Shame on me, I haven’t made real blog posting for ages. This year has been mega busy, with long trips away. I’m writing this as I head off for another long (distance, if not duration) trip. The year started the way last year finished, with a “round the world” trip, only in the opposite direction! That one had me travelling through Seoul on the way out and Moscow on the way home, two new countries to add to my list. While on the ship we had a port call in Indonesia, which added a third! That trip was mainly maintenance and was six weeks long. After what seemed like a short leave, but which was almost six weeks, I had my longest trip to date. I flew to Dili, East Timor (fourth new country this year) via Moscow and Singapore, to join the ship. We finished the project and transited back to Europe via Singapore, Indonesia, Cape Town (add South Africa as my fifth new country) arriving back in Newcastle, England. I then had to visit the company office in Aberdeen, Scotland, before returning to Colorado after almost 11 weeks and 32000 miles. That trip wasn’t technically “round the world”, but like my trip in August last year, it was more than half way round and back again. The third trip was a relatively mundane one. Over to Scotland to join the ship, six weeks onboard, then return home from Norway. That was just under two weeks ago and now I’m off on the trip I mentioned at the start, Colorado Springs – Los Angeles – Hong Kong – Singapore, where I’ll be for approximately five days fitting one of our cable-lay spreads to a crane barge. After that I should be returning to Colorado for around two weeks. After that I’m not sure. Its likely that I will be going to Australia for a month, or alternatively, back to Norway for a month depending on what the work schedule is for my “regular” ship and the Sapura 3000 crane barge.
