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 […]

Photo credit: Carol Madigan    As I write this, a month has already passed since Carol and I spent those two weeks in Iceland. I’m still trying to process it all. The trip originally fell into the category of impulse or pipe dream. From the moment we read that Iceland had opened up to vaccinated […]

Photo credit: Carol Madigan    I once interviewed a museum renovation architect. (And if you think these blogs can be narcoleptic, you should have read that piece!) During the course of my interview, he mentioned a phenomenon of museum-going that I’d certainly experienced, but never realized there was a name for it: museum fatigue. Basically, […]

Photo credit: Carol Madigan    Today marked our first week in the camper. Thanks to Carol’s housekeeping skills, the van still looked as pristine as the day we picked it up. No partially made bed, strewn laundry, empty potato chip bags and wine bottles lying around like a homeless encampment, mad searches for cell phones […]

Photo Credit: Carol Madigan    If I were back to the mindset of letting Iceland come to us, rather than vice versa, today was going to be a perfect day for it. Black beaches, calving icebergs and thick fingers of glaciers from Iceland’s great ice cap reaching out ominously to the very edge of the […]

Photo Credit: Carol Madigan    The “plan” (as rare as that term was to be employed on this trip) was for a short hitch over coastal mountains to the little fishing village of Seyðisfjörður. We’d walk around a bit, and if the campground looked good, and there was a decent cafe, we’d stay the night. […]

   By our fourth day in the camper, Carol and I had developed a transition routine from driving to camping out that mimicked the precision of synchronized swimming. Within minutes of pulling into the campground, I would have Happy Hour fully underway, complete with a red and a white opened and paired with a charcuterie […]