Katrina

Part of the Gilmore clan is down in Louisiana (Cousins David , Michael and Christy) and just received word that they are all doing well. My prayers to all effected. Here is a note from David:

Bill (and others),

Here in Winnsboro we had very little effect from Katrina's devastation. A little rain with about 35-40 MPH wind. The day before land fall I was driving back from Illinois from the Seattle visit. I had planned to stay in West Memphis and then drive on to Winnsboro the next day. When I arrived at the motel, I found the lobby filled with people from New Orleans. I told the motel to give my room to someone else and drove home via highway I-55. The traffic was terrible, eight times normal, and about a hundred cars on the shoulder with flats or overheating didn't help the flow. However, it was good that I decided to drive Sunday, a Monday drive would have been treacherous.

We have had numerous power outages because we get our electricity from Mississippi and they are having their problems. Jackson, MS airport is down and their traffic is being routed to Monroe. Our small civic center is also being used as a shelter. Monroe is about the same longitude as Jackson but the storm curved just far enough east to avoid us.

It will be quite a while before Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama get over this one, but Michael, Christy and I are fine. Thanks for the offer of help.

Just in. . . Michael may have to go to Baton Rouge this weekend to aid police officials in recovery attempts. We hope he can stay out of harms way.

Donations? How about the awesome Northwest Medical Teams?

PBR. In a Bottle.

Andy took this picture of Kevin and myself at Sam and Adriane's wedding, and I just like it. I still haven't processed my images from the wedding... Soon!

August 29th

August 29th came and went. I heard nothing about my visa.

Hood to Coast Redux

The 2005 Powered by Pixelworks team

The race is done! It was a lot of fun, the team did great, and I can't wait for next time. The team ran the race at an average speed of 8:00 minutes/mile and placed 255th out of 1063 teams. I'm very happy in the top 25%! Get the full results.

The legs are feeling a little sore today, but not too bad. I actually felt fast playing Ultimate today at lunch... My personal stats are a 7:14 average pace for all three legs. Not bad, but I did the same legs two years ago and did 6:45-ish. Getting old? Lack of training? I think a combination. I'll see if I can get the 6:45 back next time!

And, of course, I have a ton of photos up for your browsing pleasure.

Hood to Coast

This years Hood to Coast starts this Friday. Hood to Coast is a 12-person, 36-leg relay that goes from Timberline lodge on Mt. Hood all the way to the beach at Seaside 200 miles away. My team, Powered by Pixelworks hits the road at 2:45pm. We are estimating around 27 hours right now, so hopefully we will be in Seaside before it is too dark. Our team is composed mainly of engineers, who bring geeky timing gadgets along, and accountants, who provide super-detailed Excel spreadsheets. I'll have my camera along capturing the fun like I did in 2002 and 2003. Tune back in early next week for the redux...

New Desktop

Mama Pimp (aka Becky) from the Dirty XXX crew just posted this sweet picture she grabbed at the Kleinmen tournament:


One of those hands is mine...

The small size doesn't do it justice. It looks great on my desktop!

For the non-Ultimate players that read the blog, this is standard cheer practice. Where other sports just put a hand in and do a "Go Team!", we put a thumb on the disc...

Ashland

I hadn't been to Ashland is quite some time, so I took the weekend last week and headed down. It was good to see all of the relatives and eat the straight-from-the-garden food. Of course going down there brought my dream of flying back to the fore-front: Uncle Steve and I stopped by the airport to chat and pick up an Aero Trader to peruse the current used plane market...


Scotty, Coleen, Aunt Kari, Uncle Steve, and Me


Me, Grandma, Grandpa

Visa Watch 2005!

LOS ANGELES - We have just learned from information leaked from the Turkish Consulate in L.A. that the visa will take around 21 days to process from August 8th. This means that Mr. Anderson should expect his visa around August 29th. We are currently checking with our Las Vegas office to see what the odds on this happening currently are. If you ask this reporter, I would bet on September.

Report by Joe Stanley of the Lack-of-Action News Team.

Kleinmen Eruption

I was out at Delta Park the entire weekend playing at the
Kleinmen Eruption tournament. As I am not playing with Swizzle anymore (I was going to be in Turkey in April, remember), I picked up with a super-fun crew called Dirty XXX (that's said "Dirty Thirty" mother). We had a great time and I came home nicely exhausted and sunburned! For those interested, I took some pictures of the finals.

Family Pictures

Myself, Dad, Mom, Jen, and James with Caitlyn and Sophia up front


Fulfilling my roll as "Cool Uncle Bill"

Auntie Net grabbed some nice shots as we were leaving on Monday and I just had to share. Thanks Auntie Net!

Where in the world...

Many people have asked where my apartment is, and where it relates to where I'll be working. Well, why don't I show you? To do that, you need to download the very cool, and very free, Google Earth. Once you have that down and installed, download this file: Izmir_Apartment.kmz. Double click that, and Google Earth will open up and 'fly' you right to my pad. One place I will be working is across the bay, near where the 'Izmir' label is. The second site is to the Northeast, in Manisa, on the Western edge of that town. NOTE: Google Earth grabs data real-time off the internet, so only try if you have a broadband or are very patient...

Visa Update: I heard the one guy at the Turkish consulate in L.A. who does visas just returned from his three week vacation. So, he should be well rested and ready to get my visa back to me ASAP.