From where you live, you could make it in about three days with good weather (be sure to buy the Alaska Milepost book before driving). If you decide to go again, let me know and I may be able to make some suggestions for places to go. I’ve made recommendations in the past to board members and even to my PT person recently. There is a good FB page called The Alaska Frontier Group. It’s mostly photographs and some commentary. It’s well-moderated and people are generally helpful and polite.
I recall forking as a favorite high school pastime too. We did it a bit … differently … than you did though. Maybe So Cal was farther ahead of the times compared to where you grew up? 
Oh, I forgot to mention…
No free WiFi on the ship. I could buy unlimited WiFi for $300 for the week but that’ egregious. And outrageous. It’s egregiously outrageous. I did end up buying 100 minutes for $75. With such a limited amount of time, I barely used it. I may have used a total of 20 minutes. And yet… The last time I was going to log on, it said I had 5 minutes remaining. The time I paid for just evaporated. Total scam.
And the television sucked. Unlike real TVs in a real hotel, there were only 20 channels. One was Navigation, and another was Bridge Cam (looking at the bow from the bridge). Then there were several channels for enticing you to buy stuff (we didn’t). The actual entertainment channels were Prime (not Amazon Prime, they just called it Prime), Action movies, Drama movies, Comedy movies, Family movies, and Favourites (TV shows). It seemed like each of those had like four shows in rotation, so we ended up watching the same movie multiple times.
My son and I miscommunicated. I sent him my itinerary, but he was busy and didn’t really read the second one. I thought they were returning on the 7th, but it may be as late as the 17th. I’m leaving tomorrow for appointments back home on the 1st and will return here the same day. Then I have appointments on some days until they return. Son said not to worry about it, but I’m looking to see what I can move around so I can return.
Oh, and last night, I hauled the biiiiig trash cans to the curb, so I was all set to haul them back this morning, but son said to give it another day, as there’s no telling when the recycling truck arrives.
No pranks for me. I was too tender-hearted. My brother and his pals got in trouble for beating up a dummy that looked like a kid. They’d wait for a car to come down the quiet street, then spring into action. One car was a squad car, and they rightfully got chewed out.
The best costume I wore was to our friends’ Halloween party. I wore a short dress with puffy sleeves, white socks, and Mary Janes. A friend made me a red cape with a hood, and I carried a picnic basket that contained, among other items, Wolf Away Spray (“Makes life less risky when they’re getting frisky.”) and a “Wolf Whacker™”. I won first prize, and the guitarists sang Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs’ “Little Red Riding Hood.” Fun times!
My best treat was a plastic bag filled with about 2 cups of SweeTarts. I think the dad there worked for the company or something. My brother stayed out until after 9:00, when one family gave out hot cider and homemade donuts, but I never made it that far. I liked giving out candy.
All our candy went into a communal bowl. I liked all the candy except the peanut butter kisses wrapped in orange or black paper. My sister said they were probably cheap, but nobody liked them, so they had no value in trades.
I’ve not heard of these. Are they like butterbeans, or are they peas with butter?
My dad did this when the candy ran out.
I used to pass out treats to my students on the regular. One time I reminded them, “You are what you eat!” and let them choose between Dum Dums and Smarties. They were too smart to fall for that line. Dum Dums won.
Hey, it worked for Courtney Love.
My daughter is 31, and she’s always been crazy about the Beatles. She has books about them, knows all their songs, and has a favorite Beatle (Ringo). The other day I mentioned Ed Sullivan, and she knew who he was because The Beatles made their first US TV appearance there. The way she talks, you’d think she was there, so it’s a sort of nostalgia. You’re never too young, I guess.
The cruise passengers sound…boring. Was it a special AARP cruise or something? Also, so sorry you got Covid!
Red, you sound like you were a mischievous minx! All in good fun, of course.
Pilot, I’m enjoying the descriptions and photos. Vicarious travel is the travel for me!
A lot of older passengers, a lot of Asian passengers, and a lot of people from the middle of the country and the South. I saw one guy wearing a WANTED FOR PRESIDENT shirt with Trump’s picture on it. Not to be Hipper Than Thou (and I’m really not that cool), but the ‘entertainment’ just didn’t appeal to the Guy From L.A. It seemed geared more to the Branson, Missouri crowd.
I got pushed for time when I did this morning’s post. Now cruising high above Nicaragua on the way home while sipping the airline’s free booze.
So I’ll go back & fill in a bit now …
The long hike was with these folks. They have a bar / snack bar with excellent views up & downhill afterwards, and a celebratory Cervesa Imperial was duly quaffed.
My pal is a highly experienced traveler maybe 7 days per month for 40+ years. His basic MO is do something, drink a beer to celebrate & re-calorie, while consulting TripAdvisor & Yelp for something else nearby, go do that, lather rinse repeat. Once it gets to be mid-afternoon do the same looking for a hotel before one last adventure. Next morning, find your first adventure over breakfast. Very ad hoc, but very adventurous and non-stop.
I’m learning from a master, and that’s how I would have / will wander the world given the opportunity. Truth be told I’ve traveled very little due to first wife’s long illness, and 2nd wife’s active disinterest. That’s gonna change.
Anyhow, after a brief consult we set off for lunch at a scenic hole in the wall that TripAdvisor knew about. LA VENTANITA, El Castillo - Tripadvisor. We drove up increasingly crappy sorta-paved minor roads past a small village and pull off at a little open air eatery/drinkery on a bluff with amazing views, net of the intermittent clouds and drizzle. The parking area is full of motorcycles despite the rainy weather today. Walk up to see Mamacita cooking and Papacita behind a different counter with a laptop & and a credit card machine. The walls are covered with US-based motorcycle advertising paraphernalia dating from my youth.
The proprietor looks kinda white / Latino crossbreed. My pal says “Hi” and he responds in instantly recognizable So Cal accented English with a slight Latino overtone. He’s about age 50 and grew up in Antelope Valley about 30 miles from where both Flyboy and I did. His Mom was white and Dad was Costa Rican and he grew up bilingual. He came down here at age 20, fell in love with CR, married a local, and is living his dream running a motorcyclist hangout and rebuilding 1970s/1980s bikes out of the residue of what he can buy as wrecks / junkers.
He’s just finishing building a rentable studio apartment on stilts made largely of recycled automotive stuff that is simply amazing to behold. It’s be available on AirBnB in a month or two. If you and your favorite bedmate wanted to leave the Earth for a week in very scenic and very informal surroundings, but within 30-45 minutes of lots of tourist fun, this would be a darn good first choice. Can recommend.
He and I had quite the reminiscence about our times in So Cal during the heyday of motorcycling. We got the tour of his workshop and all the half-built bike hulks he has. Flyboy will appreciate this: he has a 1951 HD Panhead in running condition along with a matching sidecar that’s still a wreck, but will someday ride again.
Along the way excellent burritos and more Cervesa Imperial was had. Then we picked a hotel, stopped at a groc store to get the evening’s libations then proceeded the hour-ish down the winding country roads to the hotel I’ve already described.
I didn’t get a chance to mention previously, but at dinner that night the guitar player in the pic finished his set then a younger dude re-rigged the PA for karaoke & was just playing random Latin pop & folk rather loudly during the set-up. The musician came over to talk to us. The music was loud so I couldn’t quite make out what the guy was saying. I could hear the syllables but they weren’t computing. It’s hell being deaf.
Then I tumbled to it; he thought we were German and was speaking Latin-accented German to me. Which I took in school and haven’t much used since. My pal has no German. Anyhow, between English, Spanish, & German we had a really fun chat about his life as a local rancher by day, musician by night.
Once karaoke got going, most of the locals took a turn. One dude had great emotion and timing to his voice despite not so good pitch control. We shared a fajitas pollo y mucho Cervesas Imperial. Great fun.
Today’s drive was uneventful but pretty. No rain and only a few clouds. Stopped at a random groc store in a medium town and I bought 3# of various local coffees. No issues w refueling, rental turn-in, nor at the small but adequate airport terminal. Hopped on the jet timely and here we are, now about to make landfall over SW Cuba then landing in sunny MIA in about an hour.
An excellent adventure overall. It’s mostly the people you meet, much more so than the stuff you do. In my pal’s estimation, the lower on the hog you travel, the more interesting people you meet. Between the two of us we spent $2400 total for 6 days on the road, so just abut $200/day/person all-in: hotel, car, adventures, food, and booze. Airfare being zero helped, although we did have to pay about $75 each in departure taxes & airport fees. He sometimes does this staying in hostels and renting a motorcycle for transportation.
Today is Mon and he leaves on Fri for ~2 weeks in NZ. I’m probably not able to pull that off and stay happily married; sorta either / or. Just after Thanksgiving he & his bro (another single pilot) are going to India for ~10 days and maybe Viet Nam afterwards for a week. Once you get to India from MIA, it’s about as easy to keep going westbound to get home as it is to head back eastbound. I might do that with them.
Cheers all!
We spend most of our time on cruises bird watching, looking for whales, walking the decks, or reading. On shore, we do some ship’s excursions and otherwise make our own fun in the port town (including using wifi), or book a tour on our own. Shoulder season can have bad weather and closed shops/attractions. The crowd will be older outside of school holiday times. We rarely go to the big shows, but do listen to music in the small venues and do pick our lines/ships for availability of educational talks as well.
Holland America gets an older crowd (but some of their cabins have bathtubs). HA doesn’t push alcohol the way a party line like Carnival does. We prefer Celebrity or the NCL itineraries that have more adventurous excursions, as well as smaller lines like Hurtigruten. We cancelled a cruise in 2022 because NCL changed its COVID testing/vax policy to make it less stringent. We did cruise with Hurtigruten (better policies) last winter to see Northern Lights (Dover-Norway-Dover), and have future tickets to Japan (which the line cancelled during COVID).
Cruising works well for us as a same-sex couple, for me as a person with a Jewish surname, and my lovely wife, who has pretty extensive food reactivity.
I recommend Hurtigruten and Celebrity Xpedition for small ships and good engagement (Antarctica, Scandinavia, Galapagos).
As an adult, I once attended a Halloween party as Malibu Ken and Barbie. The year I had cancer treatment, I dressed for work as a skeleton.
There’s quite a chill in the air, promising the “wintry mix” to come, but the sky is mostly resplendent blue behind the tie-dye trees, so I bestirred myself for a walk to gather acorns for the ratties.
Last year, there were so many it was hard to walk in some places, like slipping on ball bearings in old-timey cartoons.
This year, I came home utterly empty handed. Nary a one.
Must’ve been a mast year last year.
Sounds like the in-flight “entertainment” on most flights.
Way back in the day, the first time the little screens on a seatback were offered, I was so excited.
… I still bring a book, if I hafta fly.
Which hasn’t been for a good long time, but once my parents get word that I have a D.L. again 
What a great story! Love the “Wolf Away Spray” did you make that prop yourself?
Aaaand I have the song from your last few words running incessantly through my head now. Thanks!
My inner 7-year-old just fell over with jealousy.
Reminds me of my absolute all-time favorite Paula Deen recipe.
Remember her? Sapphire eyes - now that I think on it, it’s good that her career faded before the White Walkers on “Game of Thrones” - and an accent that stretched every syllable into five vowels?
This happened to me when I was, like, eleven, and I was completely flummoxed. There were rules people, and also, what the hell was I supposed to do with eleven cents?
I snortle-laughed.
Oh, she’d have about died to be in Dallas in the late 90s. Someone started a radio station - rumor was it was a tax shelter - that played absolutely zero ads, and the format was all Beatles.
Including covers, tributes, outtakes, everything.
I was quite obsessed with them at the time and it made my teenage heart so happy.
Oh, I found an old article mentioning it!
Oh, and DANGIT I mentioned some silly thing I do in a recent MMP, and made an offhand comment about how it’d be a good candidate for the “traditions” thread, and now I can’t remember or find it!!
Lil’ help, peeps?
We have over 1,000 movies including current first run, hundreds of current TV shows, live TV news and sports, and hundreds of channels of music on our airplanes. All for free. It’s not like 30 years ago. At least on the real airlines; I can’t speak to the Spirit / Allegiants of the world.
For a few bucks per flight you can connect to the internet for email, FB, SDMB, etc. Just no streaming audio/video. Yet. I have the subscription for this which is how/why I’m typing at you over Cuba.
@nelliebly: I bet you were a very hot Riding Hood. :wolf-whistle:
… yeah, it also took me a long time after leaving my 9+ years job to start saying “they” instead of “we.”
It’s a process.
Aaaand that’s why she carried the Wolf-Away Spray!
This?
Something about hand-painted boxes I didn’t quite comprehend.
FYI: to find this I opened the Discourse search page, picked your user ID, the partial hint word “tradit”, and dated in the last couple of months. That gave me four (!) posts to look at, and three of the four were obviously wrong from the excerpt shown on the results page. Viola!!
It would not have worked. :leer: 
Thank you!!!
(When mailing packages, I re-use boxes, which are generally covered in various barcodes. I paint over the whole thing in multicolored acrylics, so it looks festive while also obscuring the old barcodes. Makes scanning a lot easier.)
shoe I’m a bit west of Chicago. Most times lake effect weather doesn’t get this far west.
I’ve noticed that there aren’t as many in my yard this year as well. Usually, I have to give Nelson a mouth check before coming inside, given that he likes chewing on them and leaves the remains on my floor (those caps are sharp little bastiges).
nellie, I’m loving the wolf away spray. 
Started Typing: 3:23 PM ET
Clicked Reply: 5:18 PM ET
Happy Halloween Eve! 
Today started off warm and sunny, but since lunchtime it’s been overcast and breezy. It’s still warm enough to have the windows open, but it keeps getting darker and the wind keeps picking up. There’s rain in the forecast this evening…I’m a believer!
(4:48pm update: the rain just started!)
There are lots of kids in my neighborhood, and I enjoy giving out candy and seeing all of the trick-or-treaters, but tomorrow night I’ll have the porch light off: I can’t eat candy anymore, and with telework there’s no more bringing the leftovers to the office, so I’m skipping it. I also have a personal training session from 6:30pm-7:30pm, so I won’t be home for the youngest/cutest kids anyway. I’ll still need to be extra careful when driving through the neighborhood after the gym, though.
No pranks in my history; I was a boring kid/teenager/etc. No particular favorite treats, either: I was an equal opportunity candy lover! I didn’t have a favorite costume until I was an adult: I spent five years at a company that had yearly costume contests, and in 2003 my officemate and I – both women – were the Blues Brothers.
We didn’t win, but people loved us.
(OMG that was 20 years ago!! 
)
Yesterday’s volunteer event went alright: low turnout, but we got two $20 donations! My first cash donations of the year! I use Venmo and PayPal but the branch uses Cash App and Zelle; my credit union doesn’t support Zelle, so I’ll be creating a Cash App account later. It didn’t rain, in fact it was mostly sunny with a high of 80°F, but we were facing west all afternoon: it got sooo hot! I decided to leave the tent home but bring two big umbrellas with me just in case (one for the table and one for me), and I wound up using one of the umbrellas to block the sun. All in all there were lots of good people to chat with (both from my branch and other organizations), and there are definitely worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.
I built one of the holiday LEGO sets after dinner last night:
As hoped, it was relatively quick and easy (343 pieces; took about 90 minutes). It’s the smallest of the sets I just got, so I probably won’t tackle another one until the weekend.
Yep, I only built my first set in March! I’m amazed at how much I’m enjoying them; it’s basically paint-by-numbers but with little bricks. And they give me something to do when I don’t feel like reading or watching TV, and/or I need a break from the couch. I’m not going to suddenly start buying random sets left and right, though: like my Swarovski crystal figurine collection, I’ll only get ones that I particularly like or that mean something to me. Unfortunately, though, there are several of those…
I’m actually ridiculously happy about just the idea of eventually having one! I made do with a small hand truck (and bungee cords) all year, but at a couple of events I saw folks from other organizations with those wagons and was like “A HA!” 
If I’m just taking the big Rubbermaid container somewhere the hand truck is fine, but if I’m also taking the tent weights and/or a standing sign, etc., it will be super helpful to be able to just put everything in a wagon.
Autumn is actually returning right now. 
It’s already 63°F (down from a high of at least ten degrees warmer), and tonight’s low will be 43. I’ll be closing the windows soon, and will likely turn the heat on before I go to bed. The rest of the week will be very autumnal. Yay!
!
This year is like that for me with the black walnuts. Even my truck was unhappy in the driveway.
pilot Looks like you had a great trip. I’m kinda jealous.
They’re talking snow here tonight and tomorrow. And the furnace dude is finally coming to do service the furnace. I booked this over a month ago.
Oh, good news on the card issue, the nice lady at the bank said there was nothing in their system about my cards, but I got new numbers anyway. Friggin scammers. That is part of why I don’t answer calls from numbers I don’t recognize.
Howdy Y’all! Sloth won out (shockin’ ain’t it!) and I did no things today. OK, sup got fixed and et and the kitchen cleanded up. I take it back then. I did some things. Oh and the biiiiiig trash can got hauled back to where it lives durin’ the week.
Nellie these are butter peas. We love 'em, but they are kind of a love or hate thing.
Taters hope the furnace and dishwasher are easy fixes.
I read all but retention is next to nuttin’ right now, so yays, boos, hugs, noogies, chitlins, trouts, and how you doin’s all around, as needed.