Travel Schlepp on the go again

Its traveling time again for Travel Schlepp. This time its to Seattle, a favorite town, home ofBarb, PC, and Gus. We'll be just in time for the Northwest Flower and Garden Show plus we'll have time to catch up with John Olsen, who retired from Sandia last year and relocated to Whidbey Island. Expect photos and podcasts from the Great Pacific Northwet in the days ahead.

Meanwhile, the latest installment of Schlepp's novella has been posted. Enjoy!

Travel Schlepp's Technical Side

You don't travel all over the world building databases, designing web portals, and such without picking up a few tricks. Head over to my technical blog at Plone Metrics. Also, be on the lookout for my third installment on the novella this weekend.

New Arrivals--New Podcasts

Over the holidays we picked up a polar bear named Chili Bear aka Chilly Bear and a striped cat. The cat apparently has amnesia and that, along with Chili Bear, will roll into the novella's story line in Chapter Five. Below is a Christmas photo of Lady Jenny, Miss Maddy, Chili, Big Schlepp, Travel Schlepp, and the cat with no name.















For my birthday I received a takaan, a wooden teddy bear that was designed to be a papier-mâché mold. He's about 15" high and has a rather rigid pose, but looks to be a formidable part of the Home Front Brigade. He too will be worked into the story.

Speaking of which, another section of Chapter One has been recorded and we hope to have another podcast online this weekend.

New Podcast

As promised, I've uploaded chapter 1, part 1 of Schlepp's new novella. Can a small bear originally from Seal Rock, Oregon rescue his friend Lightfeather? How 'bout save the world? If that's not enough, he's got to save the entire galaxy! Good thing he's got lots of help--Terrance the Tortoise and Louie, a silver leaf monkey from New Orleans, not to mention the entire Bears Home Front Brigade.

More to come on approximately a weekly basis.

Fish & Wildlife Drag Feet While Interior Sells Out Polar Bears

From today's New York Times comes this scary little bit. Chili Bear, the new resident polar bear in the Home Front Brigade wants to bring it to everyone's attention.

The Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service has announced that early next month it will sell oil and gas leases on nearly 30 million acres of prime polar bear habitat in the Chukchi Sea. Meanwhile, the department’s Fish and Wildlife Service has postponed a long-awaited decision on whether to place this iconic and troubled animal on the list of threatened species.

This means that Bush and Cheney will give their buddies in the oil industry first whack at sensitive polar bear habitat while their Fish and Wildlife friends drag their feet on protecting polar bears. Yet within a few decades two thirds of all polar bears will be gone, including _all_ of Alaska's.

The Passing of a Great Beekeeper

We bears have an especially tender spot in our hearts for beekeepers, those selfless men and women who provide us with honey. Today the world is sadly without one of the greatest beekeepers ever, Sir Edmund Hillary. Its not every day that a beekeeper gets knighted, you know. Here is a photo of Sir Edmund along with Tenzing Norgay, the Shepa. Together they were the first climbers to ascend Mount Everest.

Not only a beekeeper and a climber, Sir Edmund was deeply committed to helping the Sherpa people. He built hospitals, schools, and airstrips throughout Nepal and dedicated himself to improving their lives. The Bears Home Front Brigade wishes to salute the passing of Sir Edmund and extends their condolences to all those who mourn his death.

He will not be forgotten.

Travel Schlepp Book Now Online

For New Year's Day, Schlepp is posting the first four chapters of his new novella. Enjoy!

Stay tuned for the podcasts of the same.

Happy Holidays to All!

Here's Schlepp in front of a luminaria, a traditional holiday decoration in New Mexico. Whether you call it a faralito or a luminaria, they are beautiful when massed atop all the houses and along all the streets.

Have a safe, warm and happy holiday!

Winter in NM

Schlepp took Aunt Frances down to the Albuquerque Nature Center to see the winter wildlife. It was cold but sunny and there were lots of Canadian geese, a bunch of wood ducks, and lots of mallards. Here's Miss Frances at the observation room looking out over the Nature Center's pond with lots of Canadian geese in the background.

Oddly enough, we didn't see a single crane. We're guessing they are farther south at Bosque del Apache.

Tonight it may snow, but its just not cold enough for a white Christmas in Albuquerque. Maybe it will snow on Christmas Day.

To all the Schlepp fans, have a happy solstice celebration, whatever your faith. Be safe and stay warm.

Teddy Bears in the Sudan

Talk about a collision of cultures--today a court in the Sudan convicted Gillian Gibbons for letting her 2nd year class name their teddy bear Mohammed. If any foreigner in the Sudan had thought about how the Danish cartoons of the Prophet were taken, and if the Sudanese had thought about how precious teddy bears are to the Brits, this never would have happened. To misconstrue that this is some kind of pernicious plot to overthrow Islam is ludicrous. The Muslim Council of Britain was quoted as saying:

"(Gibbons) should never have been arrested in the first place, let alone convicted of any crime," Muslim Council of Britain spokesman Inayat Bunglawala said. "There was no crime, it was a wholly innocent and naive. ... The worst you could say about her actions is that she was inadvertently naive. She should not be put in prison for that."

Schlepp and all the critters of the Home Front Brigade want Gillian to know that we fully support her and find the recent actions of the court in Khartoum to only reinforce negative stereotypes.

My understanding from the press is that a disgruntled school employee made the charge and that students had been taking Mohammed home for the weekend since September without ill feeling. After all, it was the students who nominated and voted for the name.

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Monday 3 December update. With the pardon of Gillian Gibbons by the President of Sudan, perhaps some calm will come to a land under seige. Now the correct focus of our attention (and that of the media) should be the situation in Darfur.

Thanksgiving in Ne w Mexico

Schlepp went north to visit the Horaks and Ramsays (Karl's brother's wife's family) for Thanksgiving. The forecast was for a good bit of snow and it did not disappoint. Here TS helps dig the Prius out. For scale, remember that he's just an 8" bear.

Luckily, the snowplows had stayed on top of things and the roads were slick in places with a bit of snow pack, but easily traveled if you used some bear sense.

By the time Schlepp had shoveled Dad's driveway, it was 10:00 and time to leave -- we wanted plenty of time to get back to Albuquerque because the road conditions in Santa Fe were an unknown quantity.

As it turned out, the roads were turning slushy by ten and only a few icy bridges greeted us in Santa Fe. The Interstate was somewhat wet but not at all snowy from Santa Fe south. So the Great Thanksgiving Snowstorm of 2007 turned out to be not so horrible and everyone's back home, safe and warm.

Home Again Home Again, Jiggitty Jig

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This is the way Schlepp handles fatigue while on travel--main-lining Espresso straight from the machine. And fatigue is what we had coming back from Amman.

First there was an entire day of workshop, close-out meetings, workshop luncheon, and team dinner. Then there was an evening to pack, shower, and shave before heading to the airport at 11:00 PM.

Flight to Paris took off at 2:00 AM in an old 737 that was crowded, uncomfortable, and poorly ventilated. Arrived at CDG around 6:30. Here's Schlepp at Gate E-96 so early that none of the shops are open. We worked on the Schlepp Book for a good bit while Debbie slept on the floor. Got Chapter 3 finished as well as the Dramatis Personae at the front.

The trans-Atlantic leg was much more comfortable than Amman to Paris. Arrived in good shape in Atlanta. Had a moment for a light dinner, then home to ABQ before 9:30 PM. All in all, about 44 hours on the go. Whew!

Yet Another Banquet

Had another banquet, this time in Madaba, a town famous for magnificent mosaics. Here Schlepp views one of the pieces under construction. The mosaic in the background is over 4' across. Both of them show the "tree of life," a remarkable symbol that cuts across Christian, Jewish, and Islamic faiths. Many of these mosaics are crafted by the handicapped and the pieces are only 2 or 3 mm on a side.

Afterwards we ate outdoors in a Jordanian restaurant. There were a large fig tree, grape vines, and an olive tree covering the entire group. More mezza, more shish kebab, more good times. Schlepp made friends with the daughter of one of the participants, as you can see. He is such an international diplomat.

Banquet in Amman

Tonight we had a huge banquet at a Lebannese restaurant. True, there wasn't music and dance like last March, but the service was impeccable and the food limitless. To begin with there were course upon course of mezza (appetizers) laid out on the long tables. There was hardly any room beverages for all the little plates.

After eating our fill of a huge variety of treats, they came around with the main courses, lamb, beef, kebab, chicken. Of course, afterwards there was a yummy desert and deadly strong coffee with cardamon. In a pause between course, Karl took my picture with a variety of the guests and Hanada got me to sample my first "hubbly bubbly," a Middle Eastern water pipe. Finally, the evening was finished with a lovely glass of sweet tea with mint.

A great time was had by all and I did my part for international diplomacy. Tomorrow we have another day of talks and discussion by individual NGOs and then the technical part begins. Wednesday and Thursday the Plone training will take place over at the Royal Jordanian Scientific Society.

Travel Schlepp Visits the Dead Sea

The trip to Amman started off with a bad oman: a two-hour delay due to an oil leak in an engine. Got to Cincinnati with 5 minutes to spare. Luckily, the flight to France was at the gate exactly across the concourse from our arrival gate. Karl and I were the last ones on the plane.

Security lines in Paris were chaotic, but we managed them and our flight left CDG only an hour late.

Arrived in Jordan last night about 9:00. Thank goodness for the Mohammed, the meet-and-greet fellow. Asleep by midnight and in fact slept pretty well after the 23-hour long flight from Albuquerque.

Today five of us hired a car and driver for a trip to the Dead Sea, about an hour away. Its amazing how much elevation you loose going down so far below sea level.

Here I am sitting on a salt-covered boulder on the shore of the Dead Sea. In the distance you can see people floating in the water, where they can't sink because of the buoyancy. On the left is Jordan. In the distance on the right is Israel. The Palestinian West Bank is to my left (your right) outside the picture.

Schlepp in Northern New Mexico

Earlier this month Schlepp attended the InterLab 2007 Conference in Los Alamos, NM. On the way up he stopped at the obscure Mormon Battalion Memorial near Budaghers. (You have to look real hard at the bottom of the monument to see Schlepp.)

Then on the way back, he stopped at Camel Rock. Most people stop at the casino on the north side of the road, but there's a small parking area for the stone formation on the south side of the interchange. The rock is now fenced off, but when I first arrived in NM you could climb right onto the camel's hump. Worries about erosion and the loss of the camel have resulted in a closed off site.

Where's Terrance?

Can you spot him?

This photo from two weeks ago shows him foraging in the oregano, where he is almost invisible. Now the weather has turned cold and he's dug himself a couple inches into the leaf litter underneath the Vinca. If I poke around a little, I can just see the top of his shell.

Even though the low this morning is forecast to be 40, this weekend its supposed to be back near 80. We'll see if that warms Terrance enough to get him moving again. This time of year in Albuquerque there are only 11 hours and 11 minutes between sunrise and sunset. With a sun elevation of only 45 degrees and the porch shading the Vinca bed until 1:00, he won't be getting much direct heat.

Meanwhile, Schlepp and the gang continue to work on Chapter Three of his book. Its almost time for NaNoWriMo, but since we started this last summer, we can't take credit for the 8000 words written so far.

Turtle Weight Watchers

Something for the biologists out there. Here is the graph of Terrance's weight, which I've been tracking since July.

I'm a bit surprised that it took such a dive in August when I thought he'd be laying on winterfat. At least the weight loss has flattened out, but he seems to be turning up his nose at strawberries, his favorite summer food.

His current weight of 354 grams works out to about 12.5 oz. In the next 2-3 weeks Terrance will be burrowing in for the winter's hibernations. Be on the lookout for post-hibernation weights next spring.

Abo Pass

Schlepp and PC took a pilgrimage to Abo Pass yesterday. This obscure pass between Mountainair and Belen, NM handles an incredible amount of rail traffic. Apparently this line carries more freight than the combined maritime transport between Europe and the U.S.

For several tight miles down in the canyon on the west side of the saddle it is single rail, so the trains stack up waiting for one to snake through before another can climb up the grade.

We watched a dozen or so from various vantage points as the 9000-foot long intermodal freights rolled by. Here we watch an east-bound train head into the pass at the NM 47 crossing. I'll have a audio podcast up later today and post the video to YouTube.

We went off the pavement south of the highway just west of the ghost town of Scholle, under a trestle, and down a canyon looking for the twin horned serpent petroglyphs, but we were turned back by mud from the recent rains.

Terrance, Newport and Schlepp

Terrance was out for a stroll the other morning. I found him behind the rosemary, so I brought him a plate of strawberries (his favorite food). Afterwards he checked out Newport, Schlepp, and Roberta (off camera left--you can just see an ear).

Since then I've only seen Terrance in the vinca, probably because its been too hot in other parts of the yard. As we move into September and things cool off, he'll start using the rosemary bed more often because of its early morning warmth.