Happy Birthday, Travel Schlepp!

Well... its been 10 years already--ten years since Karl opened a small box and found the furry one inside. And with that first trip to Vienna combined with his first digital camera, we've had 10 years of adventures together. Here's the very first photo of me: #61 taken on Jan. 22, 1999, in Hotel am Stephansplatz:.

We were working with the UNSCR 678 Action Team, the fellows who were keeping Saddam from getting the big, bad bomb. Nuclear disarmament inspections in Iraq had been halted, but Gary Dillon wisely realized that the pause was the time to bring the Action Team up to date with its information systems.

Debbie and I worked on their intranet, their inspection planning systems, and their analysis tools. We were probably just getting started with GIS, mostly by giving Martin a surplus copy of an old ArcInfo license.

Then it was off to Amsterdam. Here Karl and I lounge around the hotel room before going out and exploring the town. The next day it snowed and was icy everywhere. We took a train to The Hague, gave an ACE-IT demonstration at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, took the train back to the the airport, and late in the evening caught our flight back to the States.

Since then its been trips from Ankara to Shannon, Mumbai to Cairo. Eventually, Karl would take over 7,000 photos on that old reliable Kodak. Even though its been retired, there have been over 7,000 photos taken on a second Kodak. The way things are going, the second 10 years will have even more trips to more exotic locations--gotta keep the bad guys from getting those big, bad bombs.