“Before Sunrise: The reality show”    The theme behind this trip was that we’d find a small city or town in France, and then go there to live like the locals for two weeks or so. That meant an apartment instead of a hotel, and shopping for meals to cook at home, joining café society […]

   Our itinerary had us flying first to Atlanta before boarding a 10:00 pm overnight to Paris. Then a bus into the city from the airport, a taxi to the train station for the little more than one hour high speed train to the city of Tours, our home for the next two weeks. We […]

Vacations give a better outlook on life and motivate one to achieve goals. Here are some factors to emphasize the importance of vacations:

A road trip is an excellent way to travel, explore and see the world around you. Here are a few tips you should stick to when planning a road trip

   For the second day in a row, we started Happy Hour early, at a cozy lakeside café nestled among the pines and close to our cabin. Carol wimped in with an order for iced tea, which did have the salutary effect of eliciting from our waiter the only live bear story we were to […]

   Almost nothing has worked out for our Lake Tahoe getaway the way we were expecting. The fires threatening the entire lake area have diminished, and evacuation orders have been rescinded. Air quality has been good since our arrival, the skies are cobalt blue and the lake itself is pristine emerald green and there’s no […]

   Between Los Angeles and Bakersfield on our way north to Napa last week, we passed no less than two wide swaths of fire-damaged hills. Later on that same drive, we passed a number of fire trucks addressing a fire that had recently licked its way to the edge of CA 4 near Martinez. Traveling […]

   This past week marks the third anniversary of Carol and my first trip to Europe together, and Facebook is flooding our feeds with photographic memories. I’m happy to see them, because they are in sharp contrast to the memories my mind carries around with me. It’s clear from the photos that we’ve seen a […]

      You would think a beach getaway would be the occasion when Carol’s active energy would more closely match my own low wattage level of output. At home, you could attach some wires to Carol as she goes about a typical day, and generate enough power to run a dishwasher or washer/dryer combo – machines […]

Photo Credit: Carol Madigan    Carolyn told me about a trip she made to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. She traveled with a tour, but she went alone. On the flight home, she told me she said to herself, “I can do anything.”    As Carol and I were flying home from a bucket […]