Chicago people?

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Next stop: Williamsburg, VA.

[Phil Bunch]

Next stop: Williamsburg, VA.

Just in case you haven't looked up the tourist opportunities in Williamsburg, there is an incredible restored 1700s-1800s era US village, with apparently period-authentic buildings, staff clothing, etc.  If you happen to end up with about a half-day or more free, it's worth a visit.  Of course this recommendation assumes you're interested in such things.

In further thinking about this recommendation, I am less sure this site would work well for a well-traveled sophisticated European...   (1) 200 years old is not very old for Europe, (2) it's possibly too commercialized (plenty of "antique" recreations are for sale and were created by the Williamsburg village shops with good quality).

Even if you can't make a visit to area attractions, I hope you enjoy your trip and that it's very successful.
------------------------------

Some background:

I did a lot of business travel during my career.  As a result, I've seen more interesting and beautiful cities from the back seat of a taxi than I can easily count.  Perhaps 5% of the time I would end up with a free weekend in an interesting city, or maybe a half-day to quickly survey part of a museum, or to walk around and acquire a feel for a place.  Not a substitute for an extended visit, and definitely not a substitute for living in a place for the several years it would take to know some things about a place and its culture.   Perhaps an analogy would be to taste a few dishes from a very large array of food vs enjoying many meals over an extended period of time.

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Same here. In at 01:30AM, out at 07:30PM. Plane, hotel, meeting, plane. The wonderful aspects of business travel.

At least it is not cold here, either. The US seems to be boiling in Summertime.


Jeroen

[Jeroen D]

Boiling

Well, depends a bit where you are in the US.
I'm in Delhi, India right now and Dallas seems quite pleasant weather wise compared to Delhi! And let me tell you, you don't want to be in Dallas in the summer.
Jeroen

[Will]

Jeroen, how's the food?  I imagine beautiful tastiness everywhere.

[Jeroen D]

Food is great. I love Indian food. Mind you, you need to be very carefull what you eat and where. Western stomachs tend not to fare to well, initially here.

I'd better get used to it though. My three year stint in Kansas City is coming to and end and my wife and I will be moving to Delhi this August. We've really enjoyed our three years in the US. Kansas City turned out to be a real gem as far as we're concerned.

Our live in Delhi for the next couple of years will be very different. For one thing, it looks like I'll have to give up my flying. Real pain, I'm halfway with my Instrument rating. We had planned to go to Williamsburg this autumn. We loves these period buildings. We've just come back from a long weekend is Savannah, GA. Lovely place!

I'm taking July of and two of our kids are joining my wife and me for what will be our last US holiday. We're doing the west Coast. And my son and I will visit Oshkosh one last time!

So lots we've done in the US, even more we haven't. Still, India is going to be an interesting adventure.

Jeroen

[Shiv Mathur]

Jeroen,

If you're going to be transiting through Bombay, do let me know !

Shiv

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

I had not expected to meet 30+ in Miami and in Williamsburg and in Chicago and in DC. Everybody told me Miami was hot. So I expected the rest to be less hot, but it is hotter (in Summer).

Well, even Chicago is South of Southern France, and the land masses are enormous, of course. Continents cannot be compared that easily.


Jeroen

[Hardy Heinlin]

Remember, Europe is so warm thanks to the hot water coming from Miami :-)

Without the Gulf stream, Europe would be as cold as Alaska.


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[torrence]

And may be again, if the G stream changes in the future.  Europe may yet *want* global warming - although it's hard to predict all the unpredictable effects   .  Just another indication that we are all in this 'planet Earth' thing together.

Cheers,
Torrence

[Phil Bunch]

Perhaps Wall Street will figure out a way to charge service fees on Europe's Gulf Stream warming?!?!  Heck, they already own all our governments, the taxpayers, and anything else they want or can invent.  Why stop now?

It is truly amazing how different the weather is in the continental US vs Europe.  If one goes strictly by latitude, where I live in southern Maine (near Portland) is about the same latitude as Nice, France, I believe.  Yet our climate is radically different, only about 8 weeks in a typical summer with high temps above about 23C/75F.

It's interesting to read of the early settlers' accounts of US weather, especially in the Southeast, in an era with no air conditioning anywhere.  It seems they didn't know it could get that hot on a sustained basis.  Jeroen H is of course right - it is routinely above 90F/32C across most of the US during summer months, often with high humidity.   In the desert southwest states things become almost surreal - from memory, in the Arizona summer, the low at night is 95F/34C and the high is 120F/48C, although the humidity is very low.  I grew up in Atlanta, and can't stand to visit the region any more in the summer, having lived in the northeast US for several decades now.  

Yet when I visited Singapore, I was shocked to learn directly that it could and does get *much* hotter near the equator (only 60 miles from Singapore).   Near the equator, the sun's rays are unbelievably hot due to its rays being more direct.  For example, while walking a couple of blocks from a shopping center to my hotel, the decorative pattern from my t-shirt was temporarily "burned" into my back by the sun's heat.  For the next hour or so you could easily see the pattern on my back, but of course it wasn't literally a burn.  That freaked me out!  Yet I watched a man applying hot tar to the adjacent hotel's roof at mid-day, and he didn't seem to be bothered.  I guess it's what you are used to.   Anyway, I learned that Miami or Houston are *not* hot compared to *really* hot places around the world, near the equator.

Fortunately for the US, most things, including essentially all public buildings, shopping malls, shops, etc, are air conditioned.  I was very surprised to visit a Lalique crystal store in Paris (or was it another brand...) in July and it wasn't air conditioned.  I gather that many Frenchmen feel that air conditioning is unhealthy, as do some Americans.  

Jeroen H - are your aviation work areas around the USA air conditioned or are you having to work in ultra-hot conditions during the summer?

[torrence]

I was interested in your remarks about Singapore, Phil.  When I visited there a few years ago I developed a theory that the local electronics industry had a secret weapon.  A super cheap way to run environmental stress tests on chips, etc. is just to stick the unit in your pocket and walk around a bit - from extreme heat and humidity outside to super frigid in the underground malls and metro.  If it works after a day of cycling between these extremes, just stamp it "qual tested"!

Cheers,
Torrence

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Phil,

Look at how we tried to keep the flight deck survivable.



In the end we made a "command decision" to fire up the APU and had to burn about 4 tonnes of kerosine during the rest of the testing just to stay alive.


Jeroen