On the Road

Well, it's the morning of day 3 of our grand adventure. We are at an RV park in Gladewater, Texas.
We left on Sunday, and made it part way into Alabama before stopping for the night. On Monday we made it across Mississippi and Louisiana to here in Texas. Now it's Tuesday, and the real fun begins today! First, we're planning to stop in Kaufman to visit some folks (more on that later), and then we're going to head down toward San Antonio to visit a few caves and meet up with some friends down near there.
Our internet is spotty when we're driving, and the laptop is needed a lot for navigation, so this is actually the first time I've had a long period to use the computer with nothing else going on. I'll try to post regularly, but I can't tell when I'll be able to.
Now for some pictures...

 

Those are all from before we left, but I continued to take pictures once we were on the road.
This is our first night in the RV; somewhere in Alabama.

Then we really pushed it to get on and be done with the deep south.
This is Mississippi. The highways there were actually very nice. This line of trees on the left is actually just a divider between the two sides of the interstate.

I love the huge mirrors on this vehicle...

This is the mighty Mississippi itself. We were over it and left it behind in about thirty seconds. How little we esteem the beauty of nature, sometimes...

Then we were into Louisiana. The change in the topography was abrupt and startling. It was very, very flat.

And here's a church sign from somewhere in Louisiana

And finally, our current location. Altough I suspect that we'll be on the road within the hour.
This is other people...

And this is us:

Packing and Other Work

Wowwww! The past few days have been busy!
We're about two days from leaving; tomorrow we load the ABF semi trailer that's going to move most of our stuff across the country, we spend the night here, and Sunday morning we're off on the grand adventure!
We have been up literally from seven or eight in the morning (which is pretty early for us) to ten thirty or eleven at night (moderately late) for the past three or four days. And we spend all day every day either on the job packing or driving places to pick up stuff. For instance: We spent from 8:30 this morning to around noon up in Atlanta picking up our RV and driving to and from; got home and in half an hour ABF had delivered the trailer. Soon after we went into town to get a broadband internet wireless modem for the laptop. We got home and have been packing ever since; about five hours. And that's pretty typical; only usually there's less time away from the house.
I've also been trying to get some pictures, and have succeeded to some extent. Thus I display:

The living room

My room

The RV

The RV's living area with the slide pulled in. It has about two more feet of width with the slide out...

And the cats!

I'm sorry I don't take more artistic pictures, but with the camera that I have they probably wouldn't turn out too good anyway. I desperately need a wide-angle lens for a still camera, though.
Anyway, as you can tell the cats are getting in their rest. Even more than usual, it seems, one finds them sleeping in, on, over, under and around almost anything. Especially Riley. Maybe they know that there's a big adventure ahead of us all...

A Change is Coming

Yes, a change is coming.
But not to the blog.
To the location of yours truly.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, cats and dogs, mice and gerbils, crickets and beetles, etc, etc, we are moving! About 3000 miles.
We're moving back to Oregon.

Georgia has been awesome for the last three and a half years, but now we're going back where we came from...the beautiful west coast. That's were my filmmaking buddy, Paul, lives...even though he's not there right now. He's in Michigan right now, helping his brother Ross with the house...but that's another story.
By the time we get to Oregon, Paul will be coming home soon, anyway.
This is certainly a big opening for my filmmaking attempts, though. No more making films over 3000 miles of internet. We can do it face to face now.
Besides, there are other benefits. Like living really close to all the people we've known for years. And seeing them multiple times a week, etc.

Anyway, the plan is to rent an RV and drive across the southern states on our way over to Oregon. We might meet some friends in Texas, and we're definitely going to the Grand Canyon and to places like Carlsbad Caverns, and such. Anyway, it seems like a really fun idea, and we're all pretty enthusiastic.

But it's getting late. I should probably ...*yawn*... go to bed.
~Pe†er

R/C Flying...Among Other Things

First of all, I should probably apologize for not posting anything lately. We've had a procession of friends staying at our house for the last few weeks, and on Thursday we got back from Oregon, where we'd been for almost two weeks. It was a good visit; we got all the shooting done for a short (think 30-45 second long) film that Paul and I actually just thought up on the spur of the moment. All we have to do is edit it down, and then maybe we'll post it on YouTube or some place.

Anyway, on to the main subject of the post.
Doug, a friend from church, called this morning to tell me that he was making a spur-of-the-moment trip to visit an R/C flying field about an hour north of here. Since he moved here he's been looking for a really good field to fly at, since he's an R/C enthusiast who's been flying for over twenty years, and, finding that we have a common interest, he's taken me with him on some of his scouting trips before. He's also taught me to fly a little, and whenever we go to visit a new field he takes his planes and the trainer and he coaches me in my flying (in between taking his big planes up).
Anyway, we made a day trip out of it this time, and spent about four hours up there. It's a fairly big club, with a lot of great guys, and Doug did quite a bit of flying.
His big bi-plane just looks impressive, even on the ground...

 ...And it looks even better in the air...

There were two helicopter pilots there, too. They were both very skilled, but I only got pictures of one heli.

And a couple of other miscellaneous planes. I was really impressed by one guy's scale model of a P-47 Thunderbolt

And another person had a foamie model of a Navy trainer

I flew Doug's training plane for a while, and also had my first experience at the controls of a bigger model. It was one of Doug's electrics, and had way more power and agility than I was used to. I was pretty nervous, but I did okay anyway. Doug insisted on taking a picture of me with the plane afterwards.

I had fun, and so did Doug. He likes the field and the club; the membership is very low, and they have a paved runway, both of which are fairly unusual.
I think we'll probably be going back there at some point.

Follow-up to our trip to Oregon

That was an amazing trip! I had so much fun!
We even got to film a little!
Yeah, that's what I'm all excited about. We spent the day before we left filming scenes for a little 1-2 minute movie. Here are some screen shots:

Paul has all the footage on his computer, but, unfortunately, something went screwy with the camera when he was importing the footage to my family's laptop. I only have about a quarter of the footage we took. That's a real bummer, but Paul's going to burn all the files to a disc and send it to me, so I should have it all in a week or two. In the mean time I can start learning how to use Final Cut Express. It's a big program, and frankly, I'm intimidated. But I have two different user guides and the software manual, so I'm armed and ready...
We had a really good time in general, too. Paul and I made some duct tape swords (that's what we're using in the screenshots from the movie), and we went rock climbing (at a gym), swimming, went on a picnic, got to take a hike through the hills, and we went to some friends' cabin on Tenmile Lake. That was a blast. Miri's family was there, too, and we went tubing behind a motorboat, kayaking on the lake, and ate great meals the entire time.
Oh, and, speaking of Miri's family, she and her mom are coming down here on the 18th! It will be the first time she or here mom has been here, so we're all excited.
I think that's about it for now...      I'll post again if anything interesting happens.

~Pe†er

Ace Wonder teaser trailer #2

It just keeps getting better!
John and his team continue to amaze me...

Oregon, here we come!

Yes, it's that time of year again...time for our trip out west to see our friends in Oregon.
And for all you east-coasters out there, it is pronounced 'ore-eh-gun', not the oh-so-popular 'ore-ah-gone'.
That's an Oregon State Peeve, how people pronounce the name.

Anyway.....
Unfortunately, the movie...the one that Paul and I have been slaving away at for months...won't be coming off this trip. If we make another trip out there later this year, it will probably happen then.
But that means we'll have lots of free time for playing!
A couple of friends of mine from down here started a website called Warfare By Duct Tape, which has a lot of cool ideas for making swords and shields and axes and stuff that you can actually play (and have battles...heh heh heh!) with. It looks like Paul and Davy and I will spend most of our time while I'm at their house working on projects like that.
And learning - by trial and error - how to sword fight.
Sounds like fun, no?
Plus we'll get to visit with another family we know...Miri's famiy, to be exact.
Oh, and the coast! The Oregon coast is so beautiful...and we're going to be out there for a few days.

So yeah, fun times.
Lots and lots of fun.
I should probably watch Errol Flynn's 'Robin Hood' again to get myself in the mood for all the games and medieval-themed stuff we're going to be building and doing...
I wonder if we could build a catapult...?