User:Vaoverland

Welcome to the home page for Vaoverland. My vocational background is in bus transportation, tourism, and the hospitality industry. I have enjoyed a variety of perspectives working as both a direct and contract employee and as an independent consultant serving municipal governments, non-profits, and private-sector businesses. I spent the majority of my career to-date as a principal with one of Virginia's more diversified bus companies. We performed privatization contracting of bus transportation and bus fleet maintenance for federal, state, municipal and not-for-profit organizations.

Many years ago, my parents made a substantial investment in our very own multi-volume copy of the World Book Encyclopedia, with the annual yearbooks added for 30 years. These treasures required hand-washing for a child to use. As I was growing up, the encyclopedias were a window to the world beyond television and closer than the library. Even now, the old year books provide insight and a look back into each of those years. Although both well-used and a bit dated now, those World Books still hold a place of importance in my home.

Thanks, Mark in the Historic Triangle of Virginia. Vaoverland () 07:16, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I especially enjoy historical aspects. In Virginia, maintaining our present infrastructure of highways, bridges, tunnels and bridge-tunnels is a major issue these days, in addition to the need to make future improvements. However, you have to read some of the older stories, such as the American Civil War tales of the Union soldiers describing the surface conditions in 1862 as they were moving up the Virginia Peninsula literally To the Gates of Richmond (as in book of that name by Stephen Sears) to obtain an historical perspective. There is a lot of variety in both the terrain and our transportation systems in Virginia. We still have a pole ferry, (Hatton Ferry), an example of one of the earlier types of crossings, as well as some of the most modern technology in the form of the cable-stayed bridge at Varina Enon on Interstate 295.

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