It's Like We Know What We Are Doing

Monday, November 28th If you are trying to get to the Big Buddha, you have to know it's not as easy as just saying, "I want to see the Big Buddha!!"  And if you're trying to see the Big Buddha, it's best to not have an early afternoon flight home. Our original plan was for the three of us to get up and check out of the Airbnb together.  Kat's flight was earlier than Adele and my flight.  So if we all left together, we could travel to the airport train/luggage drop-off as a group.  Kat would head towards her final destination.  Adele and I would head out to see the Big Buddha.  Great idea!! Things changed. Kat's flight was in the late morning, which meant she had to leave so much earlier than Adele and I wanted to wake up.  But the real kicker was that our late afternoon flight was delayed until the late evening.  We changed our strategy the night before.  The two of us decided to see Kat off, then clean up the room and check out by...

Thursday, May 26th When in Uluru, if you don't do a sunrise excursion, you're not doing it right.   I mean, you're in the middle of the Outback to see a Big Damn Rock, you better be up and at em when the sun rises. So we were.  And seriously, it was early. Our excursion went until about noon.  The check-out for the hotel was at 10a.  Which meant we needed to check out before leaving at an insanely early time.  Which meant we needed to be packed first.  Do we remember it was a late night last night ??  And there was unlimited wine?? I could have felt better. We jumped on a bus at 6a that took us closer to Uluru than we had seen last night.  The excursion was to hike around the mountain.  It was a "light" 8k.  We could do this.  Right?? And then we couldn't.  We had one of our team bail within the first five minutes (a good time to bail if there ever was one).  The rest of us included the thre...

Thursday, July 9th Normally, I tell the story of the whole day of travel (whether you want to hear it or not).  But for two reasons today, I'm not going to do that. I mean, we drove from Philadelphia to Cleveland.  So, for six hours, we were in the car, stopping at rest stops and fiddling with the iPod for another music choice.  The reality was this day was mostly boring.  But it was designed to be boring. The real reason I am not going on and on about the journey is because of the stop we made.  And being silly or glib about the day as a whole feels wrong. We visited the Flight 93 Memorial. As we drove to Philadelphia a few days ago, we saw the exit for the memorial on the highway.  Until that exact moment, it didn't occur to me that we were even in the neighborhood.  Or even that there was a memorial.  Plus, we were too tired from the drive that we didn't want to divert on that trip.  But we banked the idea in our memory....