I hope you and your families had a great holiday season. During Christmas week, I took a road trip with Elizabeth to Indiana. We visited her family in Lafayette, and some of my family in Indianapolis. It’s been over 20 years since I’ve road tripped to Indiana and really enjoyed this one. With the foliage off the trees, and the farm fields plowed, the vastness of the farm lands could be taken in. The generations of farm houses, barns, silos and equipment were often picturesque. Thinking about the process of something growing in one of those fields and ending up on our dinner plates is mind boggling.
We got a tour of a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) lab at Purdue University. This was really interesting to me because this type of science is the foundation of why paint and plastic products have improved so much over the last decade or so. I’ll tell more of what we learned in a future blog.
I witnessed the new plague of the interstates, “smart-phoning” while driving. It used to be when we approached a driver who was drifting back and forth in their lane, we assumed they were drunk. Now when we see it, we assume they are preoccupied with their smart phone, and there are a bunch of drivers in all types of vehicles—including 18 wheelers— smart-phoning while they drive. We saw a really bad accident that was most likely caused by a distracted driver. According to the Texas DOT, over 25% of all accidents are directly related to the driver using their smart phone.
Please join me in a New Year’s resolution to limit our “smart-phoning” while driving.
Best wishes in the New Year,
Mike
