Rest and prepare

Spending the day in recovery. Found a Starbucks with plenty of folks using the free WiFi. It was a struggle getting the cashier to understand I wanted tall light roasts. They had just introduced the blonde blend here and this is what I expected, but they appear to use it like an espresso blend. Pike was what they had as a brewed coffee. Good enough. Caffeine is your friend.

Exploring "Joburg" tomorrow. It took me a while to understand folks in the know don’t call it Johannesburg. This seems a little unusual. What would you say instead of Minneapolis? Minneolas, Minnepolis, Minnolis. None of these  sounds cool. Maybe I will see if I can start a new thing when I get back to Minnlis. 

Compression socks

I assume you know that I am an old guy. I would not be able to take a trip like this if I was younger because of the time and cost. Some things about life seem unfair. When you are finally at the point in your life when you can afford to have fun, your body may not be up to the challenge. We took this into account when booking this trip realizing that it was getting close to now or never. 

So, anyway, the trip to South Africa stretches over several days. You are not on a plane all of this time, but you are also not in a hotel. It is either wait in the airport or fly. The longest flight we will take is from Chicago to Dubai is 14 hours. The last plane leg is 9 hours. 

Yes, these are my feet. No, my feet did not appear in this photo by accident. I read somewhere that all photography contains a little bit of the self. I don’t see much of me in most of my photos so I wanted to personalize this one in the only way I could come up with on short notice. I think a lot of art is created in this manner. Artists create something and then come up with a story to explain their inspiration. The compression socks are supposed to prevent you from getting blood clots - deep thrombosis. We had a friend who at a younger and more fit age had a clot behind his knee. I think they look quite similar to those some of the pro bball players wear. The red socks on top are my unique fashion sense.

Dubai from the air. It was overcast so nothing was visible until we were fairly low. I think this is a small part of the artificial islands they built.

A life of exploration

I have been lucky enough to travel a lot. Cindy and I worked in education and early on even after summer school classes were completed we had a couple of weeks to drive around the country. We eventually were able to fly and this allowed us to visit other countries. Cindy ended up taking me places I would likely have not visited if I was making the decisions myself. In a few days, we are headed to South Africa. This is one of those trips of a lifetime. I had to consider a bucket list, but I admit this was the present Cindy and I gave each other for turning 70. I hope I will be able to post frequently, but even if I cannot find a way to connect, I will eventually provide some comments. I enjoy reviewing the past trips I have chronicled here. We all make our own memories, but I hope my comments and pictures provide something of interest for others.

I have written a blog since 2002. This is pretty close to the time when blogs first appeared. Early on I combined my multiple interests in this blog and I have rediscovered some early trip memories by going through old blog posts. I see that I was not as dedicated in the old days, but this set of posts from Alaska has some great bear pictures (2008). Daughter Kim and boyfriend, now husband, Jim, worked in Alaska on a whale-watching boat and we made the journey to visit them.

Allan Gardens Conservatory

It seems the larger cities we visit have at least one botanical garden and we visit if possible to take photographs. This is Toronto’s Allan Gardens Conservatory. One interesting part of this experience was viewing many of the plants we observed growing wild in Hawaii growing here under careful cultivation.

Volunteers were just beginning to clean up the outside areas for Spring planting so the images of plants provided below were all taken within the greenhouse complex.

Toronto

 We spent one day at home before heading out again. The transition from Kona to Toronto was exhausting, but necessary to make the AERA (American Educational Research Association) conference. We are retired, but this was the 50th anniversary of a group (National Association for Instruction and Cognition) that we have been a part of for many years. This will very likely be the last time we attend so it was important to greet old friends.

We are staying close to the Toronto harbor and took a tour boat to see the sites. This was the first day the boat was in operation and it is early enough in the Spring that there was very little activity making for great skyline photos.

This is a great area for tourists and we spent time just walking around looking at the interesting buildings and visiting the International Market.

I thought I should also include some uniquely Canadian photos.