Blogs from United States, North America - page 1743

July 29 – Denver to Redstone – Today I finished loading up the “last minute” stuff in my truck that had to wait till just before I left and headed out on 470 to I-70 and then started the climb up into the mountains. All the extra load that I was carrying in my truck didn’t seem to be bothering it and I climbed on up westward. Traffic wasn’t too bad and it was raining a “nuisance” rain which just wet the windshield enough for me to have to keep turning the wipers on and off. I got lucky again and the blasting at the twin tunnels east of Idaho Springs didn’t slow me down or stop me this time. So I continued on climbing up and then over the Divide at the Eisenhower Tunnel and ... read more

July 29th, 2013. 11 pm. PDT Day 20 We left our motel at 6:15 am so we could get to Burbank, CA. in time to tour Jay Leno's Big Dog Garage and get to the NBC Studio for the filming of Jay Leno's The Tonight Show. This show will air tonight 7/29/13. On our drive to Burbank we went through Angeles NatIonal Park. The drive through the park was 58 miles of hill and curves, very beautiful. We got here at Jay's Garage at 10:39 am. We got treated like VIPs. The tour lasted about 1 1/2 hours.there are 155 cars and 110 motorcycles, the building is 101 thousand sq ft. We met Bernard Juchli, the manager of Jay's garage and Bob Sales who did our tour. We were not allowed to take any pictures. We ... read more

Our team joined together to share dinner with one of the partner families we'll be working with this week. The Sherman family, John and Sunshine, along with their three children, Jade, Kayla and Steven are excited for their new home and eager to start on the construction. Madison and Scott from the Joplin Habitat for Humanity affiliate shared information and statistics from the 2011 tornado. Over 8,000 buildings (homes and businesses) were damaged or destroyed and over 17,000 residents were displaced from their homes. As they went through their presentation, a question on the slides caught my attention. What will you build? After dinner, we had our first team reflection and I asked the team...during this week, what will you build? Here are the responses shared: relationships, knowledge about what happened, memories, hope, a simpler life, ... read more

Just four days remain until we leave. Our bags are not even close to being packed and the list of things we have to do before we leave is getting longer every day. Not a good sign! Nonetheless, excitement is really building for our big adventure. When asked yesterday what one thing we're most looking forward to, Nick's answer was the day with elephants in Chiang Mai, Sand's answer was the Asian food (and the looooong 20,000+ miles of flights!), Ben said the fancy electric toilets of Tokyo and Carys is keen to see monkeys in Bali! We have a broad mix of things planned, so hopefully something for everyone. I suspect we're going to need another holiday to get over this one.... read more

Pavane's home port is Brewers Cowesett Marina in East Greenwich. This is a great place to keep a boat but it is a mile-and-a-half walk into East Greenwich proper. So if you are just visiting East Greenwich for a night or two, this is what you should do. Once you are safely in Greenwich Bay, head South West and into Greenwich Cove. The East Greenwich Yacht Club (EGYC) manages most of the moorings in Greenwich Cove. In the days when we "just visited" here, they always found us a nice comfortable mooring. Greenwich Cove is a pretty place. The yacht club provides launch service but, if you prefer to row, your mooring will probably be within 100 yards of the dock. The club has some of the most civilized shower facilities in New England. Once ashore, ... read more