Category: Musings
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Drivers Education
If you take whatever you learned in drivers ed in high school, any expectations about right-of-way, or meaning from stop lights and stop signs, and throw it out the window, you will start to understand how traffic flows in Thailand and Cambodia. Intersections without a concept of right-of-way take on new excitement when everyone just…
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Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Travel-Weary
It’s been awhile since we’ve posted about the less glorious side of travel. As of today, we’ve been on the road for 151 days. Every new location comes with a bit of anxiety as we adjust to a new “home”. Each new place requires research and exploration to understand what sites we want to see,…
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Angels on our shoulders….
“Where’s your gray bag?” I felt a panic start at the top of my head that settled into my gut as I realized in an instant that I had left my bag with my PASSPORT, our iPad, 2 debit cards and my Amex on the tram. I had left that bag behind when exiting the…
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Virginia is for loved ones
After we drove 10,997 miles in the United States and Canada over the last 10 weeks, Marla and I were more than ready to park ourselves in a single location for 7 days. My Mom and Dad generously opened their home to us this for meals, laundry, storage, family gatherings, conversations, and problem-solving. I…
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Early morning hours
It’s the early morning hours when I miss home the most. I wake up for what seems like the fourth or fifth time because I’m hot again or my back aches from another strange bed. What I miss is not necessarily my own physical bed—that mattress certainly had it’s own issues—but the familiarity of my…
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Oh give me a home….or….the road as therapist….
When you’re travelling like we are you have a lot of time to think. Time that would otherwise be spent on chores at home or socializing or preparing for rehearsal or working or just avoiding your every day anxieties in general. Who could have predicted that I would be a total crankster when I get…
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Packing pains
I’m pretty sure Marla and I are not divergent in our views on packing. She is 100% accurate that not a day passes where both of us realize at some point that the one thing that we need is definitely packed at the bottom of a box on the bottom of boxes. That alone is…
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Your mission, should you choose to accept it……
Find the one thing you brought along that would be perfect in this situation and is now somewhere in your car. To accomplish said mission you may or may not have to unpack the entire car. In the car there are 8 small 12X18X8 (L/W/H) boxes with lids, 2 36X6X18 boxes with lids, 2 30X8X30…
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When the toothless gas station attendant talks, listen.
A surprising discovery about Oregon is that they have full service gas stations. For those young whipper-snappers that haven’t experienced this, a full service gas station is a gas station with an attendant who pumps your gas and cleans your windshield and even checks your oil. It took Marla and I two different gas stations…
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Random Q & A that I’ve had with myself recently;
Am I doing this right? I sometimes wonder if the way we are doing this trip the way we should be doing it?! What are we missing if we don’t go all out every day? Did we miss the one MUST SEE thing that is back in the grove of redwoods we passed by because…