cc: file, Diane Cluff, Darrell and Nancy Krueger, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Claude and Katherine Warner, and Lloyd and Luana Warner.
"Monday morning I went to Albuquerque to make a video tape for my presentation in Aberdeen. I got to the airport terminal just as they started to load the plane. I thought I had left early enough to be plenty early. Despite what Rhonda or others who work with me might say, ever since my mission I have tried arriving early for plane flights and meetings. My first Mission President made a strong point of teaching us the importance of being early to meetings. I remember when I was a District Leader, driving in from Harlow New Town once, speeding all the way, being late to a Zone meeting at the Hyde Park Chapel, and being reprimanded for being late. Not corrected for speeding, or getting my companion to speed. I remember reading there are those who like to be early and those who prefer to be fashionably late. I consider it part of my nature to be comfortable arriving early.
Even prior to this, I remember the first summer (1970) I worked for Pan American (now Amoco). I was assigned to support a geologist who was collecting rocks all around the Great Salt Lake as part of a 2-D seismic survey my boss, Bob Kallweit, was responsible for. The geologist had a steel rod in his leg and he asked me to be at the airport early because he had problems going through security. This was my first trip for Pan American, and I made sure I was at the Denver Airport early. I waited at the security gate, just like I remembered being instructed. The geologist never arrived. Finally I went through to the gate, and they were just closing the door and moving the gate away from the plane. They would not reopen it for me, and I missed the plane. It turned out the geologist was there earlier than me and had gone through before I arrived. It was very embarrassing, and yet it all worked out. I caught the next plane. Maybe that is why I remember being corrected about being late to the meeting at the mission home a year and a half later.
Monday I left the house at 5:45, and I got to Hobby and my gate at 6:40, just as they were loading the plane. I recalled my recent fiasco in Dallas (.../9814.html), renewing my commitment for arriving early.
I arrived in Albuquerque at 9:05 and was at MuSE by about 9:15. The video people were at the office. I had sort of written a script within the text for my presentation in Aberdeen. This text included a description of what the video would cover. However, this was not really enough, and this fact became obvious over the next two days. We worked video taping various segments until well past when everyone was ready to leave the office on Monday. When we packed up at about 7:30 in the evening, I was not convinced there was enough video shot. Yet, it was asking too much to have the camera crew stay later. Curtis Gangi, the President of MuSE took me out to dinner at a Mexican Restaurant (I thought of Ben and Sarah and chuckled to myself). It was a very enjoyable dinner, mostly because Curtis got me talking. I described Bavinger's work, IDEF-0 process modeling, IDEF-1X data schema modeling, the Best Practice methodology, hypertext, and some of the things I would like to see happen as far as implementing all of these ideas. Curtis caught the vision and it was an exciting and fun discussion. It was 11:30 by the time we finished talking and he dropped me off at the LaQuinta Inn. I worked on the script until about 12:00, on Curtis' portable PowerMac computer. Then I got up and worked on it for another hour in the morning before getting ready for another day. I went downstairs at 7:15 AM, and was checked out 10 minutes before my ride arrived. It was nice to have a few minutes to think.
We arrived at the video editing shop 10 minutes before the doors were unlocked. This was my first experience to work on a professional edit of a video. It was fun. They have a lot of neat tools, and our editor described the process as putting together a big puzzle. The biggest issue was the state of the script. Creve Maples, the Founder and visionary of MuSE, thought about what I had written for a few minutes. Then he decided the best way to handle the script was to have him act as narrator, bring me into the video as a geotechnical mentor, then asking me questions as we stepped through the various examples. It took until about 9:30, an hour after they had originally scheduled the sound studio, for me to rewrite the script and to write out a set of reasonable questions. Then there was detailed rewriting of the introduction and the summary. We finished recording the sound about noon, when the next client arrived. Another client had cancelled, or we would not have been able to have access to the facility the last hour and a half. It was quite different from recording songs in Alan Peterson's upstairs extra bedroom. After a quick lunch, and a little time watching the video editing, I left for the Airport via MuSE. It took longer than I expected to pick up a confidentiality agreement, and by the time I got to the gate Southwest Airlines was loading. So much for my plan for arriving early.
I got back to Houston at 6:15 PM Tuesday, just in time to go to RePAIRS. I arrived about five minutes early and returned a phone call I had been unable to make earlier, because my new cell phone is broken. By the way, the number is 713.542.5620. I was very tired and wondered why I had gone. It turned out to be very good for me. Someday I should write about the Yellow Star of David. I was really wiped out by the time I got to the house at about 11:30 PM. Might have been why I had a hard time focusing on putting the slides together for my paper on Wednesday. There meetings down at Energy Innovations, and numerous start-up activities to coordinate. I got away from the office at 6:30 PM, and had promised to be at dinner at the Cornings at 7:00. By the time I picked up laundry, and called and made an excuse for being late, checked and responded to some e-mail, and drove over to the Cornings I was a half hour late. It was a nice evening, and I'm glad I went, even though I was late, and I ended up staying up all night to put together the viewgraphs for my presentation in Aberdeen (http://www.walden3d.com/wvs/papers/980608/). By the time I finished I was again wishing to arrive early more often.
Needless to say, I was tired on Thursday. I organized some things ok and some things not ok. I made it down to the office about 11:00 and reviewed the video. It was ok. In fact, I grew to like it better the more times I have seen it. Melanie had gone to the VETL to pick up the tracking device for me. She didn't get back to the house until 1:00 PM, which is when we should have left. Rhonda brought the video copies to the house, got cash for us from the bank, and was concerned we wouldn't make the plane. We left about 1:30, and when we got to the airport learned we were on stand-by because Continental had overbooked. Melanie, I was very concerned my attempt to provide you a nice learning experience this summer was going to completely fall apart. However, they finally called us up, and we got on the plane, despite not arriving early enough.
We both slept on the plane some. However, we both watched both movies: 'The Man in the Iron Mask,' and 'The Newton Boys.' We took the train from Gatwick to Victoria Station and then took a cab to our hotel, The Paragon. The hotel was one underground station away from Earl's Court, where the apartment was for the last area I served in on my mission. In some ways, I felt like I had come home again. However, the hotel would not give us a room. After all, we arrived too early.
So we had a (16 ($27.84) English breakfast. I had a sponge bath, and changed clothes. Melanie put on some warmer clothes. Then we took the London tubes (underground rail) to South Kensington, walked in the tunnel to the Hyde Park Chapel (listening to a guitar player on the way), and then walking up Exhibition Road and Princes Gate to the Royal Albert Hall. Melanie walked from there to Buckingham Palace, where she was late for seeing the changing of the guard. I walked down the back road to Prince Consort Road, where I arrived 5 minutes early for a meeting with professors at Imperial College of Science and Technology, Jeff Hume, and Cindy Berlier. I had forgot the new video, and so I took a cab back to the hotel, and ended up being a half-hour late. There were meetings all afternoon. They all seemed to go very well. Imperial College is agreeing to provide us with a large room on the 3rd floor for the London Continuum Development Center. After the meetings Mr. Finstad, Jeff, Cindy, and myself walked down to the Zetland Pub and discussed the day. I learned more about his plans for Nicaragua, and particularly how this property can be used for carbon-dioxide tax credits. I left, returned to get Melanie, answered a phone call, tried to find a plug adapter for Melanie's hair dryer, and finally left for the dinner restaurant at 8:30, the same time we were suppose to arrive there. We had dinner at the Criterion Restaurant at Piccadilly Circus. Jeff called this the finest restaurant in London. Melanie, I do not think you were all that impressed. Bowen Loftin joined us, and it was an enjoyable evening. After dinner Melanie and I walked down to Big Ben and looked at the lights on the river by Parliament. We arrived early in the morning back at the hotel (shortly after midnight).
Saturday morning we both slept in. I was going to take Melanie to Portobello Road, a famous antique area. Oh well! We got up and left the hotel too late for arriving early at the changing of the guard. We couldn't find a cab, and one finally came along. We made it just as the first of the guards marched out. There were thousands of people there. We were close to the gate, and really couldn't see much. The longer we stayed the more other people got tired and moved on, giving us a better view. I took a lot of pictures. None of which will turn out because the film was not loaded correctly in my camera and they were not exposed. Oh well! It was the 4th of July, and the Red Coats had a brass band and a flute band, which together played U.S. patriotic songs. I recognized again how sentimental and patriotic I am, as the tears came to my eyes. We walked from Buckingham Palace to the Green Park tube stop, and took a tube to Leicester Square. After eating lunch, changing my remaining U.S. cash for pounds, and standing in line for over an hour, we were able to get three tickets to the musical Beauty and the Beast (which my sister Sara recommended we see via a post card she sent a week ago from England).
We then went by tube to Tower Hill to see The Tower of London. I thought I took a lot of pictures. It was fun to listen to the Beefeater tell the stories of the Tower. They had a virtual reality reconstruction of the Tower at different ages, which looked like it could be immediately translated into the MuSE or the VETL environments. Melanie didn't seem all that impressed with the Crown Jewels. I ate fish & chips, and Melanie had chicken & chips. We finished them on a tourist boat, which we took down the River Thames to Parliament. It was especially interesting to me to see the reconstructed Globe Theater, where Shakespeare's original plays were performed. We cut the timing a little too tight. We caught the tube from Westminster back to Earl's Court, then took the line to West Brompton, only to find this station was closed on weekends. We had a hard time catching a cab back to the hotel, hurried to change, couldn't find a cab to the play, had the cab we found break down, and ended up not arriving early. In fact, we were about the last patrons through the door before they locked it. Bowen was patiently waiting for us. Both Melanie and I really enjoyed the play. They did a very good job, it was a lot of fun, and I related to some of the messages. After the play we went with Bowen to one of his favorite restaurants, I ate again with him, and we talked about all of the stuff is going on. Melanie and I caught a late and crowded tube back to Earl's Court. Then we waited to catch a cab to take us back to the hotel. Again we arrived early (in the morning).
Sunday morning we slept in again. By the time we got ready it was almost 10:00 and time for church to start. There were no cabs on the street and we discovered the way through the Earl's Court pavilion grounds to the tube stop. We got to the Hyde Park Chapel just as church started. Again, despite the best of intentions we did not arrive early. There were more memories than I know how to write about flood my mind as we attended church. They redid all of the wood from dark cherry to blonde oak. Yet it was still the same place, 26 years after my mission. It was good to be there, to hear the wonderful testimonies, to feel of the spirit of the black returned missionary who taught a combined Priesthood / Relief Society meeting for visitors, and to recall all of the positive things I learned on my mission. My mind went to Paul, and how the things he is learning will help him learn the importance of arriving early.
Since I am not getting this Thoughtlet off on Sunday, I need to add a couple of post scripts. Alan and Patrice Peterson were staying in the same hotel we were (by design), and they came and visited with us for a while on Sunday evening. Monday morning we got up early, took a cab to Barron's Court, took the tube to Heathrow Airport, put our baggage in Left Luggage, ate some breakfast, took a cab to British Petroleum's Sunbury office, gave a couple of video presentation's to the BP Chief Technology Officer, took a cab back to Terminal 2 at Heathrow, got our bags, went to check in, were too late to check our bags, ran to the gate, checked our bags, checked in, and finally sat down in our assigned seats - totally drenched in sweat. So much for arriving early. Oh well!."