making the most of my last hours

 Writing can be so liberating👽👽

Fall - time for a trip

Pick up your broom and is I say "Let's Travel". 

Happy Halloween! 

Time for a car ride!

Manitou Springs      http://manitousprings.org/
The city of Manitou Springs is a home rule municipality located in El Paso County, Colorado, United States. The town was founded for its scenic setting and natural mineral springs. Wikipedia
Elevation: 6,358′
Population: 5,245 (2013)

HOTEL SCAM

Creativity wow!!!  This is one of the smartest scams I have heard about. You   arrive at your hotel and check in at the front desk. Typically when checking in, you give the front desk your credit card (for any charges to your room) and they don't retain the card. You go to your room and settle in. All is good. The hotel receives a call and the caller asks for (as an example) room   620 - which happens to be your room. The phone rings in your room. You answer and the person on the other end   says the following: 'This is the front desk. When checking in, we came across a problem with your charge card information. Please re-read me your credit card numbers and verify the last 3 digits numbers at the reverse side of your charge card.' Not thinking anything wrong, since the call seems to come from the front   desk you oblige. But actually, it is a scam by someone calling from outside the hotel. They have asked for a random room number, then ask you for your credit card and address information. They sound so professional, that you think you are talking to the front desk. If you ever encounter this scenario on your travels, tell the caller   that you will be down to the front desk to clear up any problems. Then go to the front desk or call directly and ask if there was a problem. If   there was none, inform the manager of the hotel that someone tried to   scam you of your credit card information, acting like a front desk   employee. This e-mail was originated by someone who has been duped........and is still cleaning   up the mess. P.S. Please, consider spreading the word by forwarding this e-mail (as a"bcc"!). Who knows, you might just help someone avoid a nasty experience. ANYONE travelling should be aware of this one!

Phil Norris

I've asked Phil Norris to contribute to this blog. Hoping he will! 

Lead Guide

Get Up and Go Tours

April 2015 – Present (11 months)National Parks Around Alaska

I lead Adventure Roadtrips around the state of Alaska. Camping out each night, cooking up tasty salmon, each day having a new taste of Exploring Alaska. Ice climbing or trekking, kayaking and game stalking on bushwack hikes. All sorts of random goofy adventures ensue driving around Alaska and trying to see a bunch in a short few days with a hippy mountain man guy in a van. Great fun.

CEO/Expedition Leader

Norris Expeditions

September 2014 – Present (1 year 6 months)Planet Earth

Expedition Guiding and group Leadership, consulting, travel logistic and expedition support. If you have an adventure or expedition dream, bold mission, or deep back-country exploratory journey that needs doing, I can help you complete it.

Adventures for Hire

Topeka Kansas

Why not? Visit Topeka.

 

Click for Visit Topeka YouTube

AND…. It all started with a woman's suggestion!!

HISTORY OF THE CAR RADIO

Seems like cars have always had radios, but they didn't.

Here's the story:

    One evening, in 1929, two young men named William Lear and Elmer Wavering drove their girlfriends to a lookout point high above the Mississippi River town of Quincy, Illinois, to watch the sunset.  It was a romantic night to be sure, but one of the women observed that it would be even nicer if they could listen to music in the car.

    Lear and Wavering liked the idea.  Both men had tinkered with radios (Lear served as a radio operator in the U.S. Navy during World War I) and it wasn't long before they were taking apart a home radio and trying to get it to work in a car.  

    But it wasn't easy: automobiles have ignition switches, generators, spark plugs, and other electrical equipment that generate noisy static interference, making it nearly impossible to listen to the radio when the engine was running.

    One by one, Lear and Wavering identified and eliminated each source of electrical interference.  When they finally got their radio to work, they took it to a radio convention in Chicago.

    There they met Paul Galvin, owner of Galvin Manufacturing Corporation.  He made a product called a"battery eliminator," a device that allowed battery-powered radios to run on household AC current.  But as more homes were wired for electricity, more radio manufacturers made AC-powered radios.

    Galvin needed a new product to manufacture. When he met Lear and Wavering at the radio convention, he found it.  He believed that mass-produced, affordable car radios had the potential to become a huge business.

Lear and Wavering set up shop in Galvin's factory, and when they perfected their first radio, they installed it in his Studebaker.  Then Galvin went to a local banker to apply for a loan.  Thinking it might sweeten the deal, he had his men install a radio in the banker's Packard. Good idea, but it didn't work.  Half an hour after the installation, the banker's Packard caught on fire. (They didn't get the loan.)

    Galvin didn't give up.  He drove his Studebaker nearly 800 miles to Atlantic City to show off the radio at the1930 Radio Manufacturers Association convention.

Too broke to afford a booth, he parked the car outside the convention hall and cranked up the radio so that passing conventioneers could hear it.  That idea worked -- He got enough orders to put the radio into production.

WHAT'S IN A NAME

    That first production model was called the 5T71.  Galvin decided he needed to come up with something a little catchier.  In those days many companies in the phonograph and radio businesses used the suffix "ola" for their names - Radiola, Columbiola, and Victrola were three of the biggest.

    

Galvin decided to do the same thing, and since his radio was intended for use in a motor vehicle, he decided to call it the Motorola.  But even with the name change, the radio still had problems: When Motorola went on sale in 1930, it cost about $110 installed, at a time when you could buy a brand-new car for $650, and the country was sliding into the Great Depression. (By that measure, a radio for a new car would cost about $3,000 today.)

    

In 1930, it took two men several days to put in a car radio -- the dashboard had to be taken apart so that the receiver and a single speaker could be installed, and the ceiling had to be cut open to install the antenna.  These early radios ran on their own batteries, not on the car battery, so holes had to be cut into the floorboard to accommodate them.  The installation manual had eight complete diagrams and 28 pages of instructions.  Selling complicated car radios that cost 20 percent of the

price of a brand-new car wouldn't have been easy in the best of times, let alone during the Great Depression.

    Galvin lost money in 1930 and struggled for a couple of years after that.  But things picked up in 1933 when Ford began offering Motorola's pre-installed at the factory.  In 1934 they got another boost when Galvin struck a deal with B.F. Goodrich tire company to sell and install them in its chain of tire stores.

    By then the price of the radio, with installation included, had dropped to $55.   The Motorola car radio was off and running.  (The name of the company would be officially changed from Galvin Manufacturing to "Motorola" in 1947.)  In the meantime, Galvin continued to develop new uses for car radios.  In 1936, the same year that it introduced push-button tuning, it also introduced the Motorola Police Cruiser, a standard car radio that was factory preset to a single frequency to pick up police broadcasts.  In 1940 he developed the first handheld two-way radio -- The Handy-Talkie for the U. S. Army.

  

 A lot of the communications technologies that we take for granted today were born in Motorola labs in the years that followed World War II.  In 1947 they came out with the first television for under $200.  In 1956 the company introduced the world's first pager; in 1969 came the radio and television equipment that was used to televise Neil Armstrong's first steps on the Moon.  In 1973 it invented the world's first handheld cellular phone. Today Motorola is one of the largest cell phone manufacturers in the world.  And it all started with the car radio.

   

 WHATEVER HAPPENED TO the two men who installed the first radio in Paul Galvin's car?  Elmer Wavering and William Lear, ended up taking very different paths in life.  Wavering stayed with Motorola.  In the 1950's he helped change the automobile experience again when he developed the first automotive alternator, replacing inefficient and unreliable generators. The invention lead to such luxuries as power windows, power seats, and, eventually, air-conditioning.
   

 Lear also continued inventing.  He holds more than 150 patents. Remember eight-track tape players?  Lear invented that.  But what he's really famous for are his contributions to the field of aviation.  He invented radio direction finders for planes, aided in the invention of the autopilot, designed the first fully automatic aircraft landing system, and in 1963 introduced his most famous invention of all, the Lear Jet, the world's first mass-produced, affordable business jet.  (Not bad for a guy who dropped out of school after the eighth grade.)

Sometimes it is fun to find out how some of the many things that we take for granted actually came into being!

AND…. It all started with a woman's suggestion!!

Topeka has your back!

From: Ronnie Murphy [mailto:RMurphy@topekametro.org]
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2015 9:38 AM
To: mcre@cox.net
Subject: RE: good morning

Good morning, Henry,

We would like to be a part of this journey and feature Mr. Freedman’s time in Topeka. Do you know when he will arrive?

Thanks!

Ronnie Murphy | Director of Marketing & Communications

Topeka Metro | 201 N. Kansas Ave. Topeka, KS 66603-6322

P (785) 233-2011 x 130 | F (785) 233-3063

From: Henry McClure [mailto:mcre@cox.net]
Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2015 7:25 AM
To: Susan Duffy
Subject: good morning

http://yourtravellogblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/bill-freedman-aka-forest-gump-of-mass.html

Henry McClure

785.272.1110 Direct

Time kills deals

#periscope - you need to see this! Periscope

Coast to Coast on mass transit

Bill Freedman aka the forest gump of mass transit

Bill Freedman

Is it possible to travel all the way across the United States, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, using only mass transit?

It is. Maybe it wasn't five years ago, but it is today. I created a map and an itinerary. As a long-form journalism piece, I intend to prove this, reporting on local characters, local heroes, the current state and potential for mass transit and any breaking news that crosses my path along the way. So on the morning of October 19, 2015, I'll get on the NICE N32 bus in West Hempstead, New York, and get off the BART #21 bus at Golden Gate Park 68 days later (Turns out to be Christmas Day -- nothing I planned.) I'll be posting videos here to illustrate all this in more detail but here are the highlights:

THE RULES

1. Whenever possible, use ferries, cable cars,trams, or some other unique, local feature. 2. Use subway/metro/el trains if available. 3. Use local bus routes as a standard mode. 4. If there is a coverage gap getting from one metropolitan area to the next use the following choices, in descending order of preference: Something that’s going to make a good story, like a mule, an open-cockpit plane, a carnival caravan, a Mexican smuggling rig or a boxcar full of hobos; public ride-share or vanpool services; privately offered ride; hike. 5. This isn’t a race. I’ll be happy to find out if it’s even possible. 6. I will travel no more than two hours on any one day -- although I would have to allow for the possibility of traveling as much as three under extraordinary circumstances -- and I will stay the weekend wherever I happened to be.

 THE ROUTE

1. I don't have to have all the details worked out to start (although as of this writing I'm well on my way). 2. I will remain open to advice from local residents, friends, supporters, transit experts and anyone else who has better information than I do. 3. I should always know my route and timetable a week in advance.

WHAT TO PACK, WHAT TO WEAR

1. I’m not a character out of Steinbeck. I’m more like a character out of Seinfeld. I’ll wear cargo pants, polo shirts, seasonal jacket and hikers most the time. 2. I will travel light: a backpack and a computer bag. 3. It is my intention to spend as many nights as possible indoors. I will rely on travel web sites or local referrals to secure accommodations. Still, I will bring a sleeping bag, mat, pup tent, backpacking stove, gloves, wool socks and synthetic underlayers. I hope I never need any of it. 4. Sneakers and shorts are a must. So are a couple paperback books, a deck of cards, ear buds, and a smartphone to plug them into. I also anticipate the need for a button-down shirt and nice linen blazer. 5. This MacBook Air is also making the trip.

Donate NOW

kickstarter

PAYING FOR IT

1. I will continue my freelance journalism, and aggressively query editors to expand that business. I have almost always done this work from remote locations, so there will be no logistical issues. In addition to technology and business/finance beats, I will now be able to tout my expertise in public transit to assignment editors. 2. I will endeavor to convert this adventure into a book deal that will pay an advance. This is a long shot but worth taking. 3. By planning at least a week ahead, I will be able give media outlets advance warning of my visits to their towns. I will do what I can to convert that into writing assignments or speaker's fees. 4. I will continue working on my course in JavaScript and develop a beginner’s portfolio. Just like writing, coding is work I can do remotely. 5. I’m not above manual labor. I’ll be totally fine with getting a night’s room and board for a day’s work. 6. I will stay in private homes whenever feasible. 7. That brings us to fundraising online. All this is a gamble. I need money in the bank. The actual cost of this journey is actually fairly low. But I still need to pay bills at home. Notice that the one thing not on the above list is "holding down a day job." I lost my last steady job more than two years ago. Earlier this week, I got notified by a company that I'd gone through eight interviews with that they weren't going to hire me after all. This is the fourth time that's happened. I give up. I need some help starting over.

Kickstarter Basics: Kickstarter 101

CONTENT

1. There will be photos, videos, interviews, tweets, blog posts and, I expect, published articles. These will be published to a blog, a Facebook page, a YouTube channel and Twitter. 2. The success of this enterprise depends on observation and interpretation. I will be observing and interpreting: oddball characters, genuine heroes, mass transit issues, mass transit options, "Only in America" pieces, things that only happen to me or only I notice, self revelations and whatever news breaks in front of me. I might end up a witness to history by sheer happenstance.

Risks and challenges

This is inherently risky. I'm going to be on city and county buses for two-and-a-half months, sleeping on strangers' couches. I'm a 52-year-old man who'll be taking 20-mile hikes through the desert. And I'm relying on over a hundred different drivers to be on or close to schedule or else I get stranded.

Stuff will go wrong. Best I can do is craft a workable schedule with a bit of lag time baked in and try to keep running ahead of it.