End of the Summer (Recap?)

As you can see from the above, we are presently on our way back to Texas. After a lot of debate and logistical finagling we came to the conclusion that heading back there instead of taking the much more scenic and desirable route through Minnesota, Montana, and Colorado was not the best route, in more ways than one. Unfortunately, this decision has left in its wake a few disappointed folks, namely the ones that we were to visit along the way, but no one was more disappointed than we were!

               Short backstory.

               Paula has spinal ‘issues’ that result in nerve anomalies in her feet.

 Solution: Spinal injections.

Moderate results.

Investigations, inconclusive.

Ultimately an MRI

What!!!??

No….. that’s a different issue!

Results: severed ‘anterior tibialis tendon’, time of malady and circumstances unknown.

Probable surgery. Wait.

Oops! Surgery not recommended.

Go West! She was commanded by the Doc. Get PT!

So that’s what we are doing. Add in some other logistical glitches and we came up with the fact that yes, we could wrap ourselves in a Trip of Highways of Circumference, but ultimately it all would have been too rushed. We decided to visit the affected folks later in the year at a more leisurely and quality-based pace.

Next stop, Homebase – Brenham, Texas.

End of Short Backstory!

This past summer had many an item mixed into it, a lot of the time was spent with family and friends, most of which were gladly repeated from experiences in the past. I hesitate to re-report said experiences because as wonderful as they were on that shared family level, there was not enough new material to ply you, the average reader with! And trying to keep up with the actual name of this Blog…. Muchadoaboutnothing-dp.com, I will not tire you with repetitious details. I’ll just leave it at, just like you all, we revel in being with friends and family every year enjoying traditional experiences through shared times!

Having stated that, there were some highlights that do deserve a nod in the ‘fresh’ category and some bragging on family updates!

Graduations, Recitals, etc. were some of the main reasons that we headed back East as early as we did…. three of note here….

Aubrey (Paula) is now in Chatham High School ready to add her swimming prowess to their perennially championship team. Aubrey has been swimming competitively now for about seven years and is constantly improving her best times and leaving her contemporaries in her wake!

Down the shore in New Jersey, we had the opportunity to watch Aubrey (14) swim 1500 meters (the old mile) in the open ocean at an event in Belmar where she bested about 600 other swimmers of ages all above her to come in around 200^th out of 800! And this was her first ‘open water’ meet ever!

Madeline (Don) is a Freshman at Ramapo College where she hopes to exit in five years with a Masters with a nod towards a Counseling career. One of her favorite things about Ramapo is their daily (?) bus to NYC. Maddie has more than 100 Playbills in her Broadway Shows I Have Seen collection!

And Andrew (Don) graduated at the top of his class from Aviation Institute of Maintenance in Teterboro, N.J. with his A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) firmly in his grasp. He is currently employed at the Greenwood Lake Airport in northern New Jersey where he is gaining valuable experience.

We were able to have a very nice maritime excursion out in the ocean outside Manchester-by-the-Sea with my son Donny and his family on their 32-foot sailboat, Selkie. When they moved up there from Cambridge about four years ago the kids started sailing lessons, their parents followed suit and now the kids are all involved competitively in sailing.  It was a great experience for us to watch the kids, Adelaide and Eleanor (13) and Augustus (15), handle a complex sailboat like they were pros!

Eleanor and Adelaide also traveled to Savannah, Georgia to compete on the 1500-meter Relay at the Junior Olympic Trials where they attained an All-America status! The only questionable part of this was someone’s decision to schedule these events in Savannah, Georgia in August where the daytime temps regularly top 100 degrees. Several competitors needed medical attention, and they ended up running some events at crazy late/early hours in order to avoid the heat. We all know the solution to this issue, it’s too bad the organizers did not!

On the Travel Front, you all saw the Posts from the Rhine River and London trip, which could not have been better. I highly recommend that Rhine River trip from either Basel to Amsterdam or the reverse, either one is fabulous.

But maybe I’m saving the Best for Last and it’s totally local! We had the opportunity to ‘tour’ New York City and I say that with all seriousness! How crazy is it that for a thousand years we’ve lived in the shadows of the skyscrapers of NYC, and it took a request from friends of ours that we met on the World Cruise to actually get this experience!

            (Another) little back story here is definitely in order.

            We met Sandi and Steve, residents of Palm Springs, California and Vancouver, Washington on the World Cruise three years ago. You know them from Posts here about Mt. Hood, Palm Springs, Big Bear Lake, Astoria, Oregon, and several others as we have kept in contact with them and visited them, in those other locales. Well, it seems that even with all of their travels, they’ve never visited NYC! Lo and behold, along comes another ‘World Cruise’ that they took from Sydney, Australia, disembarking in NYC this past August. We agreed last Spring (in Palm Springs) that we would hang around long enough to “show them around “as we obviously knew it better than they did.

I was bound and determined to give them a good experience as they had outdone themselves when we visited them on the West Coast in Palm Springs and Vancouver. You all know our affinity for Tours By Locals by now so with ‘tongue in cheek’ I started a company called Tours by Strangers and proceeded to plan a several-day itinerary for them.

They arrived in NYC on a Wednesday where they walked around Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick’s. We met them early Thursday morning at their hotel which we were also checked into. Off we went to the West Side of Manhattan to embark on the famous Circle Line that would take us all around Manhattan. The highlights were the Statue of Liberty, lower Manhattan with the Freedom Tower, and the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges that span the East River. That evening was dinner at Carmine’s and then off to see Wicked at the Gershwin Theater. Wicked never fails to impress and Sandi and Steve have obviously never seen a show on Broadway, but they have seen the travel-productions of shows when they came to the Portland, Oregon area. Luckily Wicked was not one of those so they had a First-First Experience!

A walk though Times Square at night on our way back to the hotel capped off a good first day. The second day (Friday) I arranged for an all-day tour of the City by Gary from Tours By Locals and he may be the best tour guide we’ve ever had, and you all know how good our past ones have been! There wasn’t much that we missed on this tour which brought us down into the subway system as this is by far the best way to get around. That evening was dinner at Gallagher’s one of the most long-lived and iconically authentic New York Streak Houses there are. It was obviously superb!

The next morning (Saturday) I procured tickets to the top of the Empire State Building. I opted for the ‘Express Service’ which allows you to skip all of the lines and get straight to the top. This is probably double the price, but well worth it! On top of that there is a new ‘Early Admittance’ ticket (yes, that’s even more $$$! But this day was worth the extra expense!) that gets you in a full half-hour before the general public. Throw that on top of the ‘Express Service’ and we found ourselves THE ONLY ONES ON THE OBSERVATION DECK of the Empire State Building! We had the entire place to ourselves, the weather acted as if it was in on this from the beginning, we could see as far as we possibly could and spent the most amount of time that I’ve ever spent up there where we enjoyed showing Steve and Sandi the sights from all four sides.

By the time we exited it was time to catch a cab back to Times Square where we had a brunch of sorts at Junior’s (you know, those piled high pastrami and corned beef sandwiches, etc.) and then it was time for Paula and me to skedaddle. Steve and Sandi left the City on Monday, heading back to Portland.

This is the part that really aggravated Paula’s ankle-issues, her leg looked like an elephant’s after walking (about 7 miles!) all over. A few hurried doctor’s visits brought us to almost hanging around for a surgery that we thought was imminent but was ultimately contra-indicated so here we are on our way back to Texas.

I started this entry a few days ago, worked on it while Paula was driving (she’s a much better driver than me!) and we entered Texas last evening and are at the first Rest Stop on I-10, the Texas Welcome Center, where we spent the night. It’s about 4:30 AM, the place is as quiet as a truck stop on an Interstate can be, and we still have 200 miles to go before we get to Brenham! That’s the distance from Port Jervis N.Y. to Cape May, N.J…… I still can’t get over how huge this place is!

If you’ve stayed with me this long on this Post, then you get to have the exclusive first-look at where you will be traveling with us this upcoming Travel Season which starts in January!

Here we go:

            January into February will be Vietnam from top to bottom, a side trip into the hills to spend time with local folks and then at the end we will spend some more time in Cambodia with Ankor Wat an obvious highlight!

            April into May will be the Baltic Capitals with a nice pre-trip to Poland. Both of these (Vietnam and the Baltic’s) will be new ventures for us using Overseas Adventure Travel (O.A.T.) which is the company that Harold and Sherry (World Cruise friends/ Florida, who will be with us) use all the time. They are land-based tours, not necessarily cruises.

            Then in July/August we will fly to Reykjavik where we board the Viking Neptune for a fourteen-day cruise around Iceland with Carol and Glenn (Paula’s cousin / Ortley Beach) then on to Svalbard (Spitsbergen) close to the North Pole and way above the Arctic Circle! Then on to the coast of Norway for a few ports, eventually we disembark at Bergen and fly home.

            So, as usual, make sure that your passports are up to date (mine just came back from the forgers) and that you pack the appropriate clothing needed to go from hot steamy Vietnam to cold and icy Svalbard!

            It should be an exciting season!

Random pics from NYC for your perusal……

Hope you enjoyed these!