All folks at home, rest achured. We didn't have any tornado's in the last couple of days. We didn't notice anything of the violent tornado's in Alabama and other states. The USA is a big place you know...
After a few days in Wake Forest (lucky for us we had a bit of rest during Easter weekend) we went on to Oxford for a very short visit. Two days ago we (Filip and me) had a vocational visit at Bandag. They make tires, or better, manufacture parts to repair tires. While Filip was happy in the IT department, I toured around with the guy from the quality and environmental department. I learned some interesting things. In Europe, the better your installation works, the heavier it is and so the heavier the permits get. In the US, if your installation works very well than you no longer need a permit! Because the risk to the environment has been minimalized. Same thing with safety. If you get to a point that your health and safety system is so robust that you have all risks under control, than you fall of the radar.
Yesterday we did a lot of visits in half a day. The town hall, the town museum and skeet shooting all in half a day. Yes that's right. After the gun shop in Wendell we got into contact with guns again. And now we did some actual shooting! Filip appeared to be ex-military or something because he hit 3/4 of all skeets. The rest was... less good as we say.
And then followed the long (awaited) trip to Ashville. The mountains, the forests, the micro-breweries and, of course, the Rotary District Convention.
Today we had a free day in Ashville. So we could sleep untill 9am. By the time we had our breakfast it was already 11am and we left for the estate of Biltmore. This is a huge estate built in the late 19th century. It took us a couple of hours to see it all. Hundreds of rooms, all richly decorated and in very good shape. Huge gardens, greenhouses, forests, lakes and a winery.
After a very nice lunch at the winery we took of to one of the micro-breweries in the area. Nothing like the breweries in Flanders. All stainless steel, no funky smells. And reasonable beer (and as we come from Beer Capitol, the term 'reasonable' is a compliment). To get the food and beer digested, we took the cars up a winding road into the hills to see some panoramic views (picture time). Glad our lunch didn't come out on the way down, we arrived back at our hotel in the late afternoon. And now we are 20.30pm and what are we gonna do now?? Diner of course!
Hopefully we get those added pounds off by the summer time in Belgium... Otherwise I will need a new swimming suit. :-)
Cya later,
Tim
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