The first ever New Year’s Eve ball drop happened in 1908, falling from a flagpole atop the New York Times building. It’s an event that was at one time on my bucket list, but any more we try to avoid large crowds especially with Covid threats. It’s better to watch it on TV, as if I could actually stay up that late any more. New York City is once again part of our travel plans for next year, as we make our way to Maine – the last stop on my 50-state quest. This is, of course, if I can cross- off Alaska in September as planned. Once again, Covid might be a factor in taking this cruise, As a far as NYC, it used to be a quarterly business stop, but we haven’t been there September of 2018.

We have friends in White Plains, New York that we’ll stay with when we take this drive next year, and hopefully Broadway will be back in full swing by then. The journey will probably include a stop at my wife’s brother’s house near Clemson University, more time in Hilton Head, Washington, Philadelphia, and Boston, with different stops on the way back. The Basketball Hall of Fame, The Atlantic City Boardwalk, a Philly Cheese Steak, and Bar Harbor are a few of my priorities on this 3,500-4,000 mile drive up the East Coast.

We did get our second  Covid test at Walgreen’s. The first was a saliva test at a nearby outdoor park with thankfully negative results. Yesterday’s was a nasal swab while sitting in our car in the drive thru, a much better set-up than standing in the hot sun surrounded by a number of people hoping for negative results after testing positive. We should be notified today. The day ended with a pleasant sunset picnic on the beach, while today I get my first acupuncture treatment on my hip in a series of six. I already had a chiropractor visit on Monday, adding to the list of medical procedures this week. “See me, feel me, touch me, heal me!”

 The opening ceremonies of the 1896 Summer Olympics, the first modern Olympic Games, were held on April 6th in Athens, Greece. The 2022 Winter Games this February are already diluted by the decision of the NHL not to participate. The USA hockey roster will be filled with amateurs and outside leagues. Watching the games, was always a bucket list goal that’s getting more and more likely to never happen. Plus, it could be years before we feel comfortable even traveling through China. The next U.S. site is Los Angeles in 2027, perhaps my last chance to check this off my list, although it’s no longer a burning desire. As a consolation prize, I was at least fortunate to see the Track and Field trials in Eugene last year, 

Crowds, lines, and traffic congestion are no longer tolerable. Even concerts and ball games are becoming a hassle. Cancellations, rescheduling, and security, plus safety and health protocols are taking the fun out of events and travel. So many of our plans have been changed over the last two years, but we keep trying to schedule ahead. This year we’ve laid out plans for the Keys, Singer Island, Indianapolis, the Grand Hotel, Cleveland, Canton, Asheville, Hilton Head, Portland, Alaska, Russia, Japan, and Kauai. I also plan to go to the St. Pete Grand Prix, Spring Training games, and the Oregon Coast -another year of Atlantic-to-Pacific adventures, plus the ocean cruise. There is also more of Florida to see. 

When you start an adventure, there’s never a guarantee that you’ll get to all the destinations. One of our biggest disappointments was the rough waters that prevented us from getting into Olympia, Greece to see the ruins of the original Olympics site. Weather, Fires, and Covid have disrupted many of our travels. In a sense, we’ve been lucky to go anywhere, but Bali, Kaui, Tahoe, Egypt, Australia, Germany, Canada, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Finland, and Norway have been some of the casualties. There may not be time or money to replace these losses, but we’ll give it an Olympic effort.

In 1887 the Grand Hotel opened in Mackinac, Michigan. It will celebrate its 134th anniversary in July of 2021. We will arrive shortly after the candles are lit, following our drive up from Florida into Indianapolis and into Michigan. It’s Road Trip 2022! Looking back through recent years, 2021 was the second Portland to Venice cross-country drive interrupted by a kidney stone. 2020 was Glacier National Park and the initial southern haul to Venice via Tucson, Marfa, and Austin. 2019’s car adventures were to Vancouver, BC and Walla Walla. Going back to 2018, we drove to Crater Lake and Bend, while in 2017, my first year of retirement most all of our travel was by plane, train, or cruise ship – not automobile. 

The Grand Hotel is best known for having the world’s largest porch, some 660 feet (200 m) in length, overlooking a vast Tea Garden and the resort-scale Esther Williams swimming pool. The only other notable porch in my memory is the wrap-around veranda at French Lick Springs that was loaded with rocking chairs. I remember sitting there and thinking about the gangster days when classic, luxury  automobiles dropped off guests on the circular driveway. I’m hoping for an equally memorable vision when I relax on the massive Grand Hotel porch that I’ve heard so much about. Often the greatest excitement about traveling somewhere new is the anticipation and research that goes into the visit. We’re still 236 days away!

What to do in the meantime? Well, there’s Disneyworld, daughter, friends, and brother visits; a day trip up to see my sister and her new place in Leesburg; Spring Training, movies, and TV; two weeks in Singer Island; beach-nics, blogs to write, and touristy sights to see. The time will pass by quickly on the new Trivia calendar that we received from our financial/broker advisor. Last year it was “Word of the Day,” that wasn’t quite as well received in comparison to previous travel/nature versions. Every year my 401k gets a little lighter to the point where eventually we won’t be on their mailing list any longer. 

The point is well taken that our home is still filled with ancient relics like wall/desk calendars, file cabinets, DVD’s, cassette & VHS tapes, calculators, etc. Even the written word is somewhat antiquated. We watched Yellowstone last night with one last episode remaining, followed by the highly anticipated prequel 1883. I forgot to mention this in blog post #1883. A spin-off of Tiger King called Doc Antle is also now available. should I get desperate. “Matinee Monday” has been replaced with bridge club this afternoon, so I may not have anything better to do. Plus, to add to my sports frustration, the Bears lost again to the Packers and in the process gave up enough points to the wrong players to soundly knock our Fantasy Team out of the playoffs. Maybe I’ll get out of this sports funk by the time we get to the Grand Hotel?

It was the year 1877. “January 8 – Indian Wars – Battle of Wolf Mountain: Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle with the United States Cavalry in Montana. March 2 – In the Compromise of 1877, the U.S. presidential election, 1876 is resolved with the selection of Rutherford B. Hayes as the winner.” Today in 2021, 144 years later, the state of the union hasn’t much changed with civil rights injustice and election contention still at the forefront. 

I woke up this morning concerned about next year’s plans. With the MLB owner’s strike, Spring Training plans could be in jeopardy. It would be the second time that I bought tickets for Spring Training only for the games to be cancelled. The same thing happened in March of 2020 when we traveled to Phoenix only to find Covid related shutdowns. I ultimately used those ticket credits to buy what I thought would be a Santana concert in Tampa for my seventieth birthday. However, when we showed up at the venue in August of 2021, I was surprised to discover that it had changed to the same date in 2022, a year later. Yesterday, it was announced that Carlos Humberto Santana Barragan had cancelled all his December Las Vegas appearances following a heart procedure. Will he, or me for that matter, be there to actually see that show on August 27, 2022? I’m hoping for a speedy recovery. Carlos will be seventy-five and I will be seventy-one. 

So far, the status of these two events that I have planned for 2022 are not at all related to Covid. However, the snowballing effect of the virus is still affecting our economy. Plus, the  new Delta Variance could have an impact on my other travel plans. In the short term, I doubt that it will impact our scheduled trips to  Disney World, Key West, Florida’s Singer Island, and our Mackinac Island Grand Hotel adventure. However, it could mess with our Alaska to Japan cruise and family trip to Hawaii later in the year. Fingers are crossed!

It’s time to start planning for the next couple of trips now that the house has settled back to just the three of us. We had a great visit with a lifelong friend that included jaunts to the Tampa and Sarasota airports, Kennedy Space Center, Braves Cool Today Stadium, Cocoa Beach Pier, Titusville, Venice Rookery, Lemon Bay pontoon cruise, and a birthday dinner sunset. After several delays yesterday on our friends’ trip back, he finally made it back to Portland with a first-class ticket upgrade. After a night there, he’ll return to his dogs for a welcome reunion. With no house guest, I have a free day today with few obligations except football and soccer. 

We went to see Broadway Diva Grace Fields last night at the neighborhood Islandwalk Entertainment Complex. She had an overpowering operettic voice more suitable for the Phantom numbers she preformed when compared to Judy Garland tunes she also sang. There was a meet and greet for neighbors at intermission so we snuck out the back door. It was not as bad as the Styx/Journey cover bands we saw here a few months ago. The next performance we’ll go to is The Land of the Greedy Mouse musical comedy that’s being put on by our talented neighbor down the street. Our fifth edition of the “Meet The Borrego Neighbors” get-together is this Friday as we continue to develop friendships. 

My wife and I will sit down this afternoon and plan a two-week family trip to Kauai for a year from now and a summer-time three-week drive into Northern Michigan that will eventually include a relaxing week in Hilton Head. We plan to drive through Central Illinois and my Indiana home town to visit friends, stay at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, see the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, and make stops in South Carolina and Atlanta to visit relatives. We’ll fit this into our aggressive 2022 travel schedule that also involves a Portland visit in conjunction with an Alaska/Russia/Japan Viking Ocean Cruise and two weeks on Florida’s Singer Island for our 22nd anniversary. We’ve already paid for a Viking Egyptian River Cruise and extended stays in Cairo and Petra for 2023. It’s time to make the most of our retirement after Covid put some dents in our plans these past two years. 

Traffic was a mess coming and going from Cape Canaveral. My expectations of what we might see were somewhat spoiled by the fact we had already been to the Houston Space Center for a tour. However, excitement started to build when we found out that an actual launch was planned for the next morning. We drove to the Space X launch sight just down the beach from the Cocoa boardwalk after having lunch and watching the surfers tackle the waves. Their headquarters was not impressive, at least when compared to the Blue Origin compound, however it was their rocket holding 50 Starlink satellites that was scheduled for blast-off at 7:01 a.m.

We got up early to see the sunrise and launch, choosing a location across the water from Launch Pad 40, leased by Space X. In the far distance we could see the white cone of the Falcon 9. A number of photographers were set-up near us. I took the time to get in a quick mile while we waited. Neither my wife or I had a decent night’s sleep due to a flag-football team that was staying in the room directly above us. Mother Marriott refunded our points but that did not make up for the frustration of all the noise. There was a mist in the air when we found out about the 40-minute delay, having missed any signs of the sunset behind a bank of heavy clouds. Eventually, the flight was scrubbed so we headed back to the hotel to get ready to tour The Kennedy Space Center. 

We did at least see the draw bridge over the water operate – not quite as exciting as a launch. It was overall a much better experience than Houston. Most rockets are launched from the Cape because the spin of the earth will boost a trajectory traveling in an Eastern direction while there is also less risk of hitting a populated area in the event of a malfunction. Houston typically takes control after the launch and helps to retrieve the returning capsule in the calmer Gulf waters. Both sights played a major role in the moon landing. We rode on a launch simulator, took the bus out to the famous Launch Pad 39, and saw many different presentations on the history of space travel. The displays were much more elaborate than Houston, with more of a Disney-esque appeal. We saw Space Shuttle Atlantis, various Mars rovers, and the massive Saturn V rocket. It was all indeed worthy of the quote, “one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.”