I spent the week in San Diego, Ca for meetings, flew on Rouge Air for the first time.
The meetings were at the Bahia Resort Hotel.
The weather was good for most of the the week, temperatures were in the mid 20’s.
The Pacific Beach pier.
The view from my hotel room.
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I was down in Champaign, IL for the week on business. I was leading an external review (audit) team on one of the NADP analytical laboratories. I flew in and out of Indianapolis airport, it’s about a 2 hour drive from there, just a lot easier than O’Hare in Chicago. On the last night I went for dinner in Philo, IL. According to the water tower, Philo is the Centre of the Universe.
I spent the week in Louisville, Kentucky for meetings. I flew in on Sunday afternoon via Minneapolis. Louisville is the birthplace of Muhammed Ali.
Louisville has painted horses around the city. It is part of an event called Gallopolooza. In 2004 and 2009 they did horses.
In 2015, they did Bourbon, in the form of Mint Juleps.
The Louisville Bats were playing the Durham Bulls at Louisville Slugger Field. They are the Triple A farm team for the Cincinnati Reds. I bought a ticket for $13.50 two rows behind the dugout.
Their mascot is “Buddy” the Bat.
The game went to extra innings, I moved around to watch from different areas.
The final score was 4-3 Louisville in 14 innings, I only stayed until the 10th.
it was a nice stadium, although the draft beer was $7.60, a little pricey for a minor league park.
On the way back I stopped at the Visitor Centre and saw the Colonel.
A couple of blocks from the hotel was an area called Fourth Street Live, it has a lot of restaurants and bars.
On Monday afternoon, a few of us went to the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory. There is a 120ft bat out front. It is a replica of Babe Ruth’s 34 inch Louisville Slugger bat.
Ken Griffey Junior.
Babe Ruth.
Ted Williams.
Derek Jeter.
There is a tour that takes you through the factory and it shows the bat making process from billet to lacquered finished product. A display showing how they cut the billets from a tree.
It use to take 30 minutes for someone to make a bat on a lathe. Now they use a CNC machine to make the professional bats in 50 seconds.
There was a special Lego exhibit, called Big Leagues, Little Bricks. Here is a replica of Wrigley Field made from 58,000 bricks.
This is a mural made from Lego bricks. It has the words to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” spelled out.
Wrigley Field.
There is a signature wall that has all of the players that have signed contracts with the company. Only those that have a contract have their signatures burned onto their bats, other Major Leaguers who only order bats, have their name in block letters. I found early Blue Jays Doug Ault…
…and Rick Bosetti.
At the end of the tour we each got a miniature souvenir bat.
The Kentucky Derby is next weekend, so things will start to get busy this week. I’m pretty sure you won’t be able to get a room for the $134/night I paid this week.
The meeting was at The Brown Hotel, it was opened in 1923, until closing in 1971. In the 80’s it re-opened as a hotel and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
There was a terrace on the roof that provides a 360 view of the city.
There is a ZeroBus (it is an electric bus) that is free in the downtown core.
I was down in Santa Fe, New Mexico this week for meetings.
I left on Halloween and had a challenging time trying to get there. My original flight out of Toronto on American Airlines was cancelled due to mechanical problems. I was able re-book on the noon flight to Dallas and got the last seat on the connection to Santa Fe, although the connection was tight. I was traveling with three colleagues, who ended up having to go through Albuquerque. In the end I made my connection, although their system said I was still in Toronto, and even though I was standing there with a ticket, they were reluctant to let me board.
Santa Fe is the oldest and highest state capital in the USA.
I stayed at the La Fonda on the Plaza Hotel, it sits on the location of various inns since 1609. The current hotel was built in 1922. It sits at the end of the Old Santa Fe Trail.
Just down the street is the Loretto Chapel. It is a former Roman Catholic Church that is now a privately owned museum. It is known for its unusual helix shaped spiral staircase.
When the church was built there was no staircase to the choir loft and the nuns had to use a ladder. The story goes:
“The nuns prayed for St. Joseph’s intercession for nine straight days. On the day after their novena ended a shabby-looking stranger appeared at their door. He told the nuns he would build them a staircase but that he needed total privacy and locked himself in the chapel for three months. He used a small number of primitive tools including a square, a saw and some warm water and constructed a spiral staircase entirely of non-native wood. The identity of the carpenter is not known for as soon as the staircase was finally finished he was gone. Many witnesses, upon seeing the staircase, feel it was constructed by St. Joseph himself, as a miraculous occurrence.”
This was a picture of what the staircase would have looked like originally with no handrails.
Route 66 use to run by the hotel.
Down the road from the hotel was the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. It is the mother church of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
Across the street is the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.
A statue of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (1656–1680) who was the first North American Indian to be beatified, and was canonized in October 2012
The church was built between 1869-86, it was elevated to basilica by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.
There is a large collection of original art in the hotel, including all the guest rooms.
The Basilica in the late afternoon sun.
A lot of the buildings and houses are Adobe style.
The oldest church structure in the US is in Santa Fe. It is the San Miguel Mission. It was built between 1610-1626. Mass is offered at the church every Sunday.
Across the street is the “Oldest house in the US”, it dates back to 1646.
The back of the San Miguel Mission.
The front of the oldest house.
The weather for the week wasn’t much warmer than Mississauga, but it was sunny every day.
The Loretto Chapel.
The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century transportation route through central North America that connected Independence, Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was eventually replace by the Santa Fe Railroad in the 1880’s.
There are a lot of shops and art galleries. Santa Fe ranks third in art sales behind New York and LA. There is a street called Canyon Road that has over 100 art galleries.
The hotel was right on the Plaza.
This sculture is called “Not afraid to look” by Charles Rencountre.
In Santa Fe there is a car service called Bolt Ride. The cars are the Tesla Model S. It is pretty cool. We used it to get to the airport on Friday.
The car was driving it itself, and if the driver made a signal change, the car would change lanes on its own.
Our flight out of Santa Fe was delayed 40 minutes, but it was better than the flight before us. Their plane is the one in the picture, the flight out of Dallas had to turn back for a cockpit issue, then once it landed the same problem occurred, so they were trying to repair it. Our plane came in and we departed before theirs. They were close to a 3 hour delay.
The Santa Fe airport is pretty small.
The Dallas to Toronto leg was on time and only half full. Although there was an airfield lighting issue at Pearson, we didn’t experience any delays.
I was down in Champaign, Illinois last week for a few days. I had meetings with folks from the National Atmospheric Deposition Program at the University of Illinois. We flew direct from Toronto to Indianapolis and then drove 2 hours to Champaign. The weather was nice during the day, sunny and hot. It brought in a nice thunder and lightning storm that evening.
There was a nice sunrise the next morning.
The one night they took us down to Campustown for dinner. This is the main quad, that is Foellinger Auditorium in the background.
The Alma Mater statue, a popular spot for grad photos.
Altgeld Hall, this is the original university library building in 1897, it now houses the Department of Mathematics and Mathematics Library.
Noticed that the markings on the tarmac at the Indianapolis Airport are in the racing motif.
I spent the week of April 25-29th in Madison, Wisconsin for work. It was the Spring meeting for the National Atmospheric Deposition Program. This year I am Chairing the Technical Subcommittee and the Joint Committees portion of the meeting at both the Spring and Fall Meetings. In November, the meeting is being held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Here is a photo of the Capitol Building, the hotel is located across the street. This was the third time I have been to Madison for the meetings.
I was down in Rochester, NY in October for the 9th Acid Rain Conference. It was a combination of meetings at the beginning of the week, followed by the conference.
It was held at the Rochester Riverside Conference Centre. There was a reception held at the George Eastman House on the Wednesday. We were able to tour the house and museum.
There was some time on Thursday after completing our work to take a drive. We didn’t go into Seattle because they had the I-90 closed off for the Blue Angels who were practising for the Seafair Air Show that was happening this weekend. We stayed north of the city and went to Edmonds, WA for lunch and then to Brackett’s Landing Park to walk around.
There were a lot of people crabbing on the pier. Here is a guy setting his trap with raw chicken.
Mount Olympus in the distance.
A lady throwing her trap in the water.
They caught a rock crab, but it must have been too small because they threw it back in the water.
Loading up with more chicken.
After we headed to Discovery Park in Ballard. It had a very confusing trail system and it was also the hottest day so far this summer in Seattle. It got up to 94 degrees fahrenheit. So far they have had 9 days over 90 degrees which was a new record.
I was out in Bothell, WA last week for work, I was part of an external review team visiting a mercury analytical lab. There were five of us as part of the team, the others were from Denver, CO, Champaign, IL, Jacksonville, FL and Augusta, GA.
Bothell is north of Seattle and only a 15 minute drive from our friends, Nikki and Richard, who live in Woodinville. I was able to spend a couple of nights with them on the weekend. On Sunday morning I got a chance to watch their daughter Sarah ride at a horse show. Here she is in one of the events. She did well overall in about five events.
In the afternoon Richard and I headed to the Seattle Mariners game, they were playing the Toronto Blue Jays. Nikki had picked up tickets ahead of time for us.
Safeco field is an open air stadium, but has a roof that can roll over during inclement weather. Even though it was raining in the morning they had the roof off.
We were sitting down the right field line. There were probably more Blue Jays fans then Mariners fans.
Although it was not a sellout as noted by the empty seats.
This was just after the bizarre triple play by the mariners.
The skies started getting dark, and the roof started to close.
The roof can move fairly quick. The roof just covers the field and stands, it doesn’t seal the stadium.
This is the roof fully closed.
Arrived at YYZ airport this morning for a noon flight, only to find out it was delayed 90 minutes. Normally not a problem, I’d park myself in the Maple Leaf lounge, however I have a connecting flight in YVR and only 90 minutes to clear customs and find my gate.
The agent put me on stand-by for the 11:15 departure, and I got on AND upgraded to business class.
