Category: Travel

Fun with Moving Day

How’s this for a wacky movie day experience.

My step daughter rented a u-haul pod to ship most of her belongings from Massachusetts to her new school address near San Diego. The plan initially was to have it dropped off on campus, then we would show up and unload it, and they would pick it up when we were done.

Nope.

The campus has a one hour parking limit and that includes movie trailers and the like. So what to do?

How about have the pod dropped off at a u-haul storage facility sort of near the campus, then we rent a van and go to where the pod is stored, unload the pod into the van, then drive the van to campus and proceed as expected.

The plan worked like a charm with only one minor hiccup. The storage facility was half an hour away from the campus. No biggie. We got it done. Van rented, pod met and unloaded, van unloaded, van dropped off. Now all that is left is to unpack.

California Camera Woahs

I meant to take my Nikon FG-20 to San Diego but when I was packing the bag I wasn’t paying attention and I grabbed my Dad’s Pentax K1000. No biggie, I love that camera. I just worry about traveling with it because I don’t want to damage it.

Spoiler alert…

I loaded a roll of Kodacolor 200 while we were in the hotel and then I shot it at Pacific Beach and at the Organ Pavilion at Balboa Park. When it ran out I tried to put in another roll. It wouldn’t unwind. Huh? I got it loaded but when I tried to take a shot I couldn’t advance the film. It was jammed up badly. What the hell? I assumed it was the film canister and opened the back, flashing the hell out of the unrolled film, and rolled it back into the can and tried to reload it. Same thing. 

I declared the roll of film dead and loaded another one… and the exact same thing happened. I thought I must have somehow mangled the advance mechanism. The roll itself seemed to get jammed into the slot and I couldn’t move it at all. 

I was so mad… and sad… and heartbroken… and mad. Dad is no longer with us and I had this silly little thing that he bought in the 80’s and then forgot about and never used again but it was his and now its with me and I was just so fucking mad at the idea of it being dead.

This morning as I was getting ready for the day (mattress shopping is first on the agenda) I opened it up and tried again using the same roll of film that got stuck on the second try yesterday. It loaded up without issue and seems to be working fine. I don’t know what I did different yesterday (nothing) but it seems okay now.

Major sigh of relief over here. Let’s see if there are any troubles going forward. Fingers crossed.

Pack

We don’t leave for California until Saturday morning but we’ve started packing already. I said packing but I should have said over packing because… ya know how it is.

The point of this trip is to help my step daughter move into her new place near San Diego so she can start school a week later. Did I also mention that on the way home my wife and I are taking a detour to Cleveland to see Rush again? Yes, that is happening.

In other news, clouds are cool.

Home

We are home, safe and sound and in one piece after a great two day New York adventure. I’ll share the details eventually, but for now it’s getting late and I am tired from traveling and I want to go to sleep.

I will leave you with this. Sort of a preview for a larger post that’ll probably come tomorrow.

DSCN0153

I’m on Vacation

I’m on vacation and it is wonderful. Today is the first day. It’s Saturday so is that technically not vacation because I would be off work anyway? Explain it to me.

I did a nice bit of music work today. I also went with my wife to her favoriate computer store and bought her a monitor. It has all been sort of spoiled a little (just a little) by the toothache. Three days ago I could take Tylenol and the pain would more or less go away for hours. Now? Three Tylenol buys me an hour. Maybe less. Sometimes a little more. It’s hard to judge. I want to take it on the same schedule as my vitamins, every five hours or so. I’ve been feeling huge pain for a couple of hours but if I stay on the schedule I have to wait until 9:00pm and I still have 15 minutes to go. I am literally writing this to try to distract myself from the pain and the desire to take some meds.

My dentist appointment is the day after tomorrow. That seems like a really, really long wait. I will survive though. Trust me.

We are starting to plan the nitty gritty details of our Rush trip next week. Train from Boston to New York on Tuesday morning. Rush concert Tuesday night. Train back to Boston Wednesday afternoon. What do we do with the rest of the time? Not sure yet. Am I bringing cameras? I’m bringing the little digital point and shoot. Should I bring a film camera? Will I have time to use it? Not sure. I’ll probably bring it even if I don’t have time or opportunity to use it. 

What else? We’re going to see The Odyssey tomorrow. I hope I can handle all of the historical inaccuracies folks like elon musk are complaining about… sorry… I can’t… I tried to type that with a straight face but that critique of the movie is so absolutely fucking idiotic. As if the movie were based on historical events and not an epic poem. Not a work of complete fantasy fiction. Cut the shit elon and fox and maga and all of you nazi fucks. It’s a story. Yes its thousands of years old, but it’s just a fucking story. Get over your racist asshole selves.

Okay. It’s time for the 9:00pm Tylenol. Wish me luck, universe.

PS: I think I set this account up to automatically cross post to Threads. If it works, this will be the first post to do it. Did it work?

Prime Destination

Ever since our honeymoon in 2009 I have told anyone who would listen (whether they want to or not) that if I ever was forced to leave greater Boston my first choice for a new home would be San Diego, CA. 

I have been to San Diego three times. On our honeymoon in 2009, once in 2011, and then again in 2012. I have not been back since. I keep trying to find an excuse to return but it just hasn’t happened.

Until this coming fall. 

We’re not going for vacation. It’s going to be a working trip. I am not going to say what we’ll be working on yet but come September I am going to be in my second favorite city. We haven’t booked flights yet but that’s okay. 

We’re going. Oh yes, we are going.

That was a Rough Week

I’m still not ready to write about the reason behind all of the insanity last week. It’s not really my story to tell. Suffice to say I drove about 100000000 miles over the last 10 days or so.

First, I was off on Friday May 1st. That day we learned that my step son’s girlfriend had an issue that needed immediate attention. She goes to school in Burlington, VT but her family lives near Detroit, MI. On Saturday May 2nd my wife and I drove from Methuen, MA to Burlington (about three hours) to pick up both kids and drive them back to our house. 

On Sunday May 3rd I drove them both to Logan Airport in Boston (about 40–50 minutes or so) so she could catch a flight to Michigan. Then immediately I drove my step son back to Burlington (3.5 hours or so) and after dropping him off at his apartment I drove straight home (three hours).

On Monday May 4th I went to work, then on Tuesday May 5th I had the day off. I was supposed to be taking my wife to a doctors appointment but that fell through. I was also supposed to pick up my step daughter at Logan Airport. She was on a trip to California. Turns out her flight didn’t land until 10:00pm so it wouldn’t have interfered with work. It did mean I didn’t get home until super late which made Wednesday morning rough.

On Wednesday May 6th I worked from home and as soon as I punched out for the day my wife and I jumped in the car and drove to Burlington, VT again. We picked up my step son and then drove further North, crossing the border into Quebec. We immediately went to a hotel and went to sleep. 

On Thursday May 7th we did some major driving. We drove all the way to Lapeer, MI. It was about 9–10 hours. Almost all of it on highways in Canada. When we arrived we brought my step son to where his girlfriend was and my wife and I got to meet some of her family. Most notably, we got to meet her 18 month old niece who was absolutely adorable. After that we went back to the hotel and crashed.

On Friday May 8th we spent almost the entire day just being there for the kids as they went through everything the family needed to get through. My wife and I were distantly on the periphery, but my step son was more involved. In the late afternoon my wife and I excused ourselves for a while. We drove about an hour North in the hopes of seeing a Great Lake (Huron) up close but when we got to the spot we were looking for you couldn’t actually see the lake. You could see little canals running into it, but not the lake itself. We did catch a glimpse from the highway at one point though. That will have to do.

Saturday May 9th was the super crazy day that just sucked the life right out of all of us. We drove home. We crossed into Ontario again and then headed East. We crossed back into the US at Niagara, NY and from there drove home to Methuen. I think it was about 11 hours on the road. We were toast.

On Sunday May 10th my step daughter cooked a Mothers Day brunch for my wife, which was lovely, and we all just decompressed a little from the insanity of the week. Eventually we drove my step son to a bus stop in Manchester, NH (about half an hour away) and he took that home to Burlington. I went grocery shopping and then proceeded to flake out for the rest of the day. I needed the rest.

Now it is Monday May 11th and I am in the office (an hour drive from home) and it’s not even 11:00am and I am already pretty desperate to go home and go back to sleep. What a crazy week. Just… wow.

Divisible by Eleven

Friday May 8th. Yeah, it’s my birthday. Again. I’m 55 years old. I am divisible by 11.

It’s our only full day in Michigan. I might write up the reason for this trip at some point, but not today. Suffice to say we spent a long day here (and even though it is after 10pm and I am super old, the day is not over). Tomorrow we go home. We will cross the US/Canadian border two more times but one time will be at a new location.

There is a teeny tiny possibility that we might stop very briefly at Niagara Falls. The first time my Dad ever let me shoot a photo with his SLR (a Pentax K1000) was at Niagara Falls. I have a film camera here with me but it’s not Dad’s K1000. Still, it would be fun to take a shot or two of the Canadian falls on film again.

Speaking of SLR’s, I have one coming from eBay at some point next week. I had planned to wait a few weeks before I went out to shoot film again, but now I’ll need to shoot a test roll through the new camera so I can get it developed and prove everything works (oh please let everything work) before I take it out for real. That will hopefully happen next weekend. Fingers crossed.

Until then, I have a long, long drive on the books for tomorrow. An hour or so North of Detroit to a half hour North of Boston. Wish me and my wife and my step son luck on this crazy journey.