All posts tagged with "travel"

We don't pass too many October without spending a week or two in New Orleans. We welcomed our dear friend Camilla this past weekend for a long day of being tourists. For the nightcap, Camilla and Ko went to the Taylor Swift concert in the Superdome. After picking our girl up at the airport, we dropped off gear at the house where we stayed in the Bywater. We changed and went to brunch in Mid-City (Katie's, yum) and then spent a few hours wandering around the French Quarter.

We found an interesting meat market.

There are a couple of little things that I found surprising about buying things that coil up in Eurpoe.

Slovenians love to take a walk. And it's a great place to walk. But there's also a flip side to being a great place to walk.

Through most of my adult years, we've done destination Thanksgiving. It coincides with our wedding anniversary, so we've had a mix of family trips and friend meetups. We've never had friends come here -- where it's pleasant, but several times we've frozen our asses off at their homes or at some neutral location.

This week, a group of Orcas sank a sailboat near the Strait of Gibraltar. You've likely being seeing these stories for several months. They've attacked a couple hundred boats over there. Very often, they do little or no damage. A few times, they've sunk the boat. This is nerve-wracking.

It's been a lot of driving lately. Coming back from Maine was two really long days. Camp pickup wasn't until 10:00. We left from there and drove until the wee hours. 11 states, and it was all bumper to bumper traffic from Maine through New Jersey.

If you have to be querying other people's data all day, this isn't a bad place to do it. This is probably the last post about the summer road trip. I'm in New Hampshire, camping alone with only Rosie as company.

I'm going to write more words about octopuses here than you thought possible. Also, a little story-window into our Croatia trip last summer.

More from Nova Scotia and Maine. Friends join us, and I come to the conclusion that a great deal of the fun I have in publishing these posts lies in making fun of my friends.

We continued to travel north and east, to the point now where we're just about out of continent. North America is huge. I did some interneting, and I'm almost exactly the same distance from Reykjavik, Iceland as we are from Baton Rouge.

We got off later than usual, but we're on the road again this summer. Here's how the first week+ of our trip has looked.

Starlink is changing everything, and some of the sailors are maaaaaaddd about it.

As I mentioned when we last gathered, there are lots of reasons to spend time on Long Island, Bahamas. There were at least two things that I'll remember about that island forever, and a funny story to go with them. Here's a post about sailing in 2021 that isn't all disasters.

Our 2021 sailing trip to the Bahamas was an absolute disaster. Before we left, lightnight fried our boat's electronics. The generator didn't make it to Key West. And we lost tons of consumer electronics to Neptune as well. We managed to have some fun though. This is how the trip started.

We had a hell of a time getting to the Bahamas this Summer. Our friends Robert and Crystal might have even done worse than us. Also, some really pretty pictures in this post.

We went on a Covid-summer road trip that took us the whole Summer. The cat took an entirely different Summer vacation in the Ozarks.

AFor the first time in many years, we went on Summer vacation without taking the helm of a sailboat. Instead, I took the helm of the motor van San Clemente< for a tour of the Pacific Northwest. We started out north of Seattle, ferried through the San Juan Islands of Washington, crossed over the Vancouver island in Canada. From there, we crossed British Columbia and visited several Canadian National Parks in their Rocky Mountain range. Finally, we circled back into Washington for a few days before heading home.

We spent the week of Easter on the sailboat. Almost entirely, we were tied up at Pontchartrain Landing on the lakeshore. It's an almost unknown RV Park and Marina, and not at all a bad place to hole up for a week.

We decided to sail to Mandeville, a town that's usually four or five hours from our home dock. It's a pretty standard trip for us, but this one spirals into nuttiness.

In preschool a couple of weeks ago, Kolya's class made gingerbread men. When they went out to play, the teachers hid them, and they told the kids that the cookies came to life, ran around the classroom, and dared the kids to find them. The kids looked all over, inside and out, and they couldn't find the runaway gingers.

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Twice on the Fourth of July, I got called a big fatty. The first time, I was handling my gut -- grabbing handfuls and jiggling it up and down while seated. Putting this in writing makes me realize that it's odd behavior, but I'm sure it was to make some point or other. Amanda asked, "Goodness, you aren't riding your bike any more?"

Some long winded work story, but then it takes a turn for the wet and gross.

I think I alluded to the fact that I would be in Las Vegas all of last week, so naturally, I have a story or two to share. The week was scheduled where Sunday evening through mid-day Wednesday, I was there as a representative of a vendor hosting a conference. There was some time for fun, but not a whole lot. From mid-day Wednesday through the next weekend, I was there just for my own recreation.

The best office/work related party that I've ever been to -- and one of the 10-15 best parties of any kind that I've been to -- was an APPRO Users' Conference party at the House of Blues in New Orleans. This was probably somewhere around 6-8 years ago, but I think anyone who was there will confirm that it was a mighty powerful throwdown.

I had a work trip last week to Indiana. Indiana is a pretty desolate place, and I spent the entirety of may days in a crowded, windowless conference room. The makings of a boring post? Perhaps, but there were a few things worth sharing.

We just got back from Colorado, for a long weekend trip for our 10th anniversary. I have a few photos out there for you, but you don't really take too many photos when there are just two of you on a trip. Who wants to have photos taken of them by themselves?

Wednesday and Thursday last week were a pain in the ass.

On Sunday morning, the air was cool as we motored down the Red River. Not so cool that you were uncomfortable, but just cool enough to raise a few goose bumps when the sun went behind a cloud. The banks were devoid of houses, so for a couple of hours we had just seen hills, trees, and birds. "ARE YOU CHECKING FOR LOGS?"

I don't know if there was ever any debate about whether a credit union places more value on technology or on business knowledge. But if there was such a debate, I can resolve it here and now. I went to a client site last week. My trip happened to coincide with another person's trip from the office at the same time. Ann's mission was to educate users on configuration of credit policy and scoring. My mission was to meet with the programmers about interfacing the system to other things in their universe.

This is one of my old stories, but one I haven't told in a while. It came up just the other day. In November of 1995, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny and I were newly married and on our honeymoon in Ireland. November is a cool drizzly month in Ireland (as I suspect most months are), but we were having a good trip.

Anyone interested in how the trip to Las Vegas went? I should start by lambasting that stupid "Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" advertising campaign. Why don't they just take that last step and advertise. "Hey wives and girlfriends, your men sure are going to enjoy the hookers while you're at home and they're out here!"

At first, I thought it was my lucky day. I was about to board a three and a half hour flight, and I just found out that I had been granted an unrequested first-class upgrade. I'm not sure why; I'm just barely to the "silver" level of Delta's rank and grade system, but I guess that combined with low demand for those seats combined with having purchased a ticket that any sane person would laugh at got me through.

I went to Voodoo Fest this past Saturday. There was beautiful weather, and it was good to be outside hearing live music. Let's jump right in with a review of the headliners' performance:

Something always goes to hell in a handbasket when I have to go on a work trip. When I heard Gatsby moving around in the kitchen, I got up and walked in there to give him some attention. But he wasn't there. Instead, there's scratching in the cabinet above the stove. I turned on the light and opened the door.

Let's start with the good: the Madonna concert started with Vogue, and the concert could have ended at the end of that number. We would have said something like, "she could have sung a few more songs, but man, it was really good."

Mrs theskinnyonbenny and I went up to Natchitoches this weekend for the Fourth of July. Crystal and Brent were in town with all of their kids (they're up to three of them for those who have lost count). There's nothing too major or exciting to report, and I forgot my cameras until we were an hour out of Baton Rouge. So all I have are a few disjointed observations.

Mrs. Skinnyonbenny and I went on an adventure Saturday. One of the things that we are trying to make a point to do is to explore some of the waterways in Louisiana. So, we went to Henderson to paddle in the swamp, to see what was out there.

Here's one amusing story: The place that we stayed had one of those bars that you could swim up and order food and drinks. Mom went up the last afternoon and ordered an ice cream sundae, which of course, Americans pronounce "sun-di." The Thai bartender looked puzzled. Mom repeated the order, and he continued to not understand. When she pointed it out on the menu, he actually corrected her English: "That's Sun-Day."

Somewhere between when the time when the Thai ladies were trying on Mom's fake boob and when the weird little guy put a hot towel while I was urinating, I knew it was time to go home.

On Friday, Mom and I traveled to Ayuthaya province. This is about an hour outside of Bangkok, and was the capital up until about a thousand years ago. We started by touring ruins of a complex that may have been the palace or a temple. The ruins were pretty neat. It was much like touring an old fort in America in terms of how it looked. But obviously, the Thai's cement was a better mix than that of the American pioneers, since it was still holding strong, despite the handicap of an extra thousand years or so of exposure.

Being in Bangkok the second time is very different than being here for the first time. It isn't the city that has changed; it's just that the overwhelming sensation on the first visit is how very different and strange everything is. Now, the chaos seems familiar and natural. We have only done a couple of things around the town. The main thing was to go order and get fitted for custom clothes.

It takes a really long time to get to Thailand. And then, when I finally made it there, we have a little airport/customs kerfuffle.

This marks the first of many entries that I will make during my Thailand trip. I'm not sure exactly how this travel journal will play out, but I would expect it to differ in style frm the rest of the blog in some way or other. I'm making this entry from my PDA at the Baton Rouge airport, so it may be short.

I'm planning to post many web log entries from Thailand during my trip over there in the next two weeks. There is only one problem with that. Every time someone looks at pictures or wants to talk about my last trip there, they get hung up on one particular story. It was actually Heather who was pretty insistent on getting to see the filthy side of Bangkok. We packed in a lot of activity, and I can honestly say that we could not have experienced more cultural oddities than we did in such a short time. Thai smut is just one piece of the big puzzle.

I know that admitting this in print gets me labeled as a pussy by a lot of my faithful readers, but hey, I'm here to inform and educate. I spent one afternoon in the hotel spa, and got a massage and a facial. We all know what happens in a massage, but maybe not what goes on with a facial. Besides, there's someone out there who is curious about what goes on in a men's facial, and who will find this site through Goggle years from now.

I am surprised that I have managed to go this long without telling any of you about my Las Vegas trip. There are a few stories to share, but not too many. Before I get to the point on this one, I'll mention a star-spotting.