The Adventures of Travel Penguin

Out for adventure

2008-09-03T21:00:00.001-04:00

Hope the fish is good. Entertain yourselves, I will be back on the 16th.

Chicago Blue Line Train

2008-09-02T19:10:00.003-04:00

Wednesday marks three years that I have been letting you all peek at the world over my beak. There have been some quiet and boring spells when I have struggled to come up with anything interesting and one challenging period were I tried to post every day. I have lost track of how many states and countries we have visited together, lets just say a whole flock of them. I hope you enjoy my birds-eye view of the world and that we have many more years of traveling together. Thursday I leave in search of big fish and bears and won't post again until the 16th. Please don't play the theme song from Titanic, DG get so sentimental, his grandmother had a Titanic tale I should tell you some day.

Hanging out in Chicago

2008-09-01T09:01:00.002-04:00

I watched a couple of guys trying to pull a large fish out of the Chicago River the other day not far from the Wriggley Building. I don't know as I would eat a fish out of that river, and well plastics and I tend to get along very well.

Dinner

2008-08-31T09:59:00.002-04:00

A nice quiet evening and a nice quiet dinner. DG was waiting for a "cheese flight" and a nice imaginative burger, my fish came first, a little tough, but fresh from Lake Michigan.

Navy Pier Over my beak

2008-08-30T13:42:00.002-04:00

This is the view from the hotel in Chicago, that is Navy Pier over my beak. The conference was allot of work in a short time, but downtown Chicago is fun and the food is always good. DG thanks all of you for the warm and funny birthday wishes, he hardly feels a week past 49. I sure hope 49 was not his best-before date.

2008-08-26T19:52:00.002-04:00

DG Turns 50 on Wednesday

We are off to Chicago for the rest of the week

Old But Good

2008-08-24T16:29:00.001-04:00

DG can't lie about his age, he wouldn't want to be mistaken for a Chinese gymnast.

TR

Older then DG and it still works

2008-08-23T19:30:00.002-04:00

DG's first car was an Oldsmobile, not quite as old as this one, but it was a long-long-long time ago. We spend a few minutes talking to the couple who own this one, they went to college the same place that DG did (he was wearing an alumni shirt and this sparked a walk down memory lane.) They said that the local police in their home town have asked them not to drive the "Curved Dash" in their home town, it is street legal but the last time they drove it Dairy Queen three people drove off the street, one of them into a telephone pole watching the old thing go down the street. With DG's advancing age he will be have to be careful in public so that people don't drive off the street.

Special thanks to Kel, WC and Squirrel for the special birthday surprise!

Late summer in the mid south

2008-08-20T20:05:00.002-04:00

I overheard a woman today saying that she had made a terrible mistake. On her way home from work yesterday she stopped at a local store in a small town and didn't lock her car. Well you know what happens at this time in the late summer if you leave a car unlocked. She came out to find two bushels of tomatoes in her back seat. Neighbors trying to unload the bounty of the late summer harvest. She said, at least it wasn't Zucchini this time.

Cute little car

2008-08-19T17:14:00.003-04:00

Rumor has it that DG's uncle Richard has bought an Edsel, not his first, but the first one in a good number of years. DG can remember washing the first one, a convertible, without putting the top up; hard to beleive that no alchol was involved. Not a good thing, but how much harm can you cause to an Edsel? Richard has a long a storied history with cars, the last Edsel was traded on a 64 1/2 Mustang, a white one. Then there was the pickup truck he filled with diesel one night, that didn't have a diesel engine. On well, I am sure that the latest Edsel will add to the long list of Richard stories.

TR

Comfort

2008-08-15T17:37:00.003-04:00

Comfort, this is one of those days when I just want to check into a nice comfy hotel and have people wait on me, call room service and have caviar delivered, 12 more days and I get a couple of nice days in Chicago then another week and we leave on vacation, lots of fresh fish on a cruise.

TR

Good Color for me

2008-08-10T18:45:00.002-04:00

Rolling along in style, I thought that this one was a great color for me. It reminded DG of a car Flying Bob restored. Flying Bob was a childhood friend of DG's father. Bob would rebuild any thing, cars, trucks, boats, airplanes. One time the neighbors called to complain about Bob and all of the restoration projects underway around his house. The city official asked the neighbor to look across the street and tell him if a red airplane was being worked on in the driveway of Bob's house. The neighbor returned to the phone and reported that indeed a red airplane was parked on Bob's driveway and appeared to be in the process of having the engine replaced. The city offical said, " thanks for the update, the red one is mine, the blue wings in the dinning room belong to my daughter's plane. Yellow is a good color for me, I wonder if I can get Bob to paint one yellow for me.

France

2008-08-08T03:59:00.001-04:00

A year ago today I was leaving Normandy, returning to England by ferry boat. Life is good when you are a traveling pengun. Simply good,

TR

No Cameras in the Court Room

2008-08-04T17:36:00.002-04:00

This is as close to taking a picture in the Supreme Court, Court Room as you can get, perched quietly on the railing with the open doors behind me, being very-very quiet.

TR

2008-07-31T19:54:00.001-04:00

It is not everyday that one encounters a penguin and a giant wiener.

TR

A visit to the Wizards

2008-07-29T20:01:00.002-04:00

While in DC in June I stopped by to see the Wizards in the big stone house. As usually DG went around the left side of the building and came in through the entrance that the lawyers use. The chamber was open and we were able to get in for a tour. The Whizzes were all busy whizzing, trying to finish up so that they could take there summer break that ends the first week of October. Not a bad job if you can get it, lifetime tenure and a three month summer break.

TR

Play it again Johnny

2008-07-27T10:03:00.001-04:00

The sidewalks play music in Nashville, now I have heard musical rocks at Disney World, but Johnny Cash songs coming out of a street light control box was a bit of a surprise. The Renaissance Hotel is connected to the convention center, and the hotel is connected to a parking garage by an elevated walkway across what someone thought would be a busy street. Rather then build the typical covered overhead walkway; they built a “Skybridge.” It is huge; glass enclosed and contains a deli and a bar. Here I am on the top of the grand piano in the Skybridge waiting to be discovered by a big time producer.

TR

I'll try not to twang

2008-07-23T20:22:00.002-04:00

I was in Nashville the other day, for 25 hours. It was about 101 degrees in the shade, so I walked as far as I could inside the air conditioned convention center and came out the doors on the far end on my way back to the hotel. I pop out and what do I see across the street, the historic home of the Grand Old Opera. You never know what you will bump into when you are trying to stay cool.

TR

Class

2008-07-20T10:04:00.001-04:00

THE way I was meant to travel. Comfort, elegance and class.

TR

No Pictures

2008-07-18T19:24:00.001-04:00

Ok, Blogger won’t let me upload pictures right now.

During the fire yesterday the police came through DG’s office building telling people to evacuate. DG ran to his office, shut down his computer, grabbed his briefcase and cell phone and headed for the door. About half way down the hall he turned around and went back for his glasses. He then started for the door and realized that the only copy of about 25 hours of work on a major grant proposal was on his office computer. In a panic he decided he should email a copy to his home email address. Of course this involved restarting his computer. He pushed the button and waited, XP takes a minute to boot up. Then there is all of the security software and the synch-programs for the handheld and phone to start up before Outlook will open for mail. He started Outlook to soon causing the blackberry synch program to crash and ask him 50 times if he wanted to send an error message, are you really sure you don’t want to send an error message, it help to improve service for everyone still alive 10 minutes from now. As he is waiting for email to get ready the pyrotechnics in the building across the street start to explode, did I mention that DGs office is on the side of the building facing the fire. He was starting to wonder if he would die in service to his company. He was nearing panic when email finally opened and was wondering out loud, will anyone know that I died trying to safeguard my work, work that could change the destiny of the organization?

Probably not.

TR

The dog ate my homework

2008-07-17T17:28:00.003-04:00

DG had to email a friend and ask her to resend to him the dial in number for a conference call this afternoon. His excuse was that the information was in his office and his office had been evacuated because the fireworks warehouse across the street caught fire. The friend's response was that this was the best "the dog ate my homework" excuse that she had ever heard. He sent her this picture that he took just outside his office window as he was fleeing the building. He knew it was probably time to leave when he could hear the exploding shells. A fireworks warehouse is not a good place to hold a wienie roast. The fire was contained to the fireworks building, it burned for over 4 hours and the 100 year old building is likely a total loss. Just another fun day at the office. Makes me want to go out of town!

TR

It is all a matter of scale

2008-07-15T19:37:00.002-04:00

It is all a matter of scale and proportions. I am a giant, if the Capital is in a small enough scale. I have found that it is a lot easier to be a major force, in a less competitive field. It is easy to stand out in the shallow end of the gene pool. Of course in DC it is hard to tell the shallow end of gene pool from the shallow end of the ethics pool.

TR

Union Station

2008-07-12T08:46:00.003-04:00

Why Amtrak is in trouble. We recently looked into going to Washington DC by train. There is passenger service from Cincinnati. The problem is it only runs a couple of times each week going east and a couple of times a week going west. Now we can cope with the fact that in a couple of years baby squirrel would get there faster riding her big wheel. You can drive there in less then half the time it takes to ride the train. To get there for a conference that starts on Wednesday you have to leave Cincinnati the previous Wednesday and you can't return home until Sunday. If the ticket was free, who would put up with such a poor schedule? Maybe I can swim? How do you get from the Ohio River across to DC?

I have more of these

2008-07-10T19:19:00.002-04:00

After nearly 45 years of marriage, a couple was lying in bed
one evening, when the wife felt the husband begin to fondle her
in ways he hadn't done in quite some time. It almost tickled
as his fingers started at her neck, and then began moving down
past the small of her back. He then caressed her shoulders and
neck.
He then proceeded to place his hand on her left inner arm,
working down her side, passed gently over her buttock and down her leg to her calf.

Then suddenly stopped, rolled over and became silent. As she had become quite aroused by this caressing, she asked in a loving voice, "Honey, that was wonderful. Why did you stop?"

"I found the remote," he mumbled.

Flightless

2008-07-08T19:12:00.002-04:00

I stopped to talk to the FAA about classifying us as flightless. Engineers claim that there is no way that a bumble bee can fly, but it never stopped them and they were never classified as flightless. Unfortunately the person in charge of such classifications was busy changing airline flight numbers and adjusting flight times by 2 minutes to protect the future, security and safety of American air travel. I will try again the next time I am town.