May 17, 2021 Dear diary,    Reid said he was interested in learning more about Icelandic history. One of the contributors to an Iceland travel tips fb page suggested a book, Island on Fire, about Iceland’s volcanic past. I know the risk I’m taking. His children have told me something about his “phases,” when he […]

Photo credit: Lovisa Photo  Planned departure: 5/27/2021 Available seats: (LAX-JFK: 110)  (JFK-Reykjavik: 38)    To be successful, this standby trip can’t be approached with the usual lack of study and planning that I normally apply to my travels. In past trips to Europe, we’ve been able to adjust on the fly depending on seating availability […]

Photo Credit: Carol Madigan    Thermal underwear. Check. Wool socks. Check. Winter gloves. Check. Boots, heavy coats, sweaters, scarves and wool hats. Check, check, check, check and check. Getting ready for our first summer travel vacation in over a year. And no, we’re not so out of step with traveling again that we have our […]

Photo credit: Lovisa Photo    The latest installment in Carol’s best-selling How To Train Your Reid (2021, Lowbrow and Sons, and located in the Nature and Wildlife section of your local bookstore) concerns the dinner table, specifically the pushing in of chairs when dinner is done. I didn’t even know it was a thing.    […]

Careful the tale you tell That is the spell, Children will listen…    I still remember the moment, as if it had just happened. I’m 17, and I’d been passing around to classmates some absurdist prose I’d begun experimenting with. The reaction I was getting from them surprised me. Big laughs. Really big. That explosive […]

Photo by Carol Madigan    Carol decided to go to Urgent Care after a bee sting she’d experienced a week before had continued to bother her. (Never mind she stepped on the bee while walking barefoot on the beach. Barefoot? On a beach? I mean the sand, the surf, the whole idea of bare feet […]

Photo credit: Roberta Deutschman    Carol’s second grandchild celebrated his 13th birthday this past weekend. He is half-Jewish and half-Catholic, which means he feels twice as guilty all the time. It also means he likes to eat. And so it came to pass, that for his celebration of achieving manhood, he would get in touch […]

   April 22, 2021    Dear diary,    So, Reid’s latest “adventure” appears to be Iceland. He says it’s the first country to open itself up to tourists who’ve been vaccinated. I get it, but I’m not sure whether he’s thought through some of the details. (In fact, in all my travels with Reid so […]

   Mike Madigan died on this day in 2017, on a treacherous stretch of Orange county’s Ortega Highway, two days after Carolyn Marquardt entered Seattle’s Swedish Hospital to begin treatment for a virulent leukemia that would claim her life less than six weeks later. Without any idea of it at the time, Carol and I […]

   One of the great things about travel with me is that you never have to regret missing something you should have seen. Since I prefer to travel without a plan, there’s nothing to miss. Back in the 70s, I traveled to Paris four times and never visited the Eiffel Tower. Never felt I missed […]