in the cost of the cruise.  Perhaps that is a thing of the past.

Now lets talk about this trip.  I am staying at the Embassy Suites hotel in Anaheim (map).  This is a business trip to test a new product that we have developed.  I will also get in one day at the NHRA drag races at Pomona.  That will allow me to see some old friends.

As background, a bit over a year ago, we were approached by a major vendor to the specialized heavy duty vehicle market.  Our fire detection system was very interesting to him and would compliment the gas detection system he markets to the natural gas powered commercial vehicles (mandated by the government).  We did a preliminary design of a very comprehensive gas detection/fire detection system.  The project became very complex and we decided to focus on the fire detection phase.  A couple of months ago we finished developing a rather sophisticated detection system that would function with an new generation fire suppression system developed by the people who manufacture the suppression system that I market to the RV market.  All of our testing was very successful, but the customer wanted to work with one of his customers to do some joint testing.

Our customer has arranged to do some testing at a refuse facility that has a fleet of trash trucks.  These trucks experience fires periodically and it appears to be a good market.

I will try to detail the event of the next few days as time permits.