Bill Clapp wrote: > You home from vacation Mark? If so I hope you had fun and a good time with > your family.
Yep, I'm back, although I could easily have stayed there forever. Don't get me started, because it'd take three months to type in everything we did, learned, or observed there, but suffice it to say that I've loved Germany since I lived there in the Air Force 25 years ago. Those people really have it together, and in many ways make us Americans look like scatterbrains. I'll just leave it at that so as not to start a flame war. I like the way they think, and their attitudes about lots of things. I suspect that most people who write off the Europeans have never been there and don't know what they're missing. I didn't bring back any Scirocco parts, but I did manage four half-liter bottles of Bitburger Pils in my suitcase! I never really wrung it out, but I had our rented Passat TDI six-speed stationwagon up to 220 k/m on the autobahn at one point (that's 137 mph). It was a non-event, but you'd loose your license for that in the USA. Mostly we stuck to the back roads and did the "backdoor Europe" thing according to Rick Steve's guide, but I also went back to visit my old stomping ground. It was a fantastic trip, and I dare say we'll be back, now that we've had a taste of it. I'll do a web page of the trip later (I took 1900 pictures) and publish the URL for everybody, but first I have to do the 2004 Gathering web page, and work is just about killing me. I'll probably have to work all weekend for a dog and pony show that we're going to have with our customer on Thursday. At least I get paid for overtime! I'm still working my way through old emails, starting from present back to the day I left. Right now I'm only half way through, but one thing I've learned is that you guys do just fine without me. This may be my clue to just go to the digest version and answer the questions that have gone unanswered, or those that I feel could use a little more clarification. I'm bad about trying to answer every question, and I realize now that there are others who can take up my slack... Mark Langford, Huntsville, AL N56ML at hiwaay.net see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford
