Wednesday, April 28th

After breakfast with our hosts, the team made the trip over to the Best Buy dispatch centre in Nichols. The centre is responsible for dispatching items to stores across the North East of the US. We were amazed by the size of the building (over 750,000 square feet, with miles of conveyor belts and shelving). We were given a truly fascinating tour and would like to extend our thanks to Susan Pedersen, who gave us a brief history of the warehouse and her role as Loss Prevention Manager, and all of the staff who we met during the morning. Thanks to Arnie Youngblood from Best Buy who forwarded us photos of the trip (they won't upload for the moment, I'm investigating).

For lunch we attended a review of "Three Cups of Tea" and "Stones into Schools" by Greg Mortenson, which took place at the Coburn Library in Owego. The review was carried out by Linda Brisson. Greg was a rock climber who has established the Central Asia Institute. CAI is an organisation promoting education and literacy in outlying areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. We were all impressed, so much so that Barbara's planning a trip to a bookshop to pick them both up.

After the review we separated off - Caroline travelled to Owego Middle School (and I'm going to add more on this later) - while the rest of the team headed to Wagner Lumber. Wagner are the largest manufacturer of hardwood in the North East United States, and the speed with which they transform logs into lumber is incredible. We were all surprised that the drying process can take so long. I was a little nervous at seeing 6ft bandsaws whizzing merrily through gigantic wood, but we were protected (and looked very fetching) in our hardhats and safety goggles. Thanks to everyone for arranging this for us - it was a fascinating tour.

We finished the day with dinner at Carolyn and Orville Wright's home (Barbara's host family for our stay in Owego). We were joined by a number of Owego's most prominent citizens, and had a great time chatting and feasting on wonderful food. All too soon, we'd started to flag and had to say our goodbyes for the night.