Tag: travel
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Travel in the Time of COVID
My daughter is currently on a veterinarian ‘study abroad’ trip to South Africa. This is really a make-up trip, to compensate for the one she was supposed to take to Peru last March – you know, right when COVID-19 blew up – which was cancelled (at 24 hours notice). This one was planned out well in advance, COVID vaccinations were received, her passport validated, and so on. But getting her on the plane was far from easy. She was scheduled to fly out last Saturday – from Houston to Newark, and then Newark to Johannesburg. The airline requires a negative… Read more
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Spring Break Road Trip
Thanks to the impending global apocalypse, Daughter’s college is extending Spring Break (which starts Monday) by a week or two, and then moving to all-online classes “until further notice”. Which meant that instead of having a nice, relaxing weekend at home, I had to drive up to Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX, and bring her and all of her stuff back home. Yes, it is in-State, but the State being Texas, it is 500+ miles away, which makes it a weekend trip. Usually, this would irritate the pants off me, especially as it was only decided on Thursday, and… Read more
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Ire in Cairo
A description of a vacation I took to Egypt in 1991/1992, by way of a letter of complaint. Read more
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Hipsters are pants
Last week, whilst my kids were ‘enjoying’ their mom’s summer possession period, I thought I’d take my mind off it by taking a long weekend away with the gf. We wanted to go somewhere that neither of us had been, and eventually settled on Seattle, WA as a suitable destination. We reasoned that Seattle had a pretty hip cultural scene, and had the added advantage of being somewhat nearer the North Pole than home, and therefore a suitable refuge from the searing heat of Houston, TX, in August. This latter assumption proved to be of marginal benefit, as Seattle seemed… Read more
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Rental Case
Last summer I was fortunate enough to be sent on a six-week trip to Europe, courtesy of the project I was working on. Well, I would have considered myself fortunate were it not for the facts that (1) this was Rotterdam – not known for being one of the beauty-capitals of the world, and (2) I spent almost every waking hour in a warehouse stacked to the rafters with automotive oil and other specialty lubricants (and not the fun kind, either…). I’d been over to Rotterdam a couple of times before, and had spent several years living in Brussels (one… Read more