Category Travel

Ahoy Matey!

Michael 10 Comments

Okay, first things first. Do people really say that? Ever said that? It seemed an appropriate title because this post is about sailing, although sailing is a poor choice of verbs because the boats I am talking about don’t sail. I was on a sailboat once, in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast and it was fun, lots of fun. But even that boat had a motor. I suppose if the winds died, those who paid for the privilege of pretending to be Blackbeard, or Bluebeard, wouldn’t die along with them. I don’t remember if I ever wrote a post for this blog about that experience. That’s the closest, and I’m sure the only time I will be even that close, to a real sailboat. And I dare say, will most everybody I know who has ever gone “sailing.”

But I digress. Let us talk about sailing, and the boats that do, even though they don’t. I have been on only a handful of boats: a 35 foot fishing boat in Lake Erie a few times, always to do battle with the walleye. I’ve been on the sightseeing cruise ships that ply the rivers around my town and a few others, although “cruise” seems as inapt a verb when talking about these vessels as “sail” does when we (eventually) get to the big boats I mean to talk about, which to be honest, really isn’t the real subject of this post but it makes a nice vehicle, or vessel. And then of course there have been the odd human powered boats including, row, outboard motor, canoe, and paddle. Oh and twice on the boating equivalent of public transportation to get from mainland to nearby island (ferry boat?). I guess that actually is four times because I got back each time also.

Now then, about that sailing I had started with, the one that isn’t actually sailing although they always say sail, which is I suppose more attractive sounding that telling someone, “I went dieseling last week,” when you return from a cruise. And now we got to the crux of the matter, or of the vessel. Those big cruise ships. I have never been on a “cruise” (unless you want to call any or all of those other boats cruising which only seems fair since the big cruise boats seem to insist that they sail) and although I honestly don’t believe I have missed anything, I now find myself considering one but a very specific and particular one.

You should have read enough of these posts to know I am close to fanatical when it comes to old movies, as in older than me, which means movies from the 30s, 40s, and some of the 50s. The definitive stops for old movie buffs for routine viewing are television’s Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and The Criterion Channel. Of those, TCM also sweetens the cinephile’s pot with an annual film festival and – drum roll please – a cruise. The cruise alternates coasts and this year it “sails” from Florida. Not in my backyard but at least on the same side of the country.

I have never considered splurging on a TCM festival either on land or on sea, and I started thinking, I should go ahead and splurge on a vacation I would truly enjoy (because if there are old movies involved I will enjoy it) and on something I’ve never done (which is sailing on a diesel powered floating hotel). You know, I’d not be so reticent about big cruise ships if they weren’t so big. What ever happened to the Love Boat? So I thought I should consider it, fear of floating hotels notwithstanding.

Well let me tell you something! I always thought I was one of sufficient means. To paraphrase the dialogue of what I consider to be world’s greatest movie, Casablanca, when Rick tells Sam that Ferrari would pay him twice as much if he were to work for him, I don’t have enough time to spend the money I do have. Then I got a look at what it costs to watch a couple old movies while bopping along the Caribbean Sea and/or Atlantic Ocean. It doesn’t sail until October and already the luxury and not quite that fancy cabins and suites are sold out. The only space left are mostly interior cabins and a few small mid-ship ocean views and they are going at better than 5 grand a cabin! Do you know how many movies I can see at the local theater showing classic films for $5,000? About 500 – with popcorn!

Not to be all Scrooge-like about it, I could still be talked into considering it. If anybody out there would like to “sail” the Caribbean and/or Atlantic and watch some old movies, presumably in swim and vacation wear (I’ll bring my tux for dinner just in case), please let me know in the comments. We can discuss financing.

Can an egoist be redirected to a more sharing and caring lifestyle? We say yes, you, and they can be someone’s sunshine. Read how in the latest Uplift, Out of the Shadow.

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Not news is good news

Michael 16 Comments

There is a news column I read every Friday that amazes me, week after week, without fail, no matter how busy or slow the week has been. That column is from Associated Press, “NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week.” It’s not just the boring round-up of social media posts that only a complete idiot would believe. For those you can go any day of the week to apnews.com and click on “Fact Check” in the menu bar. No, the weekly summary has the most egregious findings, sprinkled with one or two that will tickle even the most astute news hound.

For example:

A couple days after Halloween, the AP debunked the claim made in a video of drones erecting a skeleton next to and the size of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world at more than 2,716 feet tall (actually 2,716 feet and 6 inches or a little less than 2&1/2 Empire State Buildings). The video with the caption, “Dubai’s #Halloween drone show takes an eerie turn with a spooky skeleton in the sky,” was viewed on TicToc over 8.5 million times and shared to other social sites including the one formerly known as Twitter where some yo-yo claimed the decision to erect the skeleton “sparked outrage among many muslim countries, who view Halloween a ‘satanic holiday’.” The yo-yo notwithstanding, I think it’s hilarious that anybody could believe a corps of 200 drones could build a 2700+ foot skeleton and nobody on the mall next to the building noticed. (In the video, people, at the location were just walking about like nothing was going on. (Imagine that!)) I wish I had a copy of the video to share but it’s since been removed.

Or how about this:

Did you know that the Salzburg Airport in Austria has a help desk specifically for people who intended to fly to Australia? I myself saw that post sometime during the last week of October on the site formerly known as Twitter and said to myself, “Self I said, ‘hahahaha!’” Apparently enough people believed it that the airport posted a clarification on their Facebook page that no such help desk exists, and the AP (and others) published a fact-check on it. It’s a story that illustrates the power of the internet and the stupidity of the human. There really was such a sign, sort of, made as an advertisement by home security company Commend International that hung in the baggage claim area as part of an ad campaign they ran in 2009!
Notice the differences including the original tag line, “Commend provides security…for even the most unlikely of situations”:

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Sign at Salzburg Airport (📷Facebook (Commend International))

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If you’re having a bad day, just remember that the airport in Salzburg, Austria has a counter for people who flew to Austria instead of Australia. (Social media post (📷 apnews.com))

Naturally not all the fake news they uncover is fun stuff like these. There are the usual suspect ballot stuffing, voting machine flipping, he said/she said accusations, and general mis- and disinformation pieces that fill most of the column, but the occasional fun ones make up for those you scratch your head over and wonder why someone would bother putting something together that is so outlandish.

I wade through the nonsense so I can get to the fun nonsense and have a good chuckle over it all. There’s always something there to laugh at. Especially around the holidays. I can’t wait for Christmas when they will be fact checking stories of a fat man wearing a red suit breaking into some politician’s house through the chimney, with the intent of keeping the politico from appearing at the next debate or something equally stupid.

Did you ever stop to think that maybe all motivation is self-motivation. We did and we wrote about in the most recent Uplift! See what we had to say about it then tell us if you agree.

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Move It!

Michael 5 Comments

A couple of days ago I was talking my regular morning walk when I passed a young man loading a U-Haul trailer. Not an unusual site in an apartment complex parking lot. People are always moving in or out. I suppose I made more of a mental note about it because it was the middle of the month and that, although still not unusual, is less usual that it would have been two weeks later. Maybe that’s why my brain went into overtime thinking of moves I’ve made over the years.

There are some people who have never moved. I know at least one family where at least one offspring has lived in the same house through what it now the fourth generation. And there others I know who have moved multiple times in a year, one particular other who moved three times in one particular year. I think I fall neatly in the middle. In my first six years of adult life I had six different addresses. In the next thirty I had one. (Actually, let’s call it one and a half as I maintained a small apartment on the opposite side of the state to lessen what would have otherwise been a killer commute. But that’s a story for a different post. I’ll make a note of it.) Since then I have moved along through two additional addresses. If you are one of the ones who have never moved, I’m not so sure I can say you’re one of the lucky ones. Moving can be an adventure and some adventures are pretty – umm, adventurous.  If you’re one of the ones who has moved and it has never involved a drive it yourself truck or pull it yourself trailer, then indeed you are one of the lucky ones!

My first couple of moves were easily handled by the back seat and trunk of my car. Granted that car was a 1976 Monte Carlo that had more interior room than some of today’s trucks have cargo volume. The trunk swallowed a console television set with room, lots of room to spare, as long as I didn’t mind barreling down the highway with the trunk lid raised. I believe it was move #3 that was the first to require a more traditional heavy hauler, in the form of a small boxy U-Haul trailer tacked onto the rear bumper of the Monte Carlo’s successor, a shiny white Thunderbird that had oodles of amenities but barely enough room in its trunk for a decent early 80s stereo. These were all simple, “get from one side of town to the other” type moves that barely registered to the neighbors that somebody was moving in or out. Not the type where a large truck with a crew of uniformed workmen ready to pack, lift, and carry any and everything put in front of them. That will be coming. But not yet.

The next move was the first that involved a truck. A big truck, smaller than a full blown moving van but bigger than a standard cargo van type truck. But no packers. No lifters or loaders. No drivers. Just a big truck. And me. And the then Mrs. And a dog. So, me. Now this trip involved a move! A cross country move. Well, a cross half country move, from Pennsylvania to central Texas. One thousand four hundred miles over three days. Me in the truck with nearly everything we owned. The then Mrs. and the dog in the brand new red T-Bird Turbo coupe with the snack bag. This was pre-cell phone days. The only way to communicate on the road was with walkie talkies or CB radios. We opted for the CB set-ups, anticipating being always in contact with each other, coordinating rest stops, food stops, and sleep stops. In reality, the only times on day one we were within range of each other were during the radio check in front of soon to be former residence and at the pre-determined first night stop, a Days Inn, 480 miles west and 150 minutes behind schedule. And so it went for the next 4 days. Yes, we modified our planned daily mileage and driving times significantly, swapping 300 miles a day for 5 days into the place of the definitely overachieving initial plan of 500 miles over 3 days.

It was a few years after then that time came to move back in the other direction, and remembering the joys of the earlier trip across half of the country, I opted for the fullest of full services available. We didn’t even have to lift a tape gun to seal any of boxes that we didn’t fill. The most strenuous thing I did for that move was sign a check. Everything was packed, loaded, and hauled 1400 miles east without any work done by yours very truly. Everything. Including the bag of garbage sitting beside the garage door waiting to be carried to curb upon our departure.

The moves since then were of a hybrid nature. I packed and unpacked and the stuff in the middle was handled by a small crew of professionals and real moving vans. Not as many good stories came from those moves, no stories at all I think. That was okay with me. I had plenty to talk about from other more eventful moves, even if there were half a lifetime ago.

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Making different choices than someone else doesn’t make you wrong. It makes you you. Read why we say you should live the life you want in our latest blog at ROAMcare.org

Revisiting the Middle Seat

Michael 4 Comments

Back in July of 2020, July 9 to be exact, I published “The Middle Seat Hump Syndrome,” a clever little ditty if I say so myself wherein I compared the then fairly new encounter with the coronavirus, which we don’t even call it that any more. Toward the end of an honest to gosh true tale of summer family vacationing, I said with much assurance that we will all be fine in the long run. Guess what? I was right! Politicians, social media “experts” in-laws, naysayers, leftist, rightists, centrists all aside, I was right! We are pretty much okay as long as you don’t ask the 6.35 million people who lost their lives. Yes that number could have been smaller had we paid less attention to the politicians, social media “experts” in-laws, naysayers, leftist, rightists, but we’re stupid so we didn’t. Maybe next time we will.

Because today is the Fourth of July, which of course everybody knows is officially American Independence Day, and because the entire country is out there burning gas we don’t have to pursue their right to a family vacation, I thought I’d regale you again, with “The Middle Seat Hump Sydrome,” with that pesky typo corrected even!

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You need to be of a certain age to remember summer vacations in the family car with enough family that it filled all the seats, three across, and the middle seat made the leg room in coach on Delta look generous for there, right where your feet wanted to be, was “the hump,” the growth in the floorboard that rose nearly to seat level, to allow whatever it was that transferred the up and downs of the engine to the round and round of the rear wheels to make it’s way from the motor to the where the rubber met the road. I am of that age and had been on those vacations and I got that middle seat.

It wasn’t always like that. For a while there were just two of us in the back and we would each get out own window seats with plenty of room between for the picnic basket and cooler that were only opened at planned stops along the way. Then the third one came along. At first it wasn’t such a big deal. She started out in the baby seat in the middle of the front seat (yes, that’s where we put them when we used them back then). After she outgrew that space, she shifted to the back but because those short, stubby legs didn’t even make it off the seat, the hump was not impediment to her comfort. Eventually though, she grew and with that, so did the complaining. “I don’t want to sit on the hump!” And the word came from the front, “take turns.” From then on, whenever the car stopped, the back seat crowd reshuffled, and everyone got a turn being uncomfortable where we decidedly didn’t want to be.

That’s a little like what’s going on in the world now. Each time it appears to be stopping, or at least slowing enough to risk opening the door and get off this crazy ride, the virus comes back, and we have to reshuffle. Do we limit contact, should we close down again, does this mask make my nose look big? Regardless of the answer, some bodies are going to end up decidedly where they don’t want to be doing what they’d rather not be doing or not doing what they’d rather do. Think of the world as an early ’64 Chevrolet and were all taking turns sitting on the hump.

I’m going to spoil the ending for you. It all works out. Nobody was permanently damaged from sitting with a leg there and the other one there. We climbed out of the backseat a little stiff and a little sore but we made. We’ll make it through this also. Maybe a little worse for the wear after this ride that you are certain we got lost on because no way it should be taking this long, but eventually we are going to climb back out into the world.

Middle seat hump syndrome was never that horrible and may have been the inspiration for some future engineer to design SUVs with higher cabins that clear all those mechanical doodads or to shift the driving wheels to the front and obviate the need for a hump running down the middle if the cars interior. Along those same lines it could be someday we might even get to go out and not have to check that we have our masks with us. We just have to wait for the right expert to come up with the right solution. They are out there. There will find it.

In the meanwhile, Happy Motoring!

roamcare_logo-3If you haven’t had a chance to visit ROAMcare yet, stop by, refresh your enthusiasm and read our blogs, check out the Moments of Motivation, or just wander around the site. Everybody is always welcome.

Flying in the face of convention

Michael 2 Comments

As vaccination totals continue to climb and gathering limits are lifted just in time for the start of summer, people have been commenting on returning to normal. During an interview on a recent local television newscast, a party planner proclaimed, “Now we can get back to planning June weddings and graduations like normal,” and a vacationing couple interviewed at the airport said, “It’s good to be travelling again like normal.” “Like normal” is becoming the latest soundbite fodder, much in contrast to last June’s oft referenced, “Flatten the curve.”

As far as graduations go, June 2020 decidedly was not normal. My friend’s daughter graduated from high school last year in an on-line ceremony that may have truly been the only unprecedented moment during the early months of the pandemic. But was it “not normal,” or was it “not expected?” Years before the pandemic wreaked havoc on graduation schedules, my daughter graduated from college a semester earlier than typical, and her December commencement, although not broadcast on a streaming video platform, was recorded and made available for those who chose not to attend the small, indoor ceremony in contrast to the thousands who would fill the outdoor stadium the following spring. Broadcasting the ceremony was, for the winter graduates, quite “normal.”

In the half-dozen or so weeks that air travel has sort of started its return to normal, I hope its not what we will eventually come to expect whenever we get on a plane. So far this year, the FAA has identified over 400 cases in violation of its Zero Tolerance policy that states any passenger who “assaults, threatens, intimidates, or interferes with airline crew members” can be fined, jailed, or both. For comparison, the FAA recorded 146 violations in all of 2019. The rate of incidents has climbed dramatically since early May when the CDC relaxed mask wearing requirements but maintained the requirement for air and other public transportation.

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The cited incidents do not involve only mask controversies. People have attempted to open aircraft outer doors while on taxiways, refused to surrender open alcohol brought on board, and brawled over who gets to use a shared armrest. Many incidents devolved to violence, at least one resulting in a charge of felony battery, that when a passenger refusing to follow cabin instructions violently attacked a flight attendant caught on video, a video that went viral shortly after the incident. In May, the FAA announced that it was proposing penalties as high as $15,000 against five passengers for violations that included allegedly assaulting and yelling at flight attendants.

In an interview with CNBC, Sara Nelson, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, relayed that unruly behavior are more than 20 times higher than what’s normally recorded in an entire year.  I’m not sure this is what we all meant when blithely referring to the new normal. New it may be. Normal? Let’s hope not.

In case you are wondering, Monday’s poll results were 100% in favor of me writing every darned day if I could. There was one write in vote for weekly. That made it a tie! I noticed that the poll was displayed on the post on the full site. For whatever reason, which I’m sure is an absolutely dandy, it was not included on the e-mailed or WordPress Reader versions. (No, me neither.) Anyway, I’ll stick it here one more time. If you really really really want to answer it, make sure to click through the blog site because I just know for sure, that wasn’t a one-time glitch.

Priorities, U.S. of A. … and others too

Michael 4 Comments

 

In a world or at least a country that has really misplaced its priorities I spent a week rediscovering mine. Let me offer a word of advice and one also of encouragement. They are out there…and they are out there.
 
It took the company of a friend who literally, literally traveled across the country to come find them with me and we didn’t stop until we convinced ourselves that if we never stopped we would still never see all that we could and find all the reasons to stick around on this world for as long as we can.
 
It’s beyond words so I’ll stop here and let the sights speak for themselves.
 
 
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There, I think that explains it pretty well.

Time Out!

Michael 4 Comments
“I have to go, I’m running late. Actually I’m running in time. You know what I mean.” And my daughter knew exactly. If you’re on time, you’re late. That was a snippet of a conversation before I set off for a doctor’s appointment this morning. Even in these days of reduced time and extra spacing in the waiting room, and for some doctors not even opening the waiting room but waiting in the parking lot, I tend to budget my travel time for a 15 minutes early arrival.
 
Unfortunately my drive time estimating skills are not that good. I plan with the help of four travel windows. Anything within the neighborhood is 15 minutes. If the destination is on my side of town it’s a 30 minute drive. Across town or into a neighboring county and I plan for 60 minutes on the road. Anything farther away than that I take a snack, several bottles of water, stop to fill up the gas tank, and in winter check that the tire chains are in the trunk. Most times this admittedly somewhat bizarre approach has served me well. I’m usually at my destination somewhere within those extra 15 minutes and when I’m outside the window it is almost always with more than 15 minutes to spare. That’s okay, I don’t mind waiting. Then are days like today.
 
The drive to the physician’s office for today’s visit is a legitimate 35 minute drive but it’s on this side of town and thus gets the 30 minute travel window. Hey, I don’t make the rules – well, okay, maybe, um, uh. 
 
StopwatchSo I set off on my 30 minute drive and everything was going fine. Just because I was only a quarter of the way there and I used up 20 of those minutes was no reason to panic. I hadn’t hit the 4 lane highways yet. I could make up that time. And I did. Sort of. I got onto the highway and with one eye on the dash clock, one on the speedometer, one on the road and another on the rear view mirror, I watched my way all the way to the parking lot only 10 minutes late which was still 5 minutes early so I wasn’t on time but I was doing fine. I pulled into a spot, strapped on my mask, tripped over the door sill thingy or whatever it’s called on a car, hit the lock button, rescued the keys from inside, hit the lock about again, and marched to the door. Whew! 
 
And there I read, “To minimize contact in the waiting area please do not enter until 5 minutes before your scheduled appointment time.” 
 
Ah…right on time!
 
 

Point Blank

Michael 3 Comments

Monday I picked up my daughter at the airport and I thought to myself, “Self,” I thought, “I miss traveling.” Well, really who doesn’t like exploring new places and different cultures, food from around the world, or a chance to wade out into an ocean? Travelling is right up there with food and drink on the list of necessities. And I miss those things too. But I also miss the actual work of getting from place to place. Travelling.

I know, everybody else is like, “Oh, I love to travel and if I just didn’t have to deal with the rigamarole of flying I’d love it even more.” True, most people wouldn’t say rigamarole. Or “It is so great to be able to see the country but can’t somebody else do the driving?” Cars, trains, and busses can’t escape the ardent traveler’s “what can we do to improve the experience” list. Even cruise ships can be bettered with more dinner seating or inclusive alcohol or faster port transfers. Every good time story has a “but..”

But I never minded getting from Point A to Point B even while complaining I would prefer not having to stop at Point A1 to do it. Although when I flew somewhere that required a stopover I was usually selective in choosing a way point not known for being the world’s largest airport knowing it probably did not double as the world’s greatest airport.

While other people were napping at the gates after getting there two hours before boarding, or seeing how many airport bars they can get to before said boarding, I would sit and enjoy the local accents in the bars. I would sit at the edge of the gate area and marvel at the anticipation in the faces of the youngest travelers making their way to what might be their first flight and compare that the disgust on the faces of the “professional” traveler because all the charging stations were full. While others rushed from gate to gate I watched the show from my front row seat. And when I got onto the plane if I ended up being in a last row seat, that was okay too.

BeamMeUpI recall one of the regional directors for the company I worked for saying how much he liked his job and getting to see the different cities and experiencing the local foods and sights. He really enjoyed travelling, if only he didn’t have to spend so much time travelling to get there. Duh. It wouldn’t be that exciting going from Point A to Point A. Until Samsung or Apple perfects the Star Trek transporter going places, aka travelling, is going to involve getting from place to place – aka travelling.

Even with the long security lines, unreasonable baggage fees, and really bad in flight magazines, I miss travelling. It’s really more of an adventure like that anyway. I mean, what’s more fun, trying to pack a week’s worth of clothes in a carry on and fighting for the last overhead compartment space or standing perfectly still and saying “Beam me up, Scotty?” At least now when I stop at Point A1 all of my molecules get there at the same time.

Usually.

 

 

Just Because You Can

Michael 5 Comments

This morning Best Buy announced they will no longer sell CDs in their stores. Vinyl yes, polycarbonate no. Apparently those who had normally opted for the shiny discs are now more likely to download or stream music to their hand held devices.

Last week the local paper announced that in August they will be dropping the print version of the paper from seven days a week to five. Apparently everybody wants their news electronically. This particular paper has not only its news website but two different apps for reading on mobile devices.

When Apple told us they had just the thing for that (with their trademarked and copywrited slogan (copywrit? copywrote?)), did they know they would release an app to reduce mobile dependency 9 years later? In fact, their app for that is only the latest in a string of such aids to reduce our electronic jonesing.

No, I’m not going to embark on a rampage decrying the ever presence of mobile devices in people’s hands. For the most part, I personally would rather hold a paper in my hands for perusal, especially now that they’ve resolved the inky finger problem, and though I never really got the hang of transferring a song from “somewhere out there” to what I still call “the phone,” I think we’ve done well in miniaturizing and availing technology to the masses. Even I am more likely to read the morning paper on my tablet out on the patio and I actually have a collection of favorites in my music folder in “the phone” (thanks to the daughter’s doing). Still, there are some things that shouldn’t completely replace the older hard copy iterations.

TriptikFor example, if you have a cell phone any less than say six years old you likely have a GPS mapping program at your fingertips. When I was traveling for work I appreciated my locating and traffic apps. I’d step out of an airport that looked quite like the airport I departed from, got into a rental car that look quite like the one I returned in a city earlier, and navigate to a hospital that looked suspiciously like one I visited the previous day on roads that held no resemblance to anywhere I’d even been. Yet I never got lost. My “phone” always knew where I was and which way to go.

But even knowing exactly where I was I never had a sense of roughly where I was. Years ago I’d use AAA “Triptiks” to navigate to a specific place. They were flip chart looking collections of mini-maps that specified your travel along highlighted roads. But I also always had my guidebooks and atlas so that at stops I could get a feel for what lay beyond the margins of the designated route. How else could you know that the world’s largest ball of twine was just 50 miles around the next bend, a drop in the mileage bucket when you’re already 1800 miles from home? You don’t get that from GPS.

So although I hope atlases never go away and that I’ll always have a CD player in my car so I have something to listen to while I search for the second largest cactus shaped like a tea pot, I can still appreciate the electronic versions. Now if only the proponents of those would please leave my paper and plastic alone we can live together in peace.

 

What to my wondering eyes…

Michael 14 Comments

A couple of days ago I had remarked in a comment that I don’t have a Bucket List. I went on to say that I mostly take things as they come but that there might some places or things I like to see or do if circumstances get me part of the way there. Of course I couldn’t give myself an opening like that without then starting to think of some of the places circumstances happened to lead.

Where I am, just off Chestnut Ridge in the Allegheny range, there are several small commercial caves including the only catacombs type cavern on this side of the country (or at least I’ve been led to believe). It’s a place I’ve been to enough times that although I wouldn’t go out of my way to explore a cave, if I happened to be around one with a particularly effective marketing plan hawking its presence, I might stop by. Thus it was that I happened to be sitting in my then living room with my then wife at my then house for the few years way back then in the middle of Texas looking for something to do the upcoming weekend. Then we realized we were only a half dozen hours’ drive from the cave of all caves, Carlsbad Caverns.

Going to Carlsbad was going to see a natural wonder. And the caves are pretty neat too. Yes, for as wonderful as the Caverns are (and they were) (then and I’m sure still), getting there should be on anybody’s bucket list and it’s not even the most scenic part of New Mexico. And if we hadn’t decided to see how the big western cave measured up to our back yard caverns, it was a scene I’d have missed.

NiagraFallsFrom the first time I saw the picture of the Niagara Falls on the can of spray starch on my mother’s ironing board I knew I had to see it. If I had thought of doing a bucket list when I was 6 years old that didn’t include a new bike, ice skates, and an never ending jar of chocolate covered raisins, “see Niagara Falls” would have been on it. And see them I had. I’m not sure how many times I’ve been to the falls but it’s been “some.” But always from the Canadian side. There is the spectacular Horseshoe Falls and the most spectacular views – including the one on the can. Until the time I ended on the American side. It was a long weekend gifted me and my then She by her offspring. And it was in winter!

Never would I put “see Niagara Falls from the puny American side in freezing temperatures” on any bucket list. Even one so insane as to include chocolate covered raisins. Spectacular is an understatement that even a picture can’t outdo a thousand words’ worth. (If the picture looks familiar it is from my last post in addition to that weekend.)

I can run through pages if places that I’ve been (THE house of seven gables -surprisingly not scary) and things I’ve done (rappel from a helicopter – surprisingly scary) that I never planned but just happened along. I guess I’ve been a victim of circumstances.