Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Hi my friends,

I realize that I haven't been on here for a long, long time. I actually tried to write a blog about a month ago and something happened to it and it didn't load. I lost it somewhere in hyperspace so I let it go. The last couple of months I have been spending an inordinate amount of time in Lucknow, India, since that is where the aircraft owner lives and when we come here, unless we have a confirmed charter flight, they just leave us here. Also, interestingly, they really don't have long-term permission to park the aircraft in Mumbai, our home base. Sounds crazy, but it's one of those India things that would take too long to explain. We were in Lucknow for 23 days of October and it doesn't look like November will be too far behind. I just fly Karen over from Mumbai and she enjoys spending time here since they put us up at our boss' private guesthouse, where we are treated like VIP guests, with full availability of the gym and spa. Karen loves all the free spa services. We have both taken advantage of full massages, facials, pedicures, haircuts, you name it. I think the skin on my face and feet is in the best shape it's been in since I was about 4 years old.

Karen and I took a couple of days off and spent time with Dr. John McGhee, our good friend from Auburn, Washington. He is working on a very interesting new project, trying to produce a kind of soap opera program for the women of Pakistan, who are addicted to these programs, but these have a heath and spiritual twist to the stories. We saw the initial program, which was extremely well done by a great cast of actors, including the lady who played Ghandi's wife in the classic movie from the early 80's. Her name is Rohini and we spent a lovely couple of hours at her home with Dr. McGhee. Very impressive, and we hope that this wonderful project takes wing and can express God's love and care in an amazing new venue on Pakistani and Indian television.

Karen and I will do Thanksgiving alone this year at Lucknow. But, we are happy to have a great place to do so, under the care of our wonderful hosts. Probably won't have turkey like we were able to do last year in Gurgaon, with our new oven. We took the oven to Mumbai but are still waiting on the gas cylinder to hook it up to, so Karen can try to cook some of our favorite dishes in our much smaller kitchen. We will probably go out to one of our favorite restaurants here in Lucknow, called Barbeque Nation, and see if they, by any chance, have any turkey on the menu for Thanksgiving. Most likely we'll be eating chicken, and that's okay.

The Indian economy just keeps on rolling and my job security seems pretty well maintained if I am still interested in working in India. My plan now is to work here, if possible, until mandatory retirement at age 65. That's still more than 6 years away so you can see we are having our big adventure here. It's turned into more of an adventure than we thought it might.

We had thought about coming home for Christmas this year but decided its a very difficult time of year to travel and everyone has family agendas so we put it off til Spring, when I will come home for training anyway. I am hoping to go back to Thunderbird Academy for their reunion weekend. It will be my brother's 40th year and I knew lots of people from his class. We like the weather in Scottsdale that time of year so maybe we'll do it again. Plus, we can visit our kids and see the grandkids, too.

We love our new apartment in Mumbai and it's close to a lot of restaurant choices and good things that Karen can do, even when I am out of town. It's much more convenient and handy than our Gurgaon apartment was, which was kind of far out.

I am going to keep this kind of short, try to get it to publish and wish each and every one of you a very wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas Season. Since Mumbai stays quite warm throughout the winter, as opposed to Delhi, which got cold in December and January, we will enjoy moderate temperatures throughout the winter (think South shore of the big Island of Hawaii for weather comparisons).

We love you all and hope to hear from you soon,

Dan and Karen Clifford

P.S. The pics are from the Formula One race in New Delhi a few weeks ago. Our aircraft owner bought 50% of the race team and we got to go to the weekend trials. We had tickets to the race but traffic was so bad we couldn't reach in time for the race. Still had fun, though.

Buying vegetables and eating out

We were taking our taxi through Mumbai the other day and saw this place in the city where the farmers come to sell their goods.  Its amazing how they just sell their stuff right there on the highway.


The last picture is out of our apartment window in the afternoon sun, looking North.  You can see other highrise apartments in the area, plus our local go-kart track, if you look carefully.  It's a beautiful area and one of the remarkable things about it is that there are no slums visible in your window view, something that is very hard to achieve in any part of Mumbai.

Karen still has to worry about the supposed crocodiles in the lake and now we hear there are leopards in the forest around where we live.  I won't lose any sleep over this but it will give her some added things to think about when I am out of town - ha!

I actually put this blog together several weeks ago and couldn't get it to publish so we'll see if I can get it to go up today to give you guys a little better idea of what our life in India is like from day to day.

Love you all,

Dan and Karen

Good morning,

I see it's been almost a month since I last put up a blog. I know that some of you are on Facebook and see me there, some of you are on my email list and get those letters, and some of you are probably seeing all of this stuff as I put it out. This blog was my kids idea but I do have to admit that I have enjoyed blogging more than I thought I would. I just don't do it as often as I would like to.

The other day I was totalling up a logbook page and it really pointed out how little flying I have been doing lately. Since the first of June, when the move to Mumbai really got serious, I have only flown about 30 hours. Usually I fly that much in a month. Some of you have asked and I am on salary so it's not a monetary issue, it's just that I like to fly and to be busy, so this has been a particularly frustrating stretch for me. This last week we did have two flights, which was nice. One of them was actually a charter flight and it was down to Kochin, which is a place that I hadn't been to before down in the Kerala coastal region of Southern India. I was glad to get a chance to fly down that way, even though it was only a pickup trip and allowed no time on the ground at all. A couple of days later we had a trip for height verification on our RVSM (reduced vertical separation minimums). An engineer flew in from Bangkok and he had the equipment required to do our height verification testing. ATC around Mumbai was not in a particularly good mood and they sent us offshore for our test flight. That became tricky because the engineer wanted us to fly in a straight line for 45 minutes but since we were headed out to sea, even though we had slowed way down, we couldn't fly that long or we were going to get out of radio range, which would complicate things mightily. So, we flew as long as we could and then turned around before we lost communications. We headed back towards Mumbai but there was some serious weather on the way and we began negotiating for moving around the weather. The controller started us down, which we couldn't do during the test, so we had to turn around again and fly out towards the ocean again. Then, I went back in the cabin and checked with the engineer to see if we could trun around and fly back into Mumbai for the landing. He gave me the thumbs up so, we headed back in, but on the way in Mumbai had a couple of 360 degree turns to make room for other planes as we headed back in. With the Hindi/English thing going on, it's always an adventure. It's in times like these that I am thankful for my Indian copilot, who can speak their language, so to speak. Lots of explanation was required for the controller to allow us to fly at an RVSM altitude when we were seeking RVSM certification. It seems that we already were RVSM approved and the only thing we were going was getting our height certification from the engineer. Sometimes, it's just how you word things that makes the difference.

If you have looked at the pictures above, I am sitting in the pilots lounge of the General Aviation Terminal in Mumbai. This was something we didn't have in Delhi, so I have to appreciate the building and the accomodation of our private planes here. The parking here is quite interesting, with the runway just a few yards away, the big jets go roaring right past you. If they ever had directional control issues due to an engine out or something, it would get really interesting really fast. It is fun to watch the big planes, the 747's, the 777's and big Airbusses do their takeoff and landing thing just right in front of your eyes. The Mumbai runway is probably one of the most used pieces of runway real estate in the world. They do have a second runway but it runs in a different direction and so they are reticent to use it under normal circumstances, which keeps runway 27 very, very busy. Sometimes, they tell us we are number 20 for landing and it isn't too hard to be number 10 for takeoff. I try to save fuel by taxiing on one engine and also idling for long periods of time on one. At least here in Mumbai the taxi times are short, compared to Delhi. I have never, ever taxiied as much as I did in Delhi. Sometimes, it was a 20 minute taxi to a far away runway. Here, last week, we started, called for taxi, and tower told us to pull into position for takeoff, so it was less than 5 minutes from startup to takeoff, but this seldom happens. More likely is that you will do a short taxi and then wait 20-25 minutes for your turn to takeoff. Since airplanes are feeding in from several different takeoff positions, you often don't know your sequence and if you start your second engine, that will just about guarantee that you will have to wait another 10-15 minutes than you thought.

Our houseguest, Ankita, went home to Delhi for the weekend to take care of some business. She will be back on Tuesday evening so we have had some time to ourselves. Karen has not been feeling well, so has been sleeping most of the weekend.

We had something really interesting happen on Sunday morning. Our househelper from Delhi had called a few weeks ago to chat about something. She has been talking about coming to Mumbai to work for us here since she liked us so much. I couldn't totally understand what her conversation was about but she was trying to get it so her 20 year old son could come down and work for us. I had tried to tell her that we didn't have a position for him because Karen really doesn't want a male housekeeper around when I am gone so much. But, come Sunday morning, he shows up with his suitcase, at the front door and was expecting to go to work. Now, he spoke just a little English but not much. His mother speaks none. I had, at the most, indicated he could stay with us for a few days while he was looking for work but now that was going to be negated by the company of our little air hostess. I was eating breakfast, getting ready to go to church and the doorbell rang. In he comes. So, I called my friend up in Delhi for whom this kids mother now works and explained everything to him. He said Saina would be coming in to work on Monday morning and he would explain everything to her then. Of we went to church, with this very nice young man just tagging along. I am not sure how much he got out of the English only church service but he was just so nice. After church I called my copilot and asked him to please explain to this young man, Attosh, was his name, that we really didn't have a place for him to stay and that I was so sorry for the misunderstanding. I was willing to pay for his transportation back to Delhi, which is 1,000 road miles away. He said he would only need 500 rupees, which is about $12. I handed him that and he packed his bag and headed out. We were so relieved because we really don't have a servant's quarters in this apartment, like we did in the one in Gurgaon. Here, we only have three bedrooms, one of which is the office with the computer and all, so no bed in there. With Ankita here, there is no extra bedroom at all. Karen and I were sweating this out but after Vipul called and talked to our new helper, he was very nice and totally understanding that his mother had kind of misguided him and so off he went. I did get him to one church service in the few short hours that he was with us. Karen wasn't feeling well enough to go on Sunday morning so it was good to have someone to talk to the auto rickshaw driver.

Wow, I just got a phone call and the airplane has some interesting flights coming up. Also, amazingly, the management actually listened and did not take the new captain they were looking at. He just didn't have a good reputation here in the local flying community, so that is always alarming. I had talked to his former boss and they said they had restricted him from VIP flights. I had told them in an email last week that I thought all of our flights were VIP flights. I still thought that I was going to have to try and work with this guy and do some intensive training. But, we dodged a bullet and so I am breathing a sigh of relief and thanking my lucky stars.

Our taxi will be here any minute to take us to the mall. There, we are going to eat some lunch and try to take in an English movie - yahoo!!

I'll be back with more next time.

Dan

Shocked in India

This week Karen and I were visiting with the pastor from our Mumbai SDA church here in India. We actually love Pastor Rajan Paul, who graduated from Spicer College in Pune, with a Master's of Religion degree. Since then he has gotten married (arranged) two years ago and now is the senior pastor of the Mumbai Central church. The first time I heard him preach back in late May, I knew I was going to like him and he is known for his preaching style. He is a wonderful young man and always has a smile on his face. Since I graduated from the SDA theological seminary at Andrews University 32 years ago this month, we started comparing notes about studies and the life of a young pastor. Since I had taken a year out of college and gone flying in Botswana for a year, I was 26 years old by the time I finished seminary and headed back to California, where I was a youth pastor at the Redlands SDA church. So, by the time I was finished with graduate school and back in California, I was right about the same station in life where our young pastor is. He has been married for two years and his wife is expecting their first baby around Christmas to early January. Now, here is where the paths of an SDA minister in the USA and one in a developing country widely diverge. Without probing too deeply, I asked the pastor if he was comfortable sharing salary information with me. I well remember before seminary, my first year out of college, this was 1976, and my starting pay was $1,000 USD/month, give or take a little. My ex-wife was working already as a dental hygienist and in California, they were pretty well paid, so she was making roughly twice what I was making, which didn't bother me at all. With two incomes and not much expense, we were able to get by just fine, even though our first year of marriage, I was still in undergraduate theology training. Without too much pressing, and with a smile on his face, I asked our young pastor about his current pay and he revealed that he is working for less than $90/month US. I asked him again, because, for a moment I was in shock. He laughed again and said that because he has his graduate degree and works at the Mumbai church, he is making quite a bit more than some of the other young men. The local conference does take 10% of his pay for rent on the parsonage, which is attached to the church. We have seen it, and it is just a different world than we live in, trust me on that. We pay our housemaid, who only comes in 6 days a week for about two hours, quite a bit more than this, and she has no education at all. Our drivers, who were full time at Jindal in Delhi, were making more than twice this amount of money and, again, they barely spoke English and their main contribution to life was driving a car in bad traffic. This is just so wrong. Not only is that wrong, but now I did a little math and its just obscene the difference between his pay and mine. If a wealthy executive were making as many times more money as I am than the pastor, he would be making over 35 million dollars a year. Karen and I came home and discussed this for quite some time and we are just shocked that there are dedicated and hard working young people who will submit themselves to a very rigorous and intense post-graduate education for this amount of money. I still remember when my dad talked about arriving in Chile, South America back in 1944. Of course, at that time dad didn't have his master's degree but he had his undergraduate degree in theology and a burning desire to work in Spanish work, since he had grown up in El Paso, Texas. When they got off the boat in Chile, dad discovered he would be making a dollar a day. His and mom's first opportunity to come back to visit family and friends in the USA would be in 6 years. My company here in India flies me home, business class, twice a year. To put one last period on this sentence, the pastor here kind of laughingly told me that his wife has a pretty good tech job with a local company. In fact, her office is right behind our apartment here in Powai. The sad part, his entire salary pays only the tithe on his wife's salary, so she is making 10 times what he makes. I know that pastors in America must now be making in the neighborhood of $50,000/year. The last time I checked, the Indian rupee is about 45 to 1 on the USD, so you can take the same number in both the USA and India, and that's the pay, only here its in rupees, where it's USD in America. An American pastor makes about 45-50 times as much as an Indian pastor. I don't know even where to start with this, but now I have a completely new and amazing appreciation for these pastors and workers.

If you noticed the pictures look a little different today, we followed our Mumbai Central pastor to another SDA English speaking church in the Mumbai area. A friend in Delhi had told me about this church in an area called Sanpada. If the driver knows what he is doing, then it's possible that we might get there quicker than we do to Mumbai Central. Sanpada is an area across the bay, which is part of Navi Mumbai (New Mumbai.) We drove kind of through and passed it on the way to Pune a couple of weeks ago, so I got a brief look at it and now we know. I was very impressed with this huge SDA school that we ended up at for church today. As it turns out, it is a private, SDA school but, since private schools are so highly sought after, they have 2600 students here. When I saw all the school busses and the size of the school I was totally in shock. After church today, one of the teachers informed me that almost the whole congregation at church today was made up solely of the teachers at this SDA school but that most of the students were not Seventh-day Adventist at all. So, I said, what a great opportunity to give them reading, writing, arithmetic, English and Bible. He said they love it and that the school is highly regarded and very successful. I had no idea and love surprises like this. We met in one of the classrooms and sat on very hard desks for the entire length of the SS and church program. Gave me so much more respect for these young kids who come in and sit in these desks every single day. Karen and I guess that there were about 25 people there today, with only one child in the entire congregation. Interesting. As soon as we arrived, the pastor came out of the classroom and greeted us, along with the local pastor of this church. We were honored as guests with special recognition and introduction from the front, as well as one long-stem rose each. Just a wonderful experience, and the pastor of this church said he had heard about me already. I forgot to mention that 3 weeks ago, when we were attending the Mumbai SDA central church, we ran into the president of the Western Indian Union office, and when he saw me, he said he had already heard very good things about my sermons from his grandkids. I guess they attended Mumbai back on July 16, when I was very priveleged to speak there. All this preaching stuff, and the wonderful way that the people here respond to God's gospel of Love, makes me wish, again, that I was two people, so I could share all the time. I got the thelogy degree to please my parents, who thought flying was not a worthy profession, but I have been flying professionally for 31 plus years and it has been a very enjoyable career. Anytime someone pays you to do what you love to do anyway, it's a good life, but we really have to fix this minister salary thing here. AND, I bet, although I don't know, that the teachers are not paid well, either. So fundamentally wrong. And, I have many friends in India who are pilots or working tech jobs and they are paid quite well. It's just a different culture.

Hi Victorville, Hi Garden Grove, Hi Redlands. These are the three SDA churches that I worked at back in the late 70's and early 80's just before I voluntarily switched careers. Great memories, great people and a wonderful experience. I wasn't paid well, but it was an OK life, with lots of the compensation coming as appreciation directly from the parisioners. (Not money, just great appreciation for trying to communicate God's love to them and their kids.) I need some of that love and forgiveness myself these days. I have been struggling lately and just really need your prayers and love.

Thanks for coming along, I hope you enjoyed the message and the journey. Love you all!!

Dan

Waiting to fly

Hi Family and friends,

In early to mid-June, Karen and I began the process of saying good-bye to our Delhi and Gurgaon friends and boarded an airliner for a two hour flight from Delhi to Mumbai on June 18th. Getting three cats on board a domestic airliner in India is no small task. Security insisted on seeing the cat containers but wouldn't have anything to do with the cats themselves. I talked to many supervisors and coordinators before the transaction actually took place. Karen was busy with the debit card covering the cost of the extra baggage and the cats themselves, which we had already taken to the vets office and gotten documentation of their shots and certificates so they could travel. The vet was trained in America and when he sees and American he charges American prices so all the paperwork and the cages, etc, ran way over $200 USD. They were not happy about their new journey and of course, when we arrived at our new apartment near mid-night on Saturday night, security was not happy to see us or our cats. They refused to let us into our new apartment. Calls were placed and, with the cats howling in the background, after about 45 minutes of negotiating, we ended up being let in. The first picture at the top is one of Karen's and my best friends in India, Louise Eikerman. She called and met us at the mall just a day before she was going to board an airliner for her native Canada. She is a nurse and a sweetheart, who has helped us a couple of times. She is now already back in India and has said that Vancouver was lovely this summer. Blue skies, perfect temperatures, etc. Rub it in, Louise. Friends Simon and Jess Alexander also saw us off and have invited us to spend Christmas with them in one of the most beautiful parts of India, the Kerala coast. We really look forward to that and hope that it all works out.

In the meantime, the last few weeks have been consumed with getting a major inspection done on the airplane so that has given us a little time to get some trips done, which you already saw the blog for the Pune trip. We have been busy trying to get all the paperwork in order for our third visit to the FRRO, foreign regional registration office. This most hated of Indian government bureaucracies is just indicative of how things go wrong when you allow paperwork and old ideas left over from the British way of doing things to flourish and grow for decades. Its just horrible and now we have made two visits there with at least a 90 minute drive each way in traffic and with not even the courtesy to get in and speak with any of the people since they always find something wrong with the paperwork. Part of this required a visit to Delhi by airlines to deregister there so we could register here in Mumbai. Until you have been here and done this you cannot imagine the amount of time and energy that goes into keeping all your paperwork and visas and other transactions current and ready in case you need them.

At least, since I have come to Mumbai, we have been flying some quite interesting people. The picture above with the lady in blue is a famous Bollywood actress here named Somali Bandre. She flew with us twice and once she had a planeload of friends from Bollywood so that was a fun and interesting trip.

Karen and I have been traveling to the Mumbai Central SDA church every weekend that we are here. Traffic is bad, although if you leave early enough, we can make it in 45 minutes. If you leave a little late, then it's over an hour. Gives new meaning to the trip to church every week but we love the little congregation of only about 60 people. The pastor is a wonderful, young man, Pastor Rajan Paul, who has been very kind to Karen and I as we moved (shifted) into the Mumbai area. Just an interesting sidelight. The pastors here in India are paid so poorly that it is just kind of sad. Our current pastor's wife has a nice, corporate job near our apartment and she makes many times what he does. In fact, he told us that his salary only pays the tithe on his wife's salary. Kind of puts dedication to the church and it's work in a new light when you consider that. I remember my folks taking a job as missionaries in Chile, South America back in the mid-40's. Dad's starting salary was $30/month and they were starving to death. Just unbelievable what church work expects of people sometimes. Dad said that even though they were ex-pats from America that the division office had decided that they would be compensated as locals. If I had been dad, I would have been on the next boat home. They had just riden on a frieght ship from New York that took them weeks to get there. Once they got there, it was going to be 6 years before they got to see America again, courtesy of the church. Mom had her first baby thousands of miles away from home, without the support of family or people that she could easily communicate with. Wow, mom, I have a new appreciation for what you went through. You made some great friends, though, and now, all these years later, your friends from those many years ago in Chile, the Wanderslebans, are good friends from Cleveland, Tennessee. Turns out, that many years later, I hired Fred Salyers as a pilot at Life Care Centers in Cleveland, and he had married the Wanderslebans daughter, Joyce, so SDA world strikes again.

When I first came to India, I had told Karen that 2-3 years would be it. Now, I am going into my 3rd year and I have changed my story. Of course, you never know how it will work out, but if things go according to my plan at all, then we will stay in India for another 6 and 1/2 years until I hit my 65th birthday and will no longer be able to fly here.

We keep talking about things that we should blog about and then I can't remember what we wanted to say when I sit down to write. One of the things we have discovered is that pedestrians are not protected in traffic like they are in America. If a car comes for you, you better jump, as they will not move or slow down. So, Karen ends up screaming at the drivers and waving her arms like mad, which I am sure just makes them wonder what's wrong with that blonde, American woman there in the way. I tell her she is not going to change the culture here but that doesn't seem to change her mind about this one. We like our neighborhood here better with a Chili's restaurant and a Spaghetti Kitchen that make us feel much more at home.The gym is about 3 blocks away and when we walk there we have discovered one of the differences here is that they don't pick up their pet's dog poop so you better watch your step. We see the natives stopped, with their pets, just doing the business in the middle of the sidewalk, not even moving to the curb. PLEASE, people!! Karen usually makes friends with every dog in the neighborhood but here she has met with some resistance that we have blamed on skin color. These dogs not only don't want to come to her, but bark and snap and really don't want to be with her. She got her feelings hurt but not every dog on the planet is going to love anyone. Our little Poppy cat was going into heat and caterwalling around the apartment for weeks, so I finally took her to the vet and got her fixed. We just took her to a vet a few blocks away and you would have been amazed at this little vet office, with the operating table right there in the office. They shaved Poppy's side in a square about two inches on a side and so it will take months for her hair to look right again, although she doesn't seem to mind. Boy, now I think she is becoming my new favorite kitty, as she has calmed down and really is a wonderful cat, considering she was going to be a Feral cat on the streets of Gurgaon until that fateful night in March of 2010 when Karen reached down, picked her up and her life changed, miraculously, forever. God does something similar for us, if we let HIM. Karen now knows the names of all dozen or so dogs that we see on our way to the gym and back each day. We love our gym and the people here are warming up to us. We finally found a couple of ex-pat organizations that have promised to let us know what is going on and to invite us to come to their social functions.

I have decided I want to buy either a real piano or possibly and electronic one for the Mumbai church. They have neither a piano or organ so the music is done each week with the assistance of a wonderful, young man and his guitar. I love the guitar, but miss the keyboard function and hope maybe we can find one reasonably here in Mumbai to help them out.

Hope this finds you all well. Will be back flying again in just a couple of days. There will be more road pictures and stories from that.

Love you guys,

Dan

Trip to Pune and Spicer College

Hello my friends,

For the first time in 5 months, I am back to publishing my blog. So, for those of you who look for this then you will be happy. Karen and I finally got a little bit of time off from my work and we are heading out on a ROAD TRIP. You see, my airplane is in maintenance for at least 15 days so that gives me time to go and see some of India, as well as other places.

First of all, I need to apologize for not being on my blog site in 5 months. The job change and transition to Mumbai was WAY more difficult and time consuming than I EVER thought it would be. Karen and I went together to the USA the 1st of April for my 40th High School reunion. That was really fun and we had a blast together but then I had to go to New York City to get my new Indian visa as I had to have that for my NEW job. That took like an extra week and with all the bother of New York City hassles, traffic and just dealing with Indian bureaucracy at the Consulate in New York. Fortunately, we had friends in the DGCA in India who helped hurry my new pilot visa through and meanwhile I was back in California, visiting with my granddaughter, Sadie, while the bureaucrats fought over issues. Finally, after the embassy refused to take my credit card info over the phone and said to send it on their website, I sent it to their email address. No passport in the Fedex truck the next morning so I called and they said their website had issues and wasn't working. I forced them to take the info over the phone and finally, on Wednesday of the second week, I had my passport and visa, but not in time to make the LA flight to Delhi that day. So, one more night in Loma Linda and then LAX to Delhi on Emirates, a very nice ride in business class and the first class lounges, where I took my first shower in Dubai this time. Very nice!! With lots of sleep and the shower I was ready for my big Indian bureaucracy when I got back to Delhi this time. First to the Indian Air Force to finish up my delayed Indian medical. Once that was in hand, we headed for the DGCA to get my new pilot's license for the new company, since your license has your employer on it. I got that and then we headed for the dreaded Foreign Regional Registration Office. Ugh!! This most hated of bureaucracies is just a drag any time. Fortunately, I had my copilot Vipul, with me to help if there were any issues that we couldn't understand. Of course, we took about 3 days because for a minute we thought we were going to the Gurgaon FRRO because that was my home address, but NO, it was back to Delhi and the LONG lines there. Finally got everything settled and had my paperwork done. They were still finishing up the certification for the aircraft in India (it had come from England) and once that was done, we started flying on April 28. I had already been working for the company for one full month, but all of that time was tied up in paperwork and taking taxis all over Delhi to get things done. Karen was still in the USA visiting with family and having get-together's with friends in Pittsburgh area. Finally, on May 26th she reappeared in India and, though I was out of town flying the plane, she put on her big girl pants and got a taxi to take her HOME, where she crashed for like a week straight. Jet lag coming from the USA is always a killer, for sure.

I had lots of flying for awhile and then it began to slow down. Finally, I had to return to the USA in late June for my recurrent training and this time, due to last minute schedule changes, I caught a British Airways/American Airlines combination through London and then straight to Dallas/Fort Worth airport, where my class started at 8 a.m. the next morning after 22 straight hours of flying and then arriving in Dallas at 8:30 p.m. the night before. Fortunately, I didn't sleep through class and we got the training done before I headed for Tennessee, where I visited with Brad, Jessica and Sadie, who were staying with her family in Tennessee. I also got a chance to visit with many friends at church and in the area over several days. Bill and Debbie Hoover up in Cleveland, Gary Walls, Doctor Starkey, all friends from days gone by, made contact and we had some quality time together. Got many chances to see Sadie and she is becoming quite a ham, reminding me constantly of someone in our family about 30 years prior to this. Brad has his 30th birthday in early June. Wow, can I possibly have a kid that age already?? 

We left this morning from Mumbai, where our new apartment in Powai area of Mumbai is our new favorite place in India. We LOVE our location, since we are on the 14th floor of a bunch of highrise apartments that are in a very nice section of Mumbai. Karen can walk out our door and catch a tuk-tuk or walk just 3 blocks to great restaurants, shopping and banks, whatever she needs. This area appeals to ex-pats and she finds herself finally feeling quite at home in India. Our gym is located about 3 blocks away and we walk together there almost every day. Too fun to have someone to work out and walk with. Karen is working hard on her new body image and finally has gotten the GYM fever even more than me. I have been faithful in the gym for over 2 years now. Even though I am no Charles Atlas, I am in the best physical condition of my life and she has started to become a believer that this stuff works so she is now waking me up at 6 a.m. to make it to the gym and workout before others get to our favorite equipment. She has lost many pounds and I have lost almost 30 since I first came to India in June of 2009. The best part is I don't worry about my blood pressure and the treadmill tests that are a routine part of my Indian flight physical are just such a breeze now. Since treadmill or Cross-trainer is a part of my cardio routine, it sure makes a difference in how I feel about my physicals. Since India has been such a blessing to me, financially, we are making plans to stay until I am forced to retire at age 65 here, so almost another 7 years. Life is adventurous, comfortable and pretty easy. We wish we were closer to family and sometimes it is lonely and hectic. Our biggest frustration right now is Mumbai traffic, which is SO MUCH WORSE than Delhi traffic. I live 10 miles from the airport and sometimes it takes 1:20 or more to get to work. Very sad and frustrating. I kill time with my new company IPAD2 and the moving map of the world works very well in all parts of India so, since I love maps, it is my new passtime, getting acquainted with the roads of India. I even tell the drivers where to go sometimes, which they do not appreciate at all. Too funny. The driver mentality cannot process a moving map with a blue dot that represents our taxi and roadways that represent what you see out the window. Not a single driver can do it, so I just tell them that I will say right or left to get where we are going. They argue with me and sometimes that alone takes an extra 10-15 minutes. But, those of you who know I love maps will know that I have found my new passion. It even works at the airport on the runways to keep us from getting lost on the airports. Too fun!!

Gottta go to Friday night vespers at the college so must close. I am off Facebook for a little while so you guys will benefit because I will take more time to keep you updated. Please let me know you like or don't like this stuff. I will try to keep it interesting.

Karen was looking for her glasses as we left this morning and they were on her head. I had to post that pic. Also, look at the road to Pune, have you ever seen such open, clear, clean roads in India? amazing. Also, look at the beautiful scenery. Our college has a wonderful campus and we will enjoy it for vespers as well as church tomorrow. Then, a little touring around Pune and back home tomorrow night.

Love you all,

Dan and Karen

New Job!!

Saying good-bye has always been very hard for me to do. I have a picture up here of Captain Sharma and Manika, whom I have been priveleged to work and fly with for quite awhile now. I have been doing the type training for Captain Sharma since early November of last year and Manika has been flying with me ever since I first started with Jindal Steel. This is a picture of my crew standing on the top of a construction project at our overnight camp in Aizawl, India, a place that Manika will always remember since you usually don't have someone breaking into your room and then stealing your money. But, I had never been to this part of the world and the countryside is just beautiful to see.

The last week has been a very difficult one for me and I hate making tough decisions. I just wish they were all easy ones. Jindal Steel has been very good to me and I have many fond memories of flying with this company and the very cool places that we used to go. For example, I am writing this very blog from Tblisi, Georgia, Eastern European Union (former USSR). I love coming here and this is likely my last trip to Tblisi but I am very happy that Karen got to tag along and see what a wonderful place this is to spend time and to get to know some of the most wonderful people on the planet. Again, tomorrow, we are going to drive up to Gudauri Ski resort and Andro and I will go skiing again, just like we did last winter. This time Karen and my co-captain will tag along and Andro's uncle owns a hotel up in the mountains so we'll drive up and then spend the night up near Gudauri somewhere. Just the scenic drive is so fun and so worth it. I again think there aren't many of my classmates who are able to say that they have snow-skiied in a part of the former Soviet Union, although Georgia is independant now and wants nothing to do with Russia.

Captain Sharma is a good pilot and I feel that I am leaving Jindal Steel in very capable hands until they also add another pilot to their group. One of my American pilot friends already called me and said that there is an ad on the professional pilot websites for a Citation XLS captain with the type rating and current experience, so they didn't wait long to try and replace me, that's for sure. But, after oscillating back a forth for over two weeks, as it was a very tough decision, the swing factor for me was the Indian pilot's themselves, who pointed out unanimously that they would definitely make the change as my new company has the best reputation in India for the way they treat their pilots. As most corporate pilots know, this is where the rubber meets the road in our daily jobs. You can be flying the greatest and most modern equipment out there and be the envy of every pilot on earth but maybe not be treated the best, or there may be major issues that affect the daily operation of the flight department but the new company asked me to find a single pilot in India that would have anything bad to say about them and I literally could not. Several of our own pilots in my previous company had worked there before and told me that they would go back in a heartbeat if given the chance. Several of our former people are over there now as this company, Sahara Group, which has a flight department called AirOne, is rebuilding their flight department after some cutbacks a few years ago. That is one of the things that I worried about in making the change because Jindal is very strong, financially, and really has nothing to worry about. Sahara is on the forefront of commercial development in India and is building many commercial projects throughout the country. Could be up and down a little more than Jindal, but what swayed me was, I only need them to do well for another 3-4 years and I can be out of here, if necessary. Even if I decided to stay in India until I was forced to retire in 7 more years, I think the company will be okay for that period of time. That 3-4 years could be very pleasant indeed if they are anything like what I have been told about the company. Very nice hotels and better treatment are all that make up our daily life formula for happiness and success. The added bonus is that, since ex-pat pilots have to bring their expertise to India, nobody can upgrade here to another aircraft. You have to have had 100 hours of pilot-in-command time in order to qualify as a rated captain in India, in addition to having the type rating already. Since I won't likely be changing types here, I am happy that I can at least now fly the latest and greatest iteration of Cessna's Citation XLS, which is now called an XLS+. No performance difference but certainly a lot of electronics and avionics changes will make this a more fun airplane to fly. Since I have been flying this type for right at 11 years now, this should be a nice, little change for me. And, of course, to add to the incentive to make the change, the whole package makes my life better. That doesn't take anything away from Jindal Steel, which was always a great option and has been nice to me throughout.

So, saying good-bye almost always makes me cry. I hate this part of life but certainly look forward to this exciting, new step. I was offered my first India job because of my experience and qualifications in this wonderful Citation XLS. When I first started flying the Citation Excell in April of 2000, I never knew the wonderful journeys that would result from flying this great performing corporate jet. Now, the most exciting part for me, this time, was that I not only got hired because of my experience on this jet and in my flying, in general, but I was offered this job because we flew a charter flight so well under extremely challenging circumstances, that the executives took notice and rewarded my flying with this fantastic job offer. Nothing could cap off my professional career better than to have something like this happen at this stage of life. After working so hard and so many long hours for so many years, now, I finally get a very special offer as I begin the think about winding down my career, it just seems that God has blessed my life so much.

Of course my flying journey began with my father, who encouraged and provided me with the opportunity to fly airplanes when I was 8 years old. He bought our little Cessna 172 and, since mom didn't care about sitting up front too much, I began flying with dad at that very tender age. My siblings had the same opportunity but I was the one absolutely smitten with the flying bug. Dad was glad to have company on many of his business trips and I was so excited to be allowed to fly at such a young age. Pursuing all my flying opportunities, I became a commercial pilot and flight instructor while still in high school at Thunderbird Academy in Arizona, finishing up my instrument rating my freshman year of college just before I headed over to Botswana, Africa for a student missionary year of flying for Kanye Hospital. What a fantastic year that was. Being president of the Thunderbird Academy Flight Club (Cloud Choppers) for two years was one of the most fun things I did while in high school. Then, flying a mission plane in Botswana while still 19 years of age was a great set up for a professional flying career. But the folks really didn't encourage professional flying as a career so I ended up pursuing their dream and got my college degree in Ministry and music, while still flight instructing my friends and renting planes to fly home on vacations every chance I got. This all led to me continuing to fly while I was attending the SDA Seminary in Michigan and where I greaduated with honors in 1979. Early 1980 and I had a call from a friend about an SDA businessman in Tennessee who was setting up a new flight department for his growing health care company. I jumped at the chance to start up the flight department for Forrest Preston and Life Care Centers of America in Cleveland, Tennessee. Did that same job for over 8 years and then opted to go with the airplane when it was sold in 1988. Now, 5 jet type-ratings later and with over 15, 500 hours in my logbook, I feel so amazingly lucky to have had this all happen in my life. My family will all testify that my logbooks are more like a diary for me, as I can go back to as early as my first logbook and look at the specific date and flight and, for the most part, I can recall that flight. Usually I have made a remark in there that keys my memory to something and will help me remember that flight. I can tell you exactly where I was when things like President Reagan being shot or the big stock market slide or my father's stroke or more mundane things like a bad headwind or great tailwind affected my flight and my life. There are entries that are accompanied with tears of sorrow and others with tears of joy. In short, my logbook is a microcosm of my life and I love that. So, while this latest change is scary in many ways, it is also very exciting because, if it works out, it will fully enable me to hang it up and still have a life. When you fly airplanes for a living, you really never know if this is actually going to be a possibility. My friend and copilot John Page used to see the roadside bums with the grocery carts and bandanas and say, "there goes a former corporate pilot." We used to laugh hard at that because there was more than a little truth to that statement.

God has certainly taken me through some very tough trials in my life and there were days that I really thought it all might not be worth it but He has stayed by my side throughout and now, as this all seems to be such a huge blessing in my life, I cannot forget that HE led me all the way and that, all in all, it has been a very good life.

So, since life goes on and this is the next chapter, I expect it to be very exciting and adventurous. Daily life in India meets those criteria, and when you throw in the flying and international travel, I say, who could ask for more.

Now I have all my blog buddies and Facebook friends to share this with me and I feel blessed beyond my wildest imagination. Thank you all for being there for me and for acting interested in

those things that bring joy to my life. I will try to do my best to keep the India adventure and the God takes care of Dan story going so that, if it provides any inspiration or pleasure for even one person, then I will feel like my life has been worth it.

It will take a couple of months to get all my certifications and paperwork processed for my new responsibilities so be patient and then, let the new adventure begin.

So: to Dhaka, Ashish, Jagjiven, Capt Sharma, Manika, Mehak and the countless others who have been associated with me at Jindal, THANKS for all you did for me and I hope to still see you around somewhere in India.

Captain Dan

Eating bugs for breakfast

You might think that I am talking about going out to eat at this place, but I was getting my Honey Shredded Mini-wheats out the other day and I noticed a couple of dark spots that looked like they had little legs. I immediately began to get the bad feeling and so I poured out the entire contents of an otherwise fairly new and normal but expensive (at $7.50/box) of this cereal onto a plate, where I could inspect and examine these guys. There weren't many of them so I decided to go ahead and pick them out and eat the rest of the box over time, which was 2/3 full. This grossed Karen out but since I had already been in Africa for a year and was born in Bolivia, where my father used to talk about cockroaches in his soup, I was kind of ready for this. I am active on Facebook so I asked my group what I should do about this problem. I received many interesting and experienced answers. I think my favorite one came from Cindy Frank, who was a teenager in Botswana when I lived there in 1972 and 73. She suggested just eating in the dark. This would certainly work and would be the easiest. Then, one suggested the microwave and that would surely work but most suggested putting the cereal in the freezer for a couple of days. These are microscopic little guys, not any kind of big bugs at all. I guess over here it's okay to kill something once it gets to a small enough size. My boss is a Jain Hindu, and they are very strict about their diet and taking care of all living creatures. The really strict ones have shrouds on their house fans so that bugs don't get sucked in and killed. One of my American friends here was talking about going over to visit some Jain Hindus and she was unaware of this rule and was clap-swatting the mosquitos in the room that were flying around. Her husband had to explain to her later that she should not be doing that in front of Jain Hindus, who don't want to kill any living thing. There is a RAT temple not that far from us and since rats can be a problem here, and they are not to be killed, our apartment complex has a pretty high-tech ultrasonic device that keeps rats away. When I first moved in here I was up very late one night and heard all these whistle soundings going on. I got up, went out on the porch and couldn't see a single security guard with a whistle in his mouth. I called the manager the next day to complain and he told me I was hearing the anti-rat sonic system. It must work as we haven't seen one here. Most people who have lived overseas totally understand what is necessary when you are trying to keep food in your cupboard in a tropical type climate. Much of our food is not expensive, but if you have a craving for the stuff you remember from back in your homeland, there are special stores that cater to ex-pats and they also have special prices. Not that they are THAT greedy, but there is a 108% import tax on things brought into India from another country. Think how THAT alone would change the landscape of America, if they did that to protect our jobs and products coming from other countries. So, since I eat on the road a lot and it tends to be more Indian, I often choose to eat my favorite breakfast cereals and pancakes and stuff like that when I am home. Milk is about the same a back home, although it comes in a box and has a shelf-life of many weeks since it is super-pasteurized. You can just grab a milk box out of the cupboard and put it in the fridge the night before you want it. Since food and entertainment are all I pay for here, I do tend to eat some favorite foods from back home like peanut butter, nuts and stuff like that. To offset the expensive, imported foods, eggs are like .30 cents a dozen and bread is 35 cents a loaf for wheat bread. Karen has some favorite fruits that she loves, like pomegranites. These are prohibitively expensive back home and take a massive amount of work to prepare but here they are pretty reasonable and beautiful in season AND the househelper will peel and get the fruit out of as many as you want. She preps one for Karen every day that there is one in the house.

Many of you said that bugs in your food would be a stopper, but you also have bugs in your food in America, you just don't see them because of the way the food is processed. I just consider the ones that I don't get out as extra protein and hope they don't float to the top of my milk as I am eating. If they do, then they get picked out. Karen doesn't eat cereal and doesn't have to put up with this. So, while you may be thinking I was worried about bugs at the above pictured restaurant near our home, it's in our kitchen that they grow. And, this is a brand-name world recognized brand of cereal, too.

We got the windshield back in the plane last week and started flying on Wednesday. Now, it's been really busy and tomorrow I have a day trip to Mumbai and then a 3 day trip way over to Eastern India, to the Myanmar (used to be Burma) border. We will spend the night and then fly back to Western India, Pune. If we overnight there, I will get my driver to take me out to the big SDA school there, Spicer College, and try to get a campus tour. I don't know how far from the airport it is but we'll try. I alway carry my camera to towns I haven't been to before because I never know what I am going to see.

For those of you who aren't on Facebook, I would encourage someone who is tech savvy in your family to get you signed up. You can have a good time finding old friends and even family that you have lost track of in the ensuing years. I post pics there on almost every flight from my Blackberry, so it's almost live action on there. I will put some more pics up here from my trip to Rajahmundry and Chennai last week very soon. That was a nice, long trip and I hadn't been to Chennai before so that was fun.

Take care and drop me a note once in awhile so I know you are alive,

Dan

Everything but Tigers

Hi friends and family,

You might think that I have totally forgotten about my blogsite, but no, its just been a hectic time and then recently I had some interesting things happen to the airplane and ended up with some time off, so have been concentrating on Facebook, which I got on in late October. I know many of you aren't on Facebook so I will continue to write letters and put stuff on my blogsite so you can kind of keep up with what's going on with Karen and me in India.

Just a few days before Christmas, we were doing a company flight to Ranchi, India and level at 41,000 feet all of a sudden we heard a loud crack that sounded like a shotgun. Even with my noise-cancelling Bose headset on, it was noticeable. I looked up at the windshield and the pilot side windshield had cracked like a checkerboard. Because I have been flying Citations for 25 years, I knew that our aircraft had a thick, plexiglass layer with a thin glass layer on the outside and the glass was what had broken. We asked center for a descent to 15,000 feet and got the airplane back to Delhi, where it has been sitting for 3 weeks as of Wednesday. We had to get the windshield from Wichita and when it got here there was a technical hangup in customs for about a week. We now have it in hand and it should be ready to fly in the next day or two but I knew this was going to be lengthy and so I took a couple of side trips. I had been wanting to go to Kathmandu, Nepal and see Everest and the Himalayas ever since I arrived in India in late June of 2009. So, we called our travel agent, something you hardly do anymore in the states, but is definitely the best way to do things here, and in a day or so we were flying commercially to Kathmandu, only a one hour flight from here. Most of you have already seen the photos from our visit and know the stories but for those of you who haven't seen the photos, I only have a Canon 1000D digital camera with 10 megapixels but I will have to say some of the photos are just breathtaking. Of course, we didn't have cooperative weather for the mountain flight the next day. I opted to go anyway since I had come this far but it was like climbing Everest without getting all the way to the top - quite disappointing. I will definitely go back with a few days to spare so we can play the weather and catch the peak without an obscuring cloud deck but the photos that I was able to take were quite beautiful, just not the awesome photo of Everest that I had envisioned.

Karen and I shopped, ate, toured, and just enjoyed another country for a change. Kathmandu is growing and changing rapidly. I have a feeling that it is nothing like it was 10 years ago or anything like it was 25 years ago. To make a long story shorter: we loved Kathmandu. It was less crowded than India seems, the food was much less spicy and the roads seemed better, although there were still "jams" on the road during rush hours. We loved our hotel, with a view of the Himalayas once the fog burned off in the afternoons. Because it was kind of the off season we received excellent service and full attention everywhere we went. Karen had wanted to go visit a couple of casinos since they have none in India so we went over a couple of evenings to see what was going on. Karen is used to the huge casinos of Las Vegas or Biloxi, etc. and was shocked when we walked in and there were just a few, maybe a dozen, slot machines, and they looked like something out of the 50's and 60's. The funniest part to us was, that the Nepalese government doesn't allow the local Nepalese to gamble so the casinos cannot cater to locals at all. This means that the next available group is Indians and many do fly over for gambling junkets. The slot machines take and pay with Indian coins and the casinos will take Indian rupees, which almost no businesses in town will. They pay back in Nepalese rupees, which have a totally different value, so you have to be sharp and keeping track to make sure they don't shortchange you when you cash in your chips. Karen always had lots of helpers in the casino, even one guy who suggested which machine was generous, and it turned out to be. I was having fun at the blackjack tables and we came out ahead, so decided we liked Kathmandu. For those of you who are getting all judgmental and concerned, we spent more money on dinner than in the casino and nothing important was risked, it was only some interesting entertainment, where we met some nice Indians. If a Nepalese casino gets caught letting locals gamble, they immediately lose their license, so it's not something they tolerate. My friend Scott Graham, who successfully climbed Mt. Everest in May of 2004, told me that Kathmandu was a less than desireable little mountain city. It is suffering from extreme growth, water shortages, all the things that the cities of the world suffer from, but the whole time you are there you look to the horizon and see those Himalayas, and for me, that made everything okay. We enjoyed the Thamel area, which is kind of like Old Delhi, but caters more to the trekkers of the world and the tourist busses with it's shops, restaurants and lots of hippie types wandering the streets with backpacks and hiking boots and looking like they have no visible means of support. We ate at the Bhojan Grija, which was an authentic Nepalese restaurant with folk dances and music and an incredible meal. You got no choice about it, they just showed you what was being served that night but, even though we had no idea about most of it, we really found it tasty and enjoyed the program a lot. We stayed 3 days, flew back to Delhi, found out my plane was still a long ways from being fixed so called the travel agent again and said we wanted a tiger safari to Jim Corbett park if possible. He said no trains were available at the last minute but if we could stand a 6 and 1/2 hour drive on Indian roads, they would send a vehicle to our door. We have nothing like this kind of service in America but they sent a driver who picked us up at 7 a.m. and we were off to the park. Since it turned out that we left early on Sunday morning, we thought traffic would not be bad but they have no weekends here and it was just like any other day, busy and crowded. By early afternoon we were pulling into the park and to our very nice resort. Nothing was planned for the first afternoon since we didn't know what time we would arrive so we both decided to go for a full massage down at the spa. That turned out to be very relaxing and then we went to the main lodge where they were serving coffee and tea and showing movies about the tigers and elephants of India. That was where we learned that elephants are not feared in the jungles and that they have recently been carrying video cameras out into the jungle, into tiger dens, etc. and getting some spectacular footage. This was also when we decided to try the elephant safari because it looked like we could just ride our elephant and get some very interesting views of nature. The first day, though, was our regular safari from the back of a jeep. We had only paid for the group safari but since it was the off season and the resort was not crowded we got the private jeep for the group rate. They don't get the park permit to view tigers until the customers show up so we had to get up early and be at the reception at 6, ouch.

We hadn't planned properly for the cooler weather so we were borrowing clothing from the staff, etc., and the ride to the North end of the park in an open jeep in 30-40 degree temps was really cold. We found a blanket and blocked out a lot of the wind but were still shivering by the time we got to the gate where we actually left the road and started exploring the tiger road. Then, that road went even further up the mountain and the trees were now tall and everywhere so no sun to warm you up. Of course, our guide then told us about a man-eating tiger that had killed several people in the last year and one woman just 5 days before we were there. That added an element of scariness to the whole episode but we felt better when he explained that man-eaters are usually older tigers who can no longer kill wild game and end up taking the easy route and killing some poor, hapless villager. This poor lady had been out collecting food for her cattle and had it stacked on her head and was walking with some others back to the village. According to the guide, she was a little bit ahead of the rest of the group and they only found her hand, foot and her sari, as well as the stack of food for her cattle that she was carrying. Since these people are often small and vulnerable, that's what the tiger takes. They send out groups of men to hunt for the man-eaters, and since they are territorial and within a certain area, they can usually find them. Since India's tiger population is dwindling, they try now to tranquilize and capture these animals, rather than just shoot them, but sometimes circumstances prevent doing what they'd like to do. As you can see from the above photo, we were where tigers had been just a short time, maybe minutes, before.

Anyway, we saw lots of tracks and many kinds of game, including a good look at a leopard, which is even more rare than the tiger. I couldn't get my camera ready and get a shot before he was gone but we know we saw it and it is a treasured memory. On the back of the elephant, Karen thought she caught a glimpse of a tiger in the same area where we later saw fresh tracks. I never got a look but I had seen two tigers at Ranthlambore Park a year ago, so I had my wild tiger spotting and was just hoping for a good one for Karen. We will definitely go back just because the park itself was so beautiful and peaceful compared to the hustle and bustle of Delhi.

Now we are back in Delhi and I am just waiting for the call from the mechanics (called engineers here) to go test fly the airplane after the new window installation and the cure of the sealant. If everything goes well, we should be flying by midweek. It will be good to be back in the air, but with Christmas, New Years and some nice vacationing under my belt it was the perfect time for something to ground the airplane.

I think most of you have seen the photo albums that I posted online so I have only put up a couple of reminder pics as to what we were doing here lately. Still having a blast, enjoying the differences and now looking forward to our trip to America in early April so I can attend my 40th high school reunion from Thunderbird Academy in Scottsdale, Arizona. It's also where I got really serious about my flying and worked hard on my early training and it's where my folks are buried so I have a lot of ties to Scottsdale. My sister, Janet, lives there so I will be able to see family, too. While I am there, I will also go see my granddaughter Sadie, who just had her 1st birthday last week, visit my kids and also spend some time with friends.

We are experiencing really chilly weather here now and Karen now sees how it is to be here with no central heat in the house. We have one oil-filled, electric radiator type heater and Karen and the cats are fighting over being close to that. This time passes and then, the rest of the year it's too hot, with heat being back on by late February. At least we do have air-conditioning for that.

Hope everyone had a nice holiday season. I want to high-five and recognize three people who actually got Christmas cards through the mail to Karen and me. My niece Ashley was first and then my cousin Jerry and his wife from Redlands, CA got a card through. Just yesterday we got a nice card from Cherie Wical Sawyer, whom I knew when I was a student missionary in Botswana 38 years ago. Thanks so much, people, for making the effort to give us a real card. No packages have come through yet, so we are thinking about going to customs and see if they have anything for us.

We love and miss you all. God bless and we wish you the best for 2011.

Love,

Dan and Karen Clifford