A Peaceful Paddle

What a wonderful way to end 2006. The paddle that I mapped out on Google Earth yesterday took us a little over 5 hours, including at least an hour's worth of stops. It was a great day. Here's the launch spot in Bowling Green, near Paynes Prairie State Park. The water level is perfect. Lots of birdlife. According to Marie, we have Randall to thank for pushing us to do a longer paddle than normal. So, she didn't hesitate to accept when he offerred to tow her while she 'napped.' The people you see in the water are hunting for fossils by digging up pails of dirt from the bottom and screening it thru a wire-mesh. Lots of people find fossilized shark's teeth here. Oh! She's awake again. Ooops, maybe not. What a gorgeous day! Back home. Our cars were waiting right there by the boat ramp, ready to load the kayaks on top and drive back to our sites. How it worked was - when we left in the morning, we found a couple people to ride up with us to the launch point, then they drove our cars back and left them waiting for us. Perfect.

Google Earth

Jim did his Google Earth seminar yesterday and I'm starting to understand it enough to get hooked! Someone today came up and asked if you could use Google Earth to look at a river and see if it would be a good area to paddle. You know, no dams, no waterfalls, stuff like that. What a good idea! We are planning to paddle the Peace River this Sunday (our good friend, Marie, is coming to visit) and we want to do a little more distance than the last time. Here is a video recording - a 'screencast' - of me using Google Earth to decide exactly where to paddle on the Peace River.

Blog Migration Successful!

Whew! Y'never know when it's gonna be you that gets stuck in a computer quagmire with something like a server migration such as the Blogger conversion. It took about an hour and a half. I didn't have to do anything but wait, but it was a nervous time. Next, I'm supposed to pick a new, upgraded template. One step at a time. I'll wait an read some more. Maybe I'll upgrade the template tomorrow. Meanwhile, the main feature I was looking forward to is already available to me. It's called labels and it acts as a way to categorize all my Blog posts by topics that I define. I occassionally debate about whether this is a personal blog (about family, friends, RVing and Travel) or a business blog (about computer stuff). In Jim's and my life, we love what we do and we do what we love, the line between personal and work is very blurry, so we write about it all. We've been keeping this blog for over 3 years now and it would be nice to click on 'WiFi' and see all the posts we've written about WiFi. Click on RVing and see all the posts that have been specifically about the RV lifestyle etc. That's what 'Labels' are for, and I see the place on my screen right now to put labels on this post. I think I'll categorize this post as 'Computer' and 'Blogs'. Then, I'll start categorizing all my old posts and see how far I get.

Blogger migration

Out with the old, in with the new. This seems to be a good time to migrate this blog to the new version of Blogger. I've backed it up every conceivable way, and I've been reading all the forum messages about other people's experiences. Lots of folks have had smooth migrations, taking just a few minutes and continuing on as if nothing had happened. Others have had 2-3 day ordeals. And a few have lost the ability to post to their blogs at all. So ... I figured I'd post this notice. If this blog is missing in action for a few days - don't worry, I'm working on it. If the worst happens, just go to our home page at www.jimandchris.com or www.geeksontour.com. Both of those have links to 'Blog' and I will post information there about what happened.

Water in the River

It looks like we picked a good time to be away from Peace River. The whole area was under Tornado watch most of the day on Christmas. To accomodate everyone for Christmas dinner, the park erected a big tent over part of the parking area. We expected to see that blown away when we got back, but it was still there. We were told that it was touch and go at a few points though. They *did* get a lot of rain though, which means water in the river! The river has been too low to paddle so far this winter, but now it looks good. Here is the view of the river from our bench, just last week: and, here is the same approximate spot today: That water level will definitely 'float our boats'!