Nine months and now crawling

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Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

Andrew is nine months old today, and has been successfully rolling around for some time now, and being able to get into a sitting position without assistance. He's been able to push/crawl backwards. With some stacking cups to motivate him, Andrew crawled for the first time today; repeatedly! Dena was reading through one of the baby development books, and for his age the book said he'd like stacking cups or blocks. We had some in the tub, but never put them out on the floor, so we did, and Andrew's face got real focused, and he crawled toward the stack, and then knocked it down. Dena grabbed the video camera, and I restacked, and Andrew crawled some more, and Dena recorded. We repeated this several times. It was very momentus. We're proud parents.

Paris Gaud de Nord train station

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Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

I had a train set growing up that was on a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood in our basement in Widconsin. It wasn't anything special, but I would look through model railroading magazines and dream of having a huge complex track layout with a big roundhouse for all the trains. Well, my first train trip in continental Europe landed me in Paris at the Gaud de Nord train station, and it was a childhood dream come true! Lots of tracks and trains all gathered under one roof. The pictures were taken on my HTC Touch Pro and came out pretty good.

I rode on a Thalys HiSpeed train from Rotterdam to Paris, and it was high speed indeed. I had the GPS going at one point and briefly saw 168 mph!!! That faster than I've ever been on any of my motorcycles. I'm know I'm going to really like travelling by train. It's so much less of a hassle than flying on a plane. You just show up to a train station, and get on the train. The seats are comfortable and have a decent amount of room. Plus there are electrical outlets and Wi-Fi available.