Blogs from Nebraska, United States, North America - page 19

Hello everyone, With the Olympics approaching in China, I anticipate more people will be reading this blog. I want to provide some info one last time before I close out this blog. I call this the "must read" post, because it deals with something most travelers may have with them: portable electronic devices. In the hotels in China, it seemed there was about a 50/50 chance that the electrical outlets worked properly. But even in the better hotels I stayed at during my 6 weeks in China, I was VERY glad I had a few basic pieces of gear with me. First, NONE of the outlets you will encounter will have a ground plug on the outlet. This means that you cannot plug in ANYTHING that has the 3rd prong on the plug. I happened to, ... read more

Obfuscator writes: We woke up to a thick layer of frost over everything. I guess I should be getting used to this, since it is January. Nevertheless, we're finding that camping in the extreme cold holds very little appeal. I think Onaxthiel spent most of the night shivering. I gradually added more layers through the night, which helped a lot, but made me very reluctant to crawl into the 10ish degree outside in the morning. Being in the middle of a big snow-covered State Park with nothing to see did nothing to encourage us to linger further, so we packed up our stuff, and headed out to Lincoln and beyond. It took us a while to get back to the main roads from our campsite, but it all eventually worked out. We skipped past Lincoln for ... read more

Hi all-- I just wanted to drop a quick line to let everyone know that I'll be leaving for France on January 2nd, which is under a week from today. I'm beyond excited at this point. I was really tempted to write this entire entry in French, actually, but realized it would be quite counter productive. So here's your chance to unsubscribe--if you received an email about this post and would like me to remove you from my subscriber's list, please contact me before I leave the states. Or you could contact me anyway, just because you love me and want to say goodbye ;) A bientot SFech... read more

Mom played hooky from work and we drove to Omaha to visit the zoo. For some reason, my whole family has a love of zoos. Whenever we're on vacation someplace with a nice zoo, we go. Last week I thought to myself, "You know, it'd be nice to go to the Omaha Zoo. I haven't been there for years." The next day, Mom said, "You know, I can take a day off of work. I think we should go to the Omaha Zoo." Weird. But, normal in my family. So, Mom and I packed a picnic lunch and headed out early in the morning for Omaha. Not too early, though, because it only takes an hour and a half to get there. We entered the zoo at 10:20 and noticed that we could go see the ... read more

Since it's the end of July, I wanted to publish a quick update with the goings-on of the past few weeks. After Jackson, Philippe and I spent a few days back in Boulder preparing for him to leave. Coordinating with his other climbing partner (Brad McMillon), running a million small errands, packing... all the while, enjoying the excellent company of old and new friends in Boulder. When I dropped Philippe at the airport on the 7th, I just kept heading east... driving all of the way to Omaha, Nebraska to see my family - especially my 87 year-old grandmother. Splitting my time between my dad's house and the retirement community, I played a lot of cribbage, gin, and rummy-cube, watched a lot of Price Is Right, and fixed a few computers. I think Cameron Diaz made ... read more