Benign as it may look, the results captured in this picture was a big deal yesterday in the lives of hundreds of employees at my company and thousands of air travelers on the (Major) airline for which I work. I'll set the stage and let you'all come to the conclusion (which I really don't know the full out come yet).Somewhere in Arizona, some one gets back from lunch, climbs into his small excavator and resumes digging in front of a non-descript building on the out skirts of Phoenix. He's contracted to drill post-holes to provide shade for the desert dwelling people living and using the parking lot. When he unearths a long pink snake, and it aint organic. It's the worst case scenario for communications between EVERY system we have.
Re-routs were orchestrated, a sys priority plan scrambled, fines averted, and a guy in a hole in the desert till late last night with a flashlight clenched in his teeth and the mother of all fibre splices in his two hands. Who thinks that strand will every work correctly again?
Skipolini and I had a good ride today. A couple hours on the road. Talking, panting, sweating below three plus layers of wool. It was the longest ride of the year for me. The weather has not cooperated for this weekend warrior. Boston has already received it's annual snowfall plus 3 inches. I've made plans with 
So I've decided to buy a new road bike this year. I'm a little hesitant to jump on the carbon bandwagon but from looking around carbon fibre is about the only thing road bikes are made of now a days. Trek, Cannondale, Specialized, Seven? I'm going to 
Last weekend Big Pete (dad) and I went to DC for a pre-inauguration visit. The both of us have never been to our nation's capitol, and what better time to visit with two million people to trip over. We got familiar with D.C.'s public transportation system, visited five or six Smithsonian museums (rocked!) and froze our asses off walking around each night with temps near zero.
So, it was Saturday. Cold and windy. We decided to walk the national mall from the Capitol Building earlier in the day after hitting up the Native American Museum, Air and Space Museum and the American History Museum. We were beat, thinking of food, beer, warmth. Passing the Washington Monument and slowly progressing to the Lincoln Memorial...and with the inauguration planned for Tuesday the national Mall was set up for two million spectators, meaning one million pot-o-johns lining the 1.8 mile long grassy field from the Capitol Bldg to the Lincoln Memorial.
Strolling Within the WWII memorial and looking at the glowing spire of the Washington Memorial, listening to James Taylor via tall loud speakers that were setup every one hundred yards. The acoustics were amazing. I estimate no less than fifty individual twenty-five foot tower of speakers with their own individual diesel generator every one hundred yards, on both sides of the national mall. The music bouncing off tall marble walls of the many adjacent government buildings. The Lyrics as clear and crisp as your living room. The traffic noise from Constitution Ave was no match for this pre-inauguration soiree'. Every now and then, just for good measure, a tractor trailer truck set-up with a jumbo-tron brightly-lit that would soon show the image of our forty-fourth president with a single hand on Abraham Lincoln's Bible. 
