Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Wherever you go, there you are.—Buckaroo Banzai, Jim Russell and a bunch of other people.
I don’t know about you but the pandemic changed my life…a lot. In some ways it was for the better and some ways not so much. Take travel for example.
In general the mere fact that I’ve gotten on an airplane means there’s going to be lots of drama. Not from me, you understand—I suffer in silence— but from the weather, the other passengers and even from the aircraft. Like the time, I was watching them refuel an United Airlines plane sitting on the tarmac while preparing for a flight from Richmond to Baltimore. I was aghast to see fuel pouring out of the aircraft on another part of the plane than where they were pumping it in. Maybe that’s why they though it was out of gas? Or the time the door blew off (or open, I don’t remember) of the plane a few minutes after taking off. That was lots of fun…
And don’t even get me started on the hotel experience. Although the two days I spent at the Peabody Orlando Hotel during PMA were pretty nice. But that was not the norm for me. Usually there’s also some drama involved in my selection of hotels but they are so horrible to recall I don’t even want to get into it. Lke when the then-new owners of Shutterbug put me in up in some fleabag hotel in New York City while considering me for the editor’s slot. On the other hand, when Olympus was still a camera company, they put me up in the legendary Algonquin Hotel in the Big Apple during a new product launch. The room was mediocre and microscopic in size too but I enjoyed the best French toast ever for breakfast and they let me sit at The Round Table (not the original I’m told.) On another pres trip, I had a great experience at The Cadogan hotel in London, where the room was amazing, the bed was uxorious and morning tea in their lobby was something I’ll never forget. Thanks Scott, for that one.
So why am I bothering you all with my personal phobias? I guess it’s just my roundabout way of telling that my #traveltuesday series will be on hiatus until I, well, start traveling again, if I ever do. My best travel memories are when I was traveling by car, especially when Mary and I would drive to New Mexico—I love visiting New Mexico, so many wonderful memories—whether if I was tagging along with her when she would go on a business trip or the times we went to Santa Fe as a brief getaway. I have many, many great memories of all our road trips together. We both seem to enjoy them, even a long road trip like when we drove to California for one of my birthdays so we could spend some time at Camp Snoopy or when we went to a family reunion in Wisconsin. Both of these long distance drives were made in our Volvo 240 wagon. Interestingly, at least to me, that while we have many photos of us with various cars, there’s none of us with the 240, the most dependable car Mary and I ever owned. There’s also no photos of us with the Volvo 740 that replaced it that also took us on a few memorable trips, like the one we made to Vernal, Utah and I got to photograph some “dinosaurs” at the Utah Field House of Natural History.
About the photograph: I made this image while on a road trip to Utah with my wife, Mary. We visited the Utah Field House of Natural History where I made this image in the garden that’s adjacent to their facility. It was shot on film—Kodak Ektachrome, I believe—using a Nikon N90s with the lens and exposure unrecorded. It was scanned by Kodaks Photo CD process and opened using Lemke Software’s GraphicConverter that produced fairly good quality files from a Photo CD disc but the software is not without its quirks for those people of using older computers and OS.
Anyway, look for a new series next week under the heading of #tuesdaythoughts. And who knows, certainly not me at this point, what all that means.
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy me to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50,) please click here. And if you do, thanks so much.