Vocational Day Modesto. Discounts if you buy in bulk

Day 33 - Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Has anyone at home ever hear of CostCo? If not, chances are we will in the not too distant future. Unconfirmed reports on the internet suggest that there will be a CostCo warehouse built as part of the docklands development in Melbourne. My guess is that it will grow from there.

CostCo is a warehouse style supermarket which aims to sell high quantities of fairly high quality goods at fairly low prices. And, interstingly, it is a membership based shop. You have to spend $50 or $100 to buy a membership before you can even shop here! Lots and lots of peoepl do though. It is an extremely successful business. I'm not a good enough shopper to really be able to compare prices (the exchange rate doesn't help) so I'll leave it to others to pass judgement on the affordableness (or otherwise) of CostCo. I'll just say that I was really impressed with theri scale adn volume. There weer many peoepl lined up waiting to go in when the place opened at 10am. The vote of the consumer is what counts!

We met at lunchtime with Oakdale Rotary at a very classy country club. They had leather chairs with little rolling wheels on them! Very comfy. Also had great desserts. My kind of place really. I sat at teh back table with all the other rebels of the club. It was fun, except that there was a womens' luncheon of some description happeneing behind some partitiions just behind us, adn they pretty much drow3ned out the club president! At the end of our presentation there was tiem for questions. One bloke made a wise crack about being really keen to get to Tasmania. He said he woudl hire a sports car and drive around aqs quickly as he could tryign to get a ticket (presumably from Sarah). For the longest tiem I didn't know where he was heading wit the story, but i n the end I'll give it credit. I found it funny...

Meeting at the country club

The afternoon provided a chance for vocational visits. Chris Currie had gone to some effort to try and arrange for us to do things we hadn't seen before. I think this is a tough ask in teh last week, but he worked at it and did a good job. I can't speak authoritively about what teh rest of the team did, but, in brief:
Michelle visited a local governemnt training authority
Sarah was out with county police
Glen went to Jack Rabbit who make machinery for almond harvesting
Chris had a pow wow with the membership coordinator for the local Rotary clubs
& I (Will) got to visit a local IT Solutions company who were named… IT Solutions!

IT Solutions is run by Modesto Downtown Rotarian David and his business partner. He's actually a competitor of sorts with CHris, so it was nice of both of them to arrange the visit. David and I had a great time discussing things as diverse as choosing their customer base, employing staff, time management, salary adn incentive schemes, low labour services that can provide ongogin revenue streams, hang gliding (a favourite of David's!) and finally, what we each wnat to do when we grow up. It was a thoroughly entertaining afternoon. Thanks David.

April & her son

A kiwi in his element

Wednesday evening presented us with ten pin bowling and pizza and partying. Terri & Howie dropped in, as did many of our hosts. I don't really want to talk abotu my bowling, suffice to say that Chris' 10 year old daughter beat me pretty consistently!

Enjoying bowling the way Terri, Els, Howie & I prefer

On the upside, the bowling alley had a radar on the alleys to tell you your ball speed, and I did hold the speed record for a short time at 19.1 mph. I was knocked off though. First by Chris, and later by Jeff and Glen who fought out a tough contest with Jeff finally taking the prize at about 23 mph... A productive evening I'm sure you will agree!

Glen bowling at 20+ Mph

A dodgy ‘baulk’ call cost us the game

Day 32 - Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Tuesday saw us touring some of the sites of Modesto. First stop was the (relatively) new Gallo Arts Centre. Gallo being the mega rich wine dynasty who sponsored the building of this facility and Arts Centre being what it is. A multipurpose venue for theatre, music, presentations etc. They are about to host a touring production of cats that many locals are excited about seeing. They have something like 180 'curtains' planned for 2008, which compares pretty favourably I think. Even better, the people of Modesto are really supporting the venue, and most shows are selling really well. It was an interesting tour.

Glen particularly enjoyed the tour, because I was late. Normally he is last anywhere and I give him grief, but this time it was Chris and Jenny and I dragging the chain. We got caught for about 15 minutes at a level crossing while the longest train in history went past. I hearby pledge not to hold Glen up again! It just isn't worth the trouble... I don't pledge not to hassle him next time he is late though! I figure it is likely to be tomorrow, so I'll get plenty of chances!

Gallo Arts Centre tour

After completing the tour of the Arts Centre, we walked up the street to have a look around the Modesto Bee. The Bee is the local newspaper, and is also the proud employer of District 5220 GSE team member Lisa Millegan. Our tour guide did a great job of giving us a broad overview of operations. We saw the actual printing presses and actual advertising inserts. We also the advertising staff and journalists in action and were able to sit in on a news meeting that was planning the front page for the following day's paper. It was interesting. (And I'm terribly sorry, I've left it too long between the event and the blog, and I've misplaced our guide's name... :-( Her picture is below though).

The business end of the Modesto Bee

Lisa Millegan returned form her GSE trip to Australia more theatrical if nothing else!

Another short wander through the streets of Modesto took us to our lunchtime Rotary meeting with the downtown (aka 'old man') Modesto club. It was a blast from the past for us because it was held at the very same Double Tree hotel where we stayed our first night in the US. I can remember sitting outside the meeting room that Rotary uses about 11pm that first night. I was chatting to Michelle over VoIP while the Hispanic Lip Sync contest raged in the background. Seems like only yesterday in some ways, but in other ways it has been a long long time! We've met a brigade of great people since then, and seen so much of the district. It's been great. And, even better, I can still call home at 11pm, and the conversations are still great! The debriefs and encouragement in those phone calls have made my trip so much more enjoyable. Lucky me. OK, tangent complete. Let's get back to the story.

We shared the Rotary meeting with 30 interact students who were all introduced, the drawing of a major raffle with twenty odd prize and the introduction of a giant deep fried asparagus dressed up like Mr Potato Head! I was very concerned that we were going to have to cut our program short on the fly.

Terri in full flight at Modesto Rotary Club

I was worrying about this because I'm last, so I'd be the one dropping material. i was trying to decide whether to drop my talk about the Taste and the Hobart Summer Festival, my jokes about bacon, or the story of the Tassie Devil. I had decided to leave the Devil in. Fortunately, that was all academic and we didn't have to cut it at all in the end. Nice group again, fun meeting. I met David, who I would be meeting for a vocational excursion later in the week, and a couple f charming students from the local Catholic high school. As a side note, their fees are about four times those of St Mary's! The government should really pitch in over here...

Our presentation at Modesto Rotary

In the evening, we travelled into San Francisco to attend a baseball game. It was the SF Giants against the Colorado Rockies at AT&T Park. Great venue, if a little cold. The Currie girls warned me that it would be cold, but I didn't believe them. Luckily for me they badgered me until i took my Wallabies Jersey and a jacket. Lucky they did! The wind off the bay was icy!

Our guides at the baseball were Sarah's host Alan, my host the Currie family and their friend Jim and his son Rick. We were barracking (aka rooting) for the local team of course! It's great to have some local knowledge at a time like this. They explained that young up and coming pitcher Tim Lincecum was going to be the star of the show. He pretty much was. Robust catcher Bengie Molina was also a highlight. Great catcher, good hitter, fantastic leader. Best we don't mention his running ability... it was comical!

So, now we come to the part of the story where you figure out what the subject line actually means! Some background, as succinctly as I can manage it. In baseball, runners on base are forever trying to 'steal a base' by running when the batter doesn't even hit the ball. At the very least, they want to sneak off the base a bit to get a head start in running to the next base if the batter does hit it. Well, instead of pitching, the pitcher is allowed to throw the ball over to the baseman to try and run out a runner who has sneakily moved away form his base. This is quite legal. A 'baulk' occurs if the pitcher has begun his pitching motion (his 'wind up') and then stops, either to try for a run out, or to just trick the batter. If the umpire calls a 'baulk' then the batter on base gets to walk a base.

Got that so far? Good. Well, it happened in this game, and a runner got to walk from third to home, scoring a run that won the game for the visitors, three to two. The weird thing was that the umpire motioned to call time out while the pitcher was in his wind up. SO the pitcher stopped his wind up, and was called for a baulk. This is a muck up somewhere. The ump shouldn't call time during the wind up anyway. So if he did, why call the baulk? If he didn't, why did he lift his arms up and make it look like he did? It was either a bad call to signal of time out, or a ad baulk call, or both...

Anyway, after the call the Giants manager and catcher both argues with the referee until the manager was thrown out of the game. Didn't help though. The visitors won...

Giants at the stadium on the bay

The only things left for the night were a few photo opportunities and the trip home. I'm very grateful to Jim for driving us home. I was shattered and really struggled to stay awake and keep talking on the trip. Many others didn't manage to stay awake at all! I'm glad I wasn't driving. Thanks for getting us home safely Jim!

San Francisco at night. Taken from the inland end of the bay bridge.

Currie Family in San Francisco in the bl**dy cold

Governator tour of Sacramento

Day 31 – Monday, April 28, 2008

Chris the Kiwi, Ashwini and the Aussie team rolled out of Tahoe on Monday morning. We didn’t’ just get up and leave though. Of course not! Instead we went out for breakfast at a genuine 1950s style American Diner. It had old advertising posters for RC (Red Cherry Cola) with carton girls with blonde hair curled with curlers. It had Red leather on the round stools set at the counter. It had the sort of food you’d expect. It was quite fun really. Like being in an old movie! I enjoyed my bottomless coffee and eggs, but didn’t bother with the full half plate of hash brown I was served. Hash brown here is a sort of grated potato that is (I think) fried. Actually I’m not too sure how it was cooked, because I didn’t taste. I think my cholesterol went up just from looking at it though…

On our way from Tahoe to Modesto, we stopped in Sacramento to have a look around the state capital. Confirmed nerds Chris and I took the opportunity to have our pictures taken outside the Intel plant. This place is huge by the way. Many buildings, many floors, many people and too much security for Chris and I to be able to wander in unannounced.

A nerd at home

The next stop on the tour was a date with Michelle’s favourite Governator Arnie at the Capitol Building. Sarah had made friends with the local constabulary before we even got inside. They were there to manage a crowd expected to attend hearings to memorialise the Jewish Holocaust during WWII. They were also dealing with a protester dressed in surgical robes. I don’t know what he was protesting, perhaps he didn’t either. I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t anything to do with the hearings…

Capitol Building

The dome shaped capital building looks a little like its sister structure in Washington DC. Inside, there are high decorated ceilings, large portraits of past state governors, museums, galleries and gift shops. We wandered right through the place and took in the sights. Taking photos in front of Governor Arnie’s office was a bit of a highlight, even if he was out of town. Once again, the local police were very obliging! We sat in on a few minutes of the hearings in the lower house of the legislature, and then were on our way.

Capitol Building - Recognise this at all?

Chris took us to Old Sacramento to have a little bit of a look around. This is a part of town hear the old ports where there are many old fashioned shops, eateries and attractions. It is cute. Sort of Salamanca meets Sovereign Hill for Aussies. Sarah had fun looking at signed movie memorabilia. I enjoyed the Peruvian crafts. Glen murdered the first ice cream he found!

Obliging local hosts Errol

After Sacramento, it was off to Modesto to meet our hosts and get ready for another big week of GSE!

Fantastic vistas of the lake

Day 30 - Sunday, April 27th, 2008

We woke up this morning to Glen talking in his sleep, Westy snoring and my tummy grumbling! We were able to sleep in til 830 which was so good and I'm sure we all needed it.

The Tahoe Team

We headed to Heidi's a Pancake Parlour and had to argue with staff over seating as they wouldn't let us bring an extra chair over to fit our group of 9 in a booth that fits 8. Group of 10 if you count Errol. The breakfast was huge and delicious. We struggled to eat it all, but Glen managed!

A gondola (aka chair lift)

We then headed to the bottom of the Heavenly Ski Resort near the California/Nevada border so we could catch the Gondola to the Ski Runs. The ride to the top was fantastic and the views just spectacular. We stopped part way up at a fantastic "vista" or lookout in Australian. We had small snowball fight and took in the views of Lake Tahoe and the surrounding Mountains.

A great vista of Lake Tahoe

Our team. Why aren't we vistaing the vista? (And cna I even verb that?)

We continued our way up the Mountains to the ski runs and went straight into a free for all snow ball fight! There a few killer shots, some ambushing, take downs and dirty tricks. We'll let you decide who was responsible for which one. Lets just say some people have strong arms and some people are just plain sneaky.

Snow fights are fun!

We headed to the beer tent and sat outside drinking our alcoholic beverages. The three people that ordered Coronas all received boys. The over educated members of the group theorised that the low air pressure at the high altitude may have led to an increase in volume. Or they may have been full of shit!

Relaxing at the top of Heavenly Valley Ski Resort with Kyle & Eric

Back down the mountain we went and drove to Emerald Bay for a hike....ok, a stroll. We walked towards the Eagle Falls and had another snow ball fight! You'd think we'd never seen snow before the way we keep playing in it. The boys were very good shots and we had a great time throwing snowballs around...Michelle seemed to cop it the most out of the group. As Jeff said, too big a target???

Tea house in Emerald Bay. Apparently they got 'several visitors per summer'

Chris Currie (Kiwi - owns the cabin) met us at his place and we said goodbye to Jeff, Eric and Kyle and chatted over pistachios, wine and beer before checking out.....

Eagle Falls

Eagle Falls a little further downstream

Lake Tahoe Beckons... A proper Californian Holiday!

Day 29 - Saturday, April 26th, 2008

Our final week of exchange is scheduled for Modesto, but our weekly host, Chris Currie, takes a broad view. He owns a holiday house at South Lake Tahoe (that's a shack for Aussies and a bach for kiwis...). Even thought Tahoe is nowhere neat Modesto, and is in fact out of the district, it is so beautiful that Chris was keen that we see it. He also thought that we could probably have a nice relaxing recharge time. He and Jenny (his wife) are very generous people.

Incidentally, the Currie holiday house is named 'Currie Whare' which is a New Zealander joke. 'Wh' if pronounced 'F', so the name is pronounced something like 'Curry Fa-ri.' And Whare means home or something similar (please correct me if I'm wrong here). Anyway, it's a clever, if nerdy, joke. Of all the team, I should have appreciated it, but it went straight over my head I'm afraid...

Chris and Jenny couldn’t head straight to Tahoe with us because their daughters were involved in a musical production, so we headed up with their good friends Jeff and Ashwini and Jeff's twin sons Kyle and Eric. What a fortunate turn of events! Chris and Jenny were great fun the whole rest of the week, but we might not have met Jeff and Ashwini without this side trip. They were lovely, so we were wrapped!

Jeff, Ashwini, Will, Sarah & Chris kick back.

At the lake we enjoyed great scenery, great company, great wine and a great time. And we didn't sleep enough. None of this is all that unusual. What is unusual however is that we didn't present at any Rotary clubs, and we didn't have any formal visits to any local businesses! It was a nice change, but I think I had withdrawal symptoms!

We had lunch at a very interesting buffet style tepinyaki restaurant. The customer’s task was to select a bowl of raw ingredients and then took them to a large central BBQ plate where they were cooked in front of you. Yes sir, yes sir, I had 3 bowls full, including plenty of calamari… Nice. Made one mistake though. One bowl had some very attractive looking roasted garlic cloves. Michelle had about 5 and I had about 10 (across my 3 bowls). Lucky we aren’t all sharing the same room? Oh, hang on, we are…

Michelle and her Tahoe Adonis

After lunch we did some preliminary sightseeing, scoped out the local casinos and then got ourselves settled in at the cabin. Sitting around chatting, blogging, drinking and laughing was heaps of fun!

Errol checking out the are

We headed to the hard rock in the Hershey’s Casino for dinner. Glen and I had grnad plans to sneakily pay the bill, but even though we snuck off early to get it, we’d still been beaten to it by Jeff! Sneaky these Americans… Dinner was good fun and afterward different members of the group talked, drank, sang and danced and gambled. We straggled home to the cabin in a few small groups… I think the plan was to have a rest. Things didn’t quite go to plan… Now, that would be typical of the trip so far!

Anzac Day.. rest, review and golf

Day 28 - Friday, April 25th, 2008

Merced must win some sort of award for being the most healthy place to stay so far. My host Jerry is a member of the local gym and Jerry, Glen and I have been for 40 mins of so every morning. It has been great! Jerry powers out the miles on the cross trainer and the bike, so Glen and I have been joining him in that. After a while I have to leave cardio and go play with weights, but Glen has been sticking with Cardio the whole time. He about tripled the amount of work he was doing over the week (measured according to the Calorie metres on the electronic cardio gear...). We followed up the gym trip by going for a 40 minute odd run around the river. Very nice.

The highlight of the gym week for me was a 38 year old african american ex marine who I bumped into and spoke to early in the week. He was in super shape, and while I was doing chin ups (or maybe make that chin up) nearby he was doing dips. After about 10 dips, he slowly rotated his body in mid air until his feet pointed straight up and then did a few more dips! Very impressive. Another item to add to my list of things to do some day...

OK, so what did we actually do today? Well, nominally it was a rest day, so we all went our different directions. Sarah hung out with the police for a change. My memory is getting fuzzy as to what she did on which day, but I think she went to some elementary schools to be a campus cop on this day. I do remember that it was along day for her!

**
From Sarah:
I headed to the Atwater Police Station and was introduced to their school resource officer. We spent time checking out some of the local schools and also a separate school for kids that aren't fitting into the normal school life or who are in a little bit of trouble with the law. The kids were all very well behaved and I couldn't believe how many of them purchased their lunch! It was a cool lunch though....cheeseburgers and chips! I spent most of the day here and then went home for an hour before heading out with the SCU (Street Crime Unit) for the night. These guys are fairly tough looking and don't mess around. We patrolled the gang areas and the trouble spots and I'm grateful that Tasmania is not as affected by gangs, guns and drugs.

BREATH TESTING SITE!
I finally got to see a Random Breath Testing site! The CHP had a static site set up in the middle of the road and it was very Hi-vis and safe for the officers. This one car came through with a young guy driving. The car smelt of liquor and the guy said he'd only had one beer....he forgot to mention the 2 beers in the car that his passenger and he had open! Naughty Naughty! CHP gave him a field sobriety test which is where you stand on one leg, look up to the sky, count to 30 etc. He passed and was warned about his behaviour. His female passenger looked like she was freaking out!

It was a late night but lots of fun again!


**

Michelle had adventures with a training mob somewhere, and I can't remember who or where. We'll get back to you on that...

I went back out to the new UC Merced Campus to meet with the IT staff. Securing a meeting had been tough because the staff were on a planning retreat all week. Ideally, I'd have liked to speak with the gentleman who planned the ICT system for the campus. It would have been interesting to find out where he did his research and what he discovered. Unfortunately, he was too busy... I did get to have a very interesting walk around and tour with one of the classroom AV specialists. We have fun checking out their projectors, video conferencing gear, and lecturing recording gear.

Westy and Glen had a great day. They played in an ambrose golf tournament with Glen's hosts Carol and Ralph, and Westy's host Roger. These guys can all play a bit. Carol and Ralph will be in Tassie soon to play Barnbougle, so that gives you an idea of their commitment level! Glen's team won in the end I believe, and a great time was had be all. Even if there wasn't enough beer at the party afterward...

Coyotes are not the most attractive of the US animals

Now, today is ANZAC Day. For all you US readers, ANZAC day is our memorial day for returned service men and women and those that have passed away. ANZAC is an acronym for Australian New Zealand Army Corps. The ANZAC spirit grew out of joint Oz & NZ action at Gallipoli in the first world war, and has been remembered ever since. We actually recognised ANZAC day over here on the 24th (which was the 25th at home in Oz). At the Atwater Rotary Club meeting, Sarah led us all in the Ode of Remeberance:

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will remember them
Lest we forget

The other thing worthy of mention is that there is a little zoo down the street from Ralph and Carol's. Glen and I both had a chance to pop down and meet the animals. My favourites were the bear (pictured) and the mountain lion (no picture). I had great fun playing peek-a-boo with the lion. It was very cool...

A black bear with places he'd rather be...

Planes, no trains or automobiles

Day 27 - Thursday, April 24th, 2008

Day 27 began with a tour of Castle Air Force Museum (formerly a fully fledged airforce base). This museum is where old military planes come to retire. There are many many helicopters and aircraft here. We enjoyed checking out everything from a B52 to an F111 to early turbo prop fighters. Very interesting.

A jet fighter. Unlike the Joint Strike it has actually been in service...

A more manageable plane for us non pilots

My host Bill in Sonora volunteers at this museum helping to rebuild an old B-36 bomber. This huge plane has 4 jet and 6 turbo prop engines. It was the world's biggest bomber in its time. It is clad in some sort of magnesium alloy that is slightly lighter than aluminium, because this is slightly lighter, and the weight difference was critical at the time. Unfortunately the cladding is deteriorating rapidly, so Bill is part of a program that is replacing it with aluminium. Interesting stuff. unfortunately we didn't have a chance to see their workshop...

B-36 bomber

We presented today at a joint meeting of the Atwater and Lilydale Rotary Clubs. President Rich ran a lively and friendly meeting and the clubs asked lots of interesting questions. It was a pleasure to be there. And I won the raffle! It was only for the right to draw a luck marble and I missed the jackpot, but we had a side pot for nearest the winning ticket on our table, so I won $5 there.

Atwater Rotary

Some of us popped out to attend vocational visits in the afternoon. It could have been time off, but many of us spoke to our hosts and arranged extra vocational trips. I (Will) went to Merced College to meet with the man in charge. Sarah spent time trying to catch bad guys. Glen went to build big machinery. A good time was had by all.

Sarah trying to catch bad guys...

And in the evening we had a party at Glen's hosts Carol & Ralph's. It was fun. All hosts and others from Merced who'd met us attended. Fantastic food and wine. (Mind you there was BBQ foster farms chicken, which worries at least one member of the team).
We all had a good night. It was very civilised!

Host Jerry Schaffer & Will at the party

BTS, we're going Back To School

Day 26 - Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Guess what? None of us took any pictures today! We're relying on a couple from my host Jerry Schaffer.

Team infront of the Bizzini Building

We spent the morning at Madera College, a 2 year community College with about 10000 students. My host Jerry Schaffer was a Dean at this college for many years until his retirement about 11 years ago. Dr Larry Johnson showed us around. We had a quick look at:
- the automotive shop (I've learned the IT can also stand for Industrial Technology...)
- biology and maths labs with one PC per student
- a resourced centre sponsored by Sarah's hosts Dorothy and Bill Bizzini
- a new student assistance centre which is a one stop shop for enrollment, financial and academic assistance
- a very well setup computer aided design (CAD) lab
- much more...
After out tour, we managed to meet a few key people from around the college to discuss our vocations. Sarah's new friend Jim (head of Campus police) was particularly interesting.

Dr Larry Johnson explains the finer points of the college to the team

Presented at a lunchtime meeting of the Downtown Merced Rotary Club. Jerry described it as the 'old man's club' of Madera. It has many many members, including the city manager, then newspaper publisher etc. They were a nice bunch. President Clarke (who drove Will and Glen from Reno down to Merced) ran the meeting forcefully, but amusingly. We had fun presenting. A few more flags were added to the hauls we are collecting for our clubs. Sarah managed to include another description for her relationship with Bobby. We've now had boyfriend, partner, fiance, significant other and better half... She's got to run out soon. I completely failed with my challenge, which was to include certain song lyrics in my speech. I had rehearsed, but forgot while I was in front of the audience! Who says this speaking gig is easy??

Presenting Flags at Merced Rotary

After the meeting, Immediate Past President Jan Mendenhall drove us over to University of California Merced (US Merced). She is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Development. Jan oozed confidence, capability and business! After our safe delivery, Alumni Affairs Coordinator Stefani Martinez led us on a tour of the campus. I think Stefani has time to run tours because UC Merced is only in its third year and only has about 80 alumni so far! Stefani was ably assisted by freshman economics student Emily. Emily is a Rotaract member, is helping set up a student endowment fund to produce scholarships and also volunteers with a ranger program that removes black berries from Yosemite (yes, they're a problem here too!). All in all, she was an admirable UC Merced ambassador and a great advertisement for the campus.

After our general tour, Glen and his host Carol slipped back over to Merced College to spend some more time looking at CAD software. Michelle headed off to learn about the stem cell research being conducted on campus, Sarah met and toured with the campus police and I met with Deputy University Librarian Donald Barclay to learn about the library.

The library is spacious, comfortable and inviting. It has been designed to suit the 21st century. They don't subscribe to paper journals and periodicals, these are all online. The 'reserve' is also all online. And book materials that professors want placed on reserve and digitised and distributed economically! No more racing in and madly photocopying the weekly readings... In fact, I didn't notice a single photocopier or printer while I was in the building.

Rita Staur showed Sarah around. She is head of US Merced police (don't call them security, they don't like that!). They have only 200 students, but about 10 police. Either these guys commit a lot of crime and need to police, or this is the safest place in the country!

Michelle had a tour of the stem cell research program in the science department. I would have loved to have been part of that, it would have been so interesting! I haven't spoken to her enough to have enough understanding to write about it, I'll see if we can add some more information later.

Glen left UC Merced after the first part of the tour and headed back to Merced College to spend more time with the CAD drawing program. He reckons that talking to the right software user can mean that he can learn things twice as fast!

Thanks to everyone who was involved in setting up another interesting day.

Vocational Day in Madera (Sarah in a chopper!)

Day 25 - Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

We had possibly our best Vocational day so far in Madera today. And we presented at a combined Madera clubs meeting, and everyone did very well. Glen and Sarah are getting so confident, it's a pity we are near the end!

I'm having fun with Jerry and Betsy Schaffer. We're even finding time to go to the gym in the mornings! Talk about a good life... And last, but not least, I got 7.5 hours sleep last night. The most on GSE so far. I feel I could take on the world...


Will's Vocational Day:

I was lucky enough to experience educational IT at 7 different levels. From the Micro (meeting IT manager Joanne at a high school) to the Macro (meeting district manager Steve and County Manager Jeff).

The school visit was interesting as I could do direct comparisons with my school and actually able to help them out a little bit. But I really enjoyed the meetings at the county office where we discussed issues that I don’t have to worry about yet but may have to one day.

Just a quick explanation, schools here are organised into districts and there are several districts in one county. Dist may have between one and a dozen schools depending on their individual area. A unified school dist includes both elementary and high schools. The Madera county office manages many dist and is able to provide some fantastic services include the wonderful internet connectivity. For you nerds out there, the county is the schools ISP and many of the schools have 45 Mbit synchronous connections. Wouldn’t you kill for a connection like that! Actually, there is a California education network which provides a high speed network link between all educational institutions include schools colleges and university.

At the county office we got talking about the catholic education system. It is very small here as it receives no government funding. In fact there is only one catholic high school in the whole county and very very few students in catholic elementary schools.

Madera rotary greeted us with some familiar faces!

Sarah's Voc. Day:

Met with Mike Herder and we travelled to Fresno and had a look around the area before heading to Caltrans TMC room (California Transport Traffic Management Control). They have cameras which check on the traffic flow and then heaps of display boards along the highway which they can print messages on - slow traffic, take alternate route etc. While there I also went down to the basement and met the guys in MAIT (Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team). .They were great fun and have great programs to help with accident investigation, including a 3D program which you can view from so many different views (driver, passenger, oncoming vehicles, witness on street).

We then headed to my favourite place in California so far.....In 'n' Out Burger! This place has the best burgers ever, and have a "secret" menu which you can get a 4X4 (4 times meat, 4 times cheese) Mmmmmm.....burgers.....

I'm not sure if this was the best idea before heading to the Airport to go flying with the CHP in their Helicopter. The CHP have about 13 helicopters in the state which are all used for general patrol, pursuits and some medical evacuations. I was able to get a great view of the City of Fresno and the Baseball Field from our Grizzlies game. The pilot and flight officer are CHP trained first and then apply for flight duties. They have no tenure and can stay there as long as they like! I would love to have their job! I had a really great time and thanks so much to Mike for organising the visits for me.

Sarah got to see the city through a wide lense

Michelle Voc. Day:

Spent the morning visiting Madera high school and checking out their vocational programs. Part of their vocational program is allowing the students to use a new CMC ( ) which is unusual for a high school to have as only larger businesses in Tasmania have these.

In the afternoon, I had the time of my life and went to Pioneer Educational College which is a chartered college for kids that have been expelled, on probation or otherwise unsuccessful in normal school classes. I spent the afternoon with Alison the principal. The school was diff to any other normal high school that I have visited as they offered smaller classes and more one on one teaching styles. They also had a program setup for teenage pregnant mothers who were allowed to bring their children into the class two weeks post birth to continue their education.

The teachers at this college are more like mentors rather than teachers, which help the kid’s fit into the class. On the day, the kids were doing their STAR testing for English and I managed to see the exam and am lucky they didn’t make me sit it without some study time!

I thought it was interesting how the kids probation officers were walking in and out of the classrooms making sure that the kids were actually in school .Alison is an ex-probation officer and has a good relationship with them.

The kids basically built this school and have built their classrooms. They have a lot or pride and respect as they have put a lot of work into it. They were able to do “Controlled Tagging” of the subjects that were in that classroom.

The school really makes a point of going out of their way to make sure that the kids can pass their high school diploma and organise evening classes for kids that are unable to attend during the day.

Glen visitng somewhere hands on for a change...

Westy’s Voc. Day:

Westy made the trip to Fresno to visit upmarket Capet shop 47 Place Carpet One (in the USA they upscale instead of Up market). They visited several houses in Fresno where they were installing floor coverings and Westy was able to explain to the contractors how to lay carpet around a tricky stair case. He was also able to wonder at the value of the houses he was working in. Later that same day we visited John and Lois and Westy noticed the first woollen carpet that we have seen in the US. No wonder we can’t sell enough sheep when these guys won’t put it in on the floors!

The story of Westy's trip

Michelle with 5220 GSE Team Leader Carol

Cow and Chicken!

Day 24 - Monday, April 21st, 2008

Today we all met at Westy's place and Roger and Chi Chi took us to Vern Wickstrom's Dairy Farm just outside of Hilmar. We were given a tour of the milking process and a brief run down of the history of the Farm. The farm was brought in 1940 and Vern is the fourth generation.

Why a dairy cow exists. Milk galore!

Vern showed us the area that the cattle are kept in and the two different varieties of cattle that the use at the Farm. The cattle make their own way through to the "merry-go-round" and get hooked up to be milked. At the end of the process they back themselves away from the milking bay and off they go! Well trained cows! The milk is pumped through to the two 7000 gallon tanks and these tanks are emptied by the trucks 2-3 times a day. That's a whole lotta milk!

The (2 or 3x) daily grind on the milking machine

Our next stop was the Hilmar Cheese Company which was founded in 1985 and is a cooperative of 12 dairy farmers seeking to maximise the value of their Jersey Cow's high solids milk. In a day, the company processes 5.5 million litres of milk which produces 1.3 million pounds of cheese! Good thing too, because the cheese here is delicious. They mainly make American Jack and Cheddar. Jack is a funny yellow colour, kinda dark and tastes....like cheese.

Errol meeting a very distant cousin

After a delicious lunch, we headed to the Livingston to see Foster Farms Chicken, which was founded in 1939. We split into two groups and had a tour of the Operations of the business. We started at the live chickens being delivered in crates and travelling along a conveyor belt into the dark room where apparently they are much more relaxed (plus they get their belly rubbed by a machine). They are hung upside down on some hooks by their feet and travel into the "killing room". I debated if I wanted to see this part - if I go in, will I ever eat chicken again?


* This may be a little graphic but needed to explain the process*

The chickens head runs through water and an electric current passes through electrocuting them, knocking them unconscious. They travel past a machine that cuts their carotid artery and just in case the machine doesn't do the job properly, there are workers on hand to slit their throat. We then followed the process - feathers being oiled off, feet chopped off and sent to China, innards being pulled out by machine, inspection of chickens, innards put back in (for some orders) and eventually the chicken pieces being cut and packaged.



It takes 15mins for a chicken to go through the kill and clean process then it is cooled in water for 70mins before being sliced which takes another 10mins. Each minute 640 chickens are killed and processed - YES 640 a MINUTE!! I found it really interesting and couldn't believe how many people were working on the floor. There are 2100 people employed on the floor and I can see why when there are that many chickens going through.



We headed back to our family, one member not feeling the best and as far as I know hasn't eaten chicken since! (5 days later...still no chicken consumed)

Is Glen tastier than corn husks??

Reno to Merced

Day 23 - Sunday, April 20th, 2008

Today was the last day of the District Conference and the day for our big GSE Presentation! The day started off with the team running around, trying to print the new presentation notes, write some notes, prepare the Australia Table and try to pack our suitcases.

Past Rotarians were remembered with a memorial service at the start of the final day, with Bernie Charles being thought of and alot of the current members speaking to me about their memories of him.

Westy laying a wreath for Bernie

We were up next and despite making changes to our sections, it went fairly well. Will's talk was hilarious and mentioned the differences in breakfast items in California compared to Tassie! Westy presented Governor Dick Wyatt with a Clock, hand made with Tasmanian Timber.

Glen looks pleased with himself. Someone must have finally understood him when he introduced himself!

Westy carried this beautiful handmade clock 12000 miles for Dick. Good thing he appreciated it!

The Californian team that went to Tasmania were also here and did a short presentation on what they learnt and enjoyed about their trip to our Home. After talking with Carol, Brian and Jim, it was clear to see that they enjoyed the exchange and all the fantastic scenery we are lucky to have in Tasmania.

5220 GSE Team Giving a Report

At the end of the session, we had a table of items to give away such as pens, books, CD's and pins to say thankyou to the Rotarians, and to encourage them to come visit Tas. It was also a great chance to lighten our suitcases, except no-one wanted to take our Inflatable Shane Warne home...so we left him at the Casino with a mobile phone....

We gave away hundreds of pins, but couldn't get rid of Warnie!

It was then time to move onto our new host family for the week. We met in the lobby, headed off with our familys and made the 3 1/2 hour trip down to Merced.

Gina, Linda and the better looking half the team at our give away stall