I honestly don’t know how excited anyone gets over new information in the Kasdorf Genealogy other than me. I have added a lot of new information I was sent on Joachim Kastorff by Reinhard Kastorff who lives in Germany. It really is a little more exciting than some updates, he has sent a very complete family tree, and one of the people match’s the information I have on a brother of Michael Kasdorf, Jacob Christian Michael Kasdorf #1352 in the current listings. Everything seems good, but the towns we show as the birth site are different. Hopefully someone will be able to find a record for the “new” Joachim Kastorff and see who his parents are to “seal the deal”.
Author Archive: George Kasdorf
The Missing Posts – at least a little of them…
Not that I will probably ever go back and add these in as posts again, I copied what was cached on Google for the Kazology Blog. Still trying to figure if there is a place (Bloglines) that has actual copies of the posts.
George
czech this out.11 Oct 2006 by Administrator
it has been a busy summer so far, and took (i think) the final trip out of the
country for 2006. i spent a week in the czech republic, leaving from detroit on
a monday pm, through amsterdam, and ending up in prague. since i was going to …
kazology – https://www.kasdorf.name/wordpress
the last leg(s)27 Sep 2006 by Kazology
after climbing and hiking more on saturday in yosemite park than i have in the last
10 years, i got back to the hotel and collapsed. sunday morning i was determined
to still get up and use the last day in california to see what i had …
kazology – https://www.kasdorf.name/wordpress
big rocks rock & point to the point27 Sep 2006 by Kazology
the continuation of the california experience. after seeing pelicans and big rocks
in the water at morro bay during the week the weekend finally came. i finished
up at work late friday, got some rest and headed off for yosemite national …
kazology – https://www.kasdorf.name/wordpress
what a wonderful bird is the . . . .20 Sep 2006 by Kazology
from san luis obispo it is a short drive to pismo beach to the south. after
completing the days activities at work i headed down that way. i drove along the
coast highway and was stopping at the small local beaches just to see the …
kazology – https://www.kasdorf.name/wordpress
california dreaming is becoming a reality..19 Sep 2006 by Kazology
well last week was a boring week training some people in northfield new hampshire,
but that is done and over. this week though is a little better. on tuesday flew
out to fresno california for a week. got in early enough that i decided i …
kazology – https://www.kasdorf.name/wordpress
Societies Ultimate Luxury to Rednecks Ultimate Race Town
After touring Atlanta for two days we headed back North… not far though. A couple hours drive from Atlanta is Asheville North Carolina. I would say Asheville is a very nice town, but I don’t remember seeing the town of Asheville itself….. we went direct to the Biltmore House, county home of George Vanderbilt.
One word “Amazing”, well maybe “Huge” or “Holycow”. Amazing what a few million dollars would buy back in 1895! Want copper roofing with your initials embossed on every piece? Want a forty foot chandelier hanging down your five floor staircase?
Want a special bar-b-que room? How about 20 separate rooms for your friends to change in before you go swimming (in your 58 foot long in door pool or course) or horse riding? Maybe a billiard room that you could put most normal homes into? No problem, just inherit 100 Million, double that in ten years to 200 million, then factor in dollar value in 1895 and you have a cool 90 Billion to spend as you like… at age 44, and still a bachelor so you don’t have to quibble over the size of the ladies dressing rooms…..
However you do it, this is one amazing place. We spent the day here and probably could have come back the next day to see more. We missed out on the “Roof top tour” which should have produced some nice panorama shots from the ramparts. The farm, gardens, nature center and riding stables (the new ones) were closed by the time we got out of the house. We did make the winery to get in a little tasting session though.
Having taken the entire day here we retired for the night, the hotel was nice, but nothing like the guest accommodations at Biltmore, but then too we had air conditioning!
Tuesday we were off and running again, up to Mooresville NC, home of many of the NASCAR team. DEI (Dale Earnhart Inc), Robert Yates, Penske Racing and many others.
We went in and out of garages taking pictures and looking for interesting souvenirs (and came away empty handed for the most part.) After hitting the shops we wanted to in Mooresville we went down the road to Charlotte. Charlotte is home to Lowes Motor Speedway and most importantly Hendrick Motorsport – which just happens to be where Jeff Gordon keeps a couple of cars at. (Along with several hundred (?) trophys including four Winston Cup’s.
We got into Lowe’s and were able to watch some cars running around the track. Not sure if they were testing or giving rides or both. But was fun to see cars under speed and not just an empty track. Then down the road a couple miles to Hendrick Motorsport. They have a nice showroom with all the trophys, and a room with a number of the cars used by Jeff and Jimmy Spencer including their dirt track cars they started racing with. I thought Jeff actually started with go-karts, but none were to be seen here. You could look out into the garage area and see the work being done on the cars but not as close as I would like… like next to them. “Oh you want a 3/16 open end, no problem here you go.” It was getting late in the day so we took off North again to get down the road toward home.
The ride through West Virgina was fantastic, early evening, the sun was turning the sky all sorts of golds, the clouds were coming into the mountains showing why they are called the smokies, and then a twin rainbow just before dark. A great way to end up the vacation.
Until I have a home like the Biltmore, or drive a car like Jeff,
George
Georgia is for Lovers – of Coke, Fish and Fast Cars.
This year I am making an attempt to use some of my vacation before December so I don’t take the entire month off and sit around home.
We have talked about visiting some places in the “near” South for a couple years now, so we decided to extend the Labor Day weekend a few days and head to Georgia. Left Friday night and drove until we got tired, then woke up in the morning and were at the Coca Cola exhibit shortly after lunch! It was interesting seeing all the old advertising Coke has used over the years (except for the “pixie” looking person with the blond flame upswept hair whom I find oddly disquieting.)
Next we tromped around Underground Atlanta. If you have been you know what it is, if you have not, most likely you could save a little shoe leather. Lots of flea market stuff, just down a level where the trains used to run. I can now say I have been there and seen it, but am pretty certain I will not ever visit again.
Having done those we went to hotel, rested the feet, showered and went to dinner at Fogo de Chão . Having now been to the original in Sao Paulo Brazil, the one in Washington DC and now Atlanta I may be able to claim some type of record. (As always employees are not eligible.) May have to try Chicago one of these days just to round it out. While the photo may not be technically correct, I liked this one since it has me drooling over the coming meal, and also has the name albeit in reverse, showing – my attempt at “arty”. Sunday we had tickets to see the Georgia Aquarium after lunch (you really need to have reservations) so we went down early to walk around Centennial Park and then eat at CNN building.
We didn’t leave enough time to take the tour of CNN but walking around the shops, and a quick lunch there was fun. You can get a DVD made of you reading the news from the teleprompter while sitting at the anchor desk for something like $20 if you like. It was busy the entire time so must be pretty popular, have to admit I considered it just for fun.
Then the main attraction the Georgia Aquarium. It bills itself as “The worlds largest aquarium” but we had also heard it was “only” about a two hour visit. When we have gone to Shedd Aquarium in Chicago we spent much more time than that, and even the National Aquarium in Washington DC we spent quite a bit of time, (That “aquarium” is another, somewhat disgraceful story though.) so we were not expecting a great deal.
We were very pleasantly surprised! It seemed small, but as we went through it was most enjoyable. Lots of critters to touch, and huge tanks… 6 million gallons several hundred feet long. The main viewing window of the main tank is 60 feet wide by 20 feet tall with acrylic almost two feet thick. They have some 20 foot long whale sharks in it and thousands of other fish, rays, turtles and other denzins of the deep swimming around.
The aquarium is divided up into sections, tropical, cold water, coral reef and so on. The whole thing is highly recommended for people of all ages…. the only down side, the crowds. They have actually limited the number of people they let in, and reduced that amount since they opened last year, but it was still very crowded, but with a little patience everyone managed to see what they wanted. Finally, we did end up spending over three hours there.
I only hope the pictures of Paul and I in the Penguin roost come out okay!
Until penguins learn to fly,
George
Plymouth Michigan Historical Museum.
Several months ago George Sr. asked if we had ever been to the Plymouth Historical Museum in Plymouth Michigan.
Well, we had to say “Nope, never been there”. Not given to idle chit chat, we understood he was asking for a reason, and with a little (?) prompting were able to get it out. Well it was easy enough to find information on where the museum was, but not so easy to verify that what he wanted to see was actually at the museum. If you know him, you know he had to be looking for either 1) Steam Engines or 2) Radio related stuff, not necessarilly in that order.
So it was number 2, radio stuff that he had heard about.
Last Sunday was the first time since then that a) we were all here, and b) we had the time, so off to the museum we went.
Plymouth is not all that big of a town, but it is very nice and well maintained, so we were not sure what to expect of the museum. Well it turned out very well indeed. The family price admission got all five of us in at a reasonable price. The volunteer at the front ticket desk was highly enthusastic and gave us a free ten minute spiel on the history of the history museum. Apparently the primary benefactor is in the historical range her self. She was there at the time, going strong at 96 years!
If you can believe it, we actually asked “Which way to the radios” just to show the fever pitch we were at to see the collection. Pushing and shoving each other and the other patrons out of the way we stampeded to the exhibit! At last, there it was, as good as advertised, and as as large as life! We spent a long 15 seconds looking the “shack” over and taking photos and then moved on to the next exhibit, the blacksmith shop which was next door to the indian encampment.
The museum advertised “The largest Lincoln museum” in Michigan. Not sure how that compares to the other 49 states and the size of their Lincoln Collections, and/or museums, but it was a pretty extensive collection of things considering that was 150 years ago.
As always Nancy took time out to chat with some others at the museum and met a friend there.
Dad tried out the telegraph key to send the alarm telling eveyone the bridge was out over “Deep Gorge” while I listened to the sounder, but it was to late, the train did not stop before it crashed into the water far below. If only I had taken time to learn the Morse code this tragedy could have been prevented.
Another major collections is the Daisy BB Gun room. I did not realize it but the Daisy Company was founded in Plymouth! (Maybe that explains all the broken windows in the old buildings.)
The pictures are posted, and as usual we took quite a few.
Enjoy
Until the last BB narrowly misses an eye,
George
A day at the races.
August always brings our annual pilgrimage to the local home of the racing gods, Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn Michigan. 
We have been going to the race just about every year since we moved to Michigan in 1999. The first year was the Busch race since we could not get tickets for the Winston Cup (back then). We started out with three tickets, but the third changed from person to person, and now only the truely race hardened fans (Paul and I) go every year. Like many other sports you have to enjoy the sounds, the smells, the crushing crowds and prices (like $6.50 beer) to want to sit on a small hard seat getting kicked from behind, your toes stomped on with people coming and going, severe sun burn (even with SPF 350 applied – hey this one day in August is the only time I normally see sun!) beer dumped on your head (which due to the sun burn sort of feels good late in the race!) two mile walks to the parked car (consider it a form of exercise!), a car whose inside resembles a Swedish sauna, and finally a three hour wait to get out of the very back corner of the 8,000 acre parking lot. Although that can even be fun. Remember there are over 100,000 fans 99,000 of which have been consuming alcoholic beverages for at LEAST six hours, many having started the night before. So the wait in the parking lot can be interspersed with a small fist fight or two, a little road (well parking lot) rage, and generally driving by people whose designated drivers failed to remember they were the designated driver! “Oh, I though YOU were the DD this year”.
This year we also had tickets to allow us into the pits prior to the race. Which was pretty fun way to spend the morning! You can see all the pictures, probably way more than you want to see actualy (one of the nasty “benefits” digital photography provides. No expensive film development and printing, then scanning and so on to post onto a web site. Now anyone can crank out hundreds of photos (per week) of the new baby for just about zero expense!) from the main Kazology Page by taking the “August 2006 MIS – NASCAR – GFS 400” link to the George’s photo album, or you can also see Paul’s from here or the main page.
Although it may not look that way, I did pare my album done quite a bit. I did not think everyone would be interested in seeing pictures of the front AND back of the tool boxs belonging to every team in the race (That would be 43 teams, times 2 = more pictures of tool boxs, jacks and tires than a normal person would care about. (Actually that includes me – I think I got caught up in the moment of it all!)
They say an army travels on it’s stomach, but obviously NASCAR travels on TIRES!
Now I like NASCAR racing, and would do a lot of things to get into the area, but one of the most boring jobs seems to be the wheel preparation. Before the race they have to 1) wire brush each bolt hole where the lug nuts rest, 2) clean them with alcohol, 3) paint the lug nut top surface so it is easy to see inside the dusty wheel, with a helmet on, with about 3 seconds to torque down all five lug nuts, 4) apply adhesive to the lug nut, 5) position and glue the lug nuts onto the wheel, 6) then stack them neatly and cover them all up. This is in addition to the work already done, selecting sets of equal weight and diameter, putting in new valve stems, mounting the tires onto the rims, balancing them (probably more than once), checking and rechecking the air pressure, moving them to the pit area… NOW they are ready to begin the final work. Then remember this is not a set of four tires.
It looked like they have upwards of 15 sets of four, probably more in the back also! So with five lug nuts on a wheel, four tires in a set, and fifteen sets = a lot of lug nuts to prepare. As an aside, as a person in automotive quality I wondered if they 100% checked the threads on every lug nut in the box before they were applied. Imagine one lug nut with missing or even bad thread… a race could be lost in spite of the $100,000’s spent on frames, engines, etc…. Maybe this is an exciting “to-do” while watching The Speed Channel at night in the shop.
Obviously I could go on describing race day for many more pages, I haven’t even touched on the tunnel in and out, the race groupies, meeting the drivers (oh, no? guess I didn’t do that.) but will quit for now.
Hey, did I ever post the pictures of Paul and I racing at MIS? No, I don’t think so…. that was before the digital camera days. I do have a few scanned photos from the event though. I will have to dig them out an post in a blog since there are really not enough to make a photo album out of. They may be in the “Extreme Kasdorfs” album though, now that I think about it for a minute.
Even though #24 did not win, but came in a close second, it was still a pretty good day.
Until the last left hand turn is made,
George