What I Did With My Christmas Vacation

Thanks to my Brother in Law Joe for lending me a small number of his many weigh lifting trophies for this picture!

On The Road

There are few things as boring as a long road trip. We are traveling from our home in Columbus to visit my sister for Christmas. She lives in the northern wastes of Massachusetts a stones throw from New Hampshire. It is a beautiful area of the country, but it is also unfortunately a drive of 750 miles.

A trip of this magnitude does offer some opportunities for great discoveries. As loyal readers, I will share with you the treasures I have seen so far.

A car with antlers!

A tanker truck full of coffee!

A dog that likes pizza for dinner!

8. Columbus, Ohio Water Tower

Northwest Columbus along route 270.

7. Columbus, Ohio Water Tower

Near the intersection of routes 161 and 270.

6. New Albany, OH Water Tower

Keep Austin Weird

I just got back from a four-day training in Fraud Examination. It was a good week – the training was excellent, I got upgraded to first class on the flight back, and the hotel put me on the club level which comes with all a fancy little room with all kinds of snacks. The training was in Austin, Texas, my first time there. A few observations on Austin.

Austin can get really cold. I was expecting warm Texas sunshine. Instead it was cold and rained most of the time. Not cool, not cool at all.

Austin is a party town. The main industries are the state government and the colleges. It is not all that different from Columbus. There are bars all over the place and these kids know how to kick loose. Many of the bars are clustered on 6^th street. It is just one big bar after another, block after block. Not really my scene, but it was fun to see.

As part of my training, we visited the National Fraud Museum. It was small but well done. If you are geek and into this sort of thing, plan a special trip to Austin. They will welcome you with open arms.

The food is excellent. I ate Tex-Mex constantly and could not get enough of the homemade, fresh salsa. One restaurant reminded me of Uruguay with its outdoor mesquite barbeque set up for cooking. You could smell the wood smoke a block away. In Uruguay, this is very common both in restaurants and in private homes. I think I will always associate the smell of meat cooking over wood fire with cool nights beside the ocean in Uruguay.