Countries of the World

I was watching television recently and the show mentioned Nepal and Sardinia. It also mentioned some historic locations in both places. Interesting historic locations that I'd never heard of before.

It dawned on me then how little I know about other countries in the world. Even countries I'd visited. I mean, I knew about the places I'd seen, but what about the rest of the country? For example, Australia is huge. I saw a lot of their east coast, I made it into the outback to visit Alice Springs and Ayers Rock, but I never made it to the west coast.

This seemed like something I could fix. Even if there's no way to visit every location on the planet, I could certainly read up on them.

I started by learning more about Sardinia since it was one of the places that started me thinking. I'm not sure I can remember what I read even a week or so later, which kind of defeats the purpose.

But so many of the websites I pulled up were travel related. What to do while you're visiting. Hotels. Restaurants. Events. That wasn't what I was looking for.

Other websites offered dry facts. Population. Demographics. Income distribution. Currency used. Language(s) spoken. Again, not exactly what I was looking for. But maybe the type of experience I'm looking for doesn't exist? I want something that will give me the information and a feeling for the country and the people who live there.

I guess I'll keep doing some online searches.

Sand Vampires

One thing that happened at the conference, and continued to haunt me for a while afterward, happened on the beach.

I arrived at the conference early, and on the first day, I headed toward the beach. I was wearing tennis shoes, but I decided to walk on the sand anyway only to discover that my shoes had tiny holes and sand filled them. Especially the left shoe.

That had me turning around and heading back to the concrete. I took off the shoes, shook them out, and put them back on. I spent the rest of the day sitting at a table on the patio, looking at the ocean while I made notes on one of my story ideas. It was windy as heck. Actually, it was terribly windy the entire week of the conference, which made it miserable to spend time outside.

I didn't think anything more about the sand in my shoes until a few days later when right above my socks, I had a strip of red on my skin. It didn't feel like bites, so I thought sunburn, but I couldn't figure out how I'd gotten sunburned when I'd been inside at the conference for two days by then.

Every day I had that red strip over my sock on the left side and I began to suspect something was biting me. I hadn't felt anything, but that's what it had to be. I just didn't know--yet--where the bites were originating.

I began to suspect my shoes around the same time I left Florida. I switched to a different pair of shoes while I was moving and all my other shoes were packed--except for the tennis shoes I'd worn on the beach in Florida. The red strip began to fade and I was certain my shoes were to blame. Before my dryer was unhooked at my old house, I threw my shoes inside and set it hot. I let it run for an hour.

The new tennis shoes I was wearing, though, rubbed my foot wrong and after a couple of days, my feet hurt. Sure that the heat had killed all the sand vampires in the first pair of shoes, I switched back the night we moved into the new house. We ran and picked up dinner late, then fell into bed.

The next morning, the strip of red was bigger and brighter than it had been and now I had a few bites on my right leg too, right above my ankle socks. Grrr.

Now there was no doubt the shoes were to blame. It had to have been something in the sand at the beach. I did online searches, but nothing I turned up sounded exactly right for my situation. I talked to people I worked with who were from Florida and they didn't know what it could be either.

I was tempted to just throw those tennis shoes out, but I couldn't. You see, these were my favorite shoes in the whole world  (Skechers GoMeb Strada 2) and they don't make them anymore. This pair filled with sand vampires was literally the last one in my size I could find anywhere on the internet. There was nothing wrong with them except for the bloodsucking fiends inside them.

But, I thought, they're Florida sand vampires. What kills bugs faster than anything else? Cold! Minnesota doesn't have the wealth and size of bugs that Florida or Georgia have because the frigid cold for months on end kills them off. Taking my shoes to Minnesota wasn't an option, but I have an extra upright freezer--that's Minnesota cold. I put my tennis shoes inside. I'm not sure when I'll take them out.

Yes, they're still inside from mid-October. I just don't want to get bitten again and I don't know of those things are dead yet or not. I'm thinking about taking them out and spraying the shoes with rubbing alcohol. I'll post an update if something interesting happens on the shoe front.

49 States

One of the guys I work with did a trip in May that was pretty incredible. On his motorcycle (!!!) he went to 49 states in 10 days. For real. It was part of some Iron Butt motorcycle thing that's online and includes getting gas receipts and witnesses willing to sign off that the rider was there as verification. This web page here has more information about the forms that need to be filled out and the rules for the ride.

The route barely brushes some of the states and there's a lot of riding on the borders between states. Twice, he had to go off to hit a state and then backtrack to the road he was on originally.

The idea of hitting 49 of the 50 states is pretty cool, but there is no way I'd ever want to do it in 10 days and definitely not on a motorcycle. Perhaps a leisurely car trip with stops to look at interesting things along the way because no matter what cool thing he stumbles across, he can't pause to look at it and still meet his Iron Butt goal.

Me? I'd rather take time to see things that interest me even if it is something as lame as the world's largest ball of twine or something equally silly. :-) I get curious and I like to explore. Driving is not fun as my trips 1100 miles to and 1100 miles back from Minnesota have aptly demonstrated. The fun is at the destinations.

When I was a teenager, my parents took us on a long car trip. We saw Williamsburg and Yorktown and Washington DC. We visited the Smithsonian and Niagra Falls and New York City. The fun wasn't in the drive. OMG, not a chance! The fun was in going out on a Maid of the Mist boat and getting my feet soaked at Niagra Falls. The fun was seeing the First Ladies dresses in the Smithsonian. The fun was learning about the history of the Revolutionary War.

As we talked about this trip at work, most of us (maybe all of us? I can't remember) agreed that the trip itself was cool, but that the speed factor wasn't the cool part. We'd all be explorers. Maybe someday, I'll give this a try. In a car. Stopping frequently to explore.

Travel Stress Tips

This isn't directly a Minnesota trip post, but it kind of ties into it and I thought I'd share.

I was listening to a podcast the other week and one of the tips given on the episode was to take bookend days around your travel. Basically, that means take the day off before you leave and the day off after you come back to reduce your stress level when you travel.

This is something I heartily endorse. When it's been possible, I've always taken an extra day off from work so that I have a day or two home after my trip. This gives me time to unpack, do laundry, and unwind from the hassle of either driving or flying. I learned this years ago and have done it ever since. It's the difference between going back to work exhausted (a lot of my vacations were to writing conferences, and as an introvert, those things left me drained) and going back to work relaxed. Or at least mostly relaxed. :-)

What I hadn't done in the past was take the day off before I traveled. Until this trip to Minnesota and that was an accident. I'd taken the Friday off before we left because my dad had a doctor's appointment. I didn't know then when, exactly, we'd be headed to Minnesota, but when everything fell into place, it turned out we were leaving that Saturday.

OMG! It was fabulous! I wasn't up until 2am packing for the first time in like forever. (I hate packing and tend to put it off until the last minute.) So we went to the doctor, stopped at the grocery store to get drinks and snacks for the trip, and had time to pack, and load the car and do the million other things a person needs to do before a car trip.

From now on, I am definitely (if I have the vacation time) taking off the day before. It was the best thing I'd done to ease travel stress in a long time.

It was after I came home that I heard the podcast and I had to laugh. Why couldn't I have heard that travel tip years ago? I'd been doing half of the bookending for years, but taking the day before had never dawned on me. Lesson learned.

4:30 = 6:00

I mentioned in my previous post that my dad and I were headed up to Minnesota. He's been living with me since my mom passed away and with the house finally empty except for a few things, we were going to drive up and list it for sale. I'm going to do a bunch of posts about this experience because, well, this is the house I grew up in and writing helps me deal with the mixed emotions I have.

My dad keeps meticulous records whenever we take a car trip. He has detailed information on every trek to Minnesota and back and he brings them along on the next trip and does comparisons. Not the way I'd choose to pass my time stuck in a car, but it works for him. :-)

Every trip I always say, "this time, let's leave at 4:30." Every time. I push us to pack as much as we can in the car the night before so that we don't waste extra time in the morning. And every time leave at 6am. I know because my dad has it written down.

I am notoriously slow-moving in the mornings, but on the car trip side of the equation, I am not the one making us late. It's my dad.

It should just be a matter of packing the coolers and putting them in the car in the morning. Maybe 20 minutes max, and of course, the usual morning things that you have to do to leave the house, like shower. ;-) I really have no idea what he's doing that takes an extra 90 minutes. He doesn't seem to be rushing around, trying to get last minute things done.

With the house listed for sale, we've probably made our last car trip to Minnesota, so how he fills the three hours it takes him to get ready to ride in my car will remain a mystery, but it's oh, so frustrating.

Gotta Get There

I think everyone has someplace on Earth that they want to visit more than anything in the world. I was lucky enough to get to my number one place--Australia. It was an awesome trip and I was able to spend 4 weeks there exploring part of the country. I could have used a lot more time because there was so much to see.

Lately, I've been thinking of the number 2 place on my really, really, really want to go there list. Ireland.

It's still a dream-about it idea, which means it's still a ways off. Years maybe. But if you can dream it, you can do it. Eventually. I'll have to do some research, start thinking about where I want to go and what I want to do while I'm there. Sometimes I think this is half the fun of traveling--making plans and anticipating fulfilling them even if it is someday.

I imagine that going to Ireland will be like going home. That it will feel familiar and comfortable. I hope I'm right about that.

I imagine meeting people like Nora Roberts' characters from her Born In trilogy. They felt so real that while I was reading the books, I felt like I could fly to Ireland and meet the heroes and heroines.

I imagine taking long walks there, maybe hanging out in the pub, and meeting people. This last part is definitely a fantasy. I'm an introvert. Meeting new people is really hard for me. I know pubs in Europe are different from bars in the USA, so I don't think it will matter that I don't really drink.

And I imagine all the fun I'll have visiting all the cool places I've only seen pictures of or heard about from others. Dreams are good. Now to start saving up so that I can actually go one day.

NASA Travel Posters

NASA has created some super cool travel posters for various planets and moons in our solar system (and a few outside our solar system). They're free to print and come in both PDF and a high res TIFF format. Be warned that the TIFF takes a while to download--the one for Earth is more than 200 MB in size.

This is such a great idea! I just wish that I had more room (and the right decor) to actually put these up in my house somewhere. I'll have to settle for using them on my computer for wallpaper. There's always room in the cyber world. Anyway, I love the vintage feel the posters have! Art is subjective, and of course, there are some posters I don't really like and others I think are awesome. I'm sure you'll have your favorites, too.

My personal favorites are: The Grand Tour, Mars, and Earth and Titan is incredible, too. My only lament is there isn't a poster for Saturn. :-(

Island Time

I was looking through my pictures a little bit today and ran across some from my trip to Hawaii in 2002. I love Hawaii, but this wasn't the best vacation ever. Part of that was the weather. It rained pretty much every day we were there and the locals on each island all said the same thing: this is really unusual for this time of year.

The other reason the trip wasn't the best ever was the cruise line. Service was terrible. It was my fourth cruise and the only one where the service was lousy. I wasn't the only one that thought so either. Everyone I talked to on the ship who'd been on a cruise before this all said the same thing: Horrible! The only people who didn't echo this sentiment were the first time cruisers.

There were still a lot of fun moments, though. I got to spend time with family. I think there were 16 of us on the ship. I went whale watching and I love doing that.

Whale watching--that reminds me of a story. I got on board the boat and this couple gets on after us. The woman was all dressed up as if she were going to an expensive restaurant and looked totally out of place on the whale-watching boat. I was mentally rolling my eyes. Here's some chick who's just going whale watching because her date wants to do it. She's going to be a total PITA.

Yeah, don't judge people by how they look. She and I ended up being the two most avid whale watchers on that vessel, and while we only exchanged a few words, we developed a rapport and helped each other locate whales. That was a valuable reminder for me. Appearances mean less than nothing.

Anyway, Hawaii. One of my very favorite things in Hawaii is the Polynesian Cultural Center. (This is my own opinion and I have NOT received any money or gifts or anything else from them for this mention.)

A lot of people told me that the Polynesian Cultural Center was boring and that I shouldn't waste my time going there, but I went anyway and I love it! I've been there twice now and it still hasn't been enough time to go to all the islands and have enough time there to learn and watch. I wish they were open longer hours so that I could immerse myself in each of the island cultures, watch the really cool performance on stage after the luau, and still see the long canoe show, too.

I know, I'm a geek. What can I say? I like to learn things and I'm hugely interested in Polynesian culture. I'd like to go visit some of these other islands for real, too, but that's for some day.

Sobering Drive Home

Another blog written in Minnesota: I left Atlanta on Good Friday to drive up to Minnesota. As I was driving on I-24 headed west, I saw an orange road construction sign that said Prepare to Stop. I didn't think I'd have to, though, because it was the Friday before Easter and the Department of Transportation had to realize there'd be traffic for the holiday. Surely, they'd suspended the work for the weekend.

And then not too much farther up ahead, traffic came to a stop. It was around 12:40 in the afternoon. As we inched along, I cursed the DOT for having road work going on, but as the time dragged out and we still were only creeping forward, I turned on the radio and started scanning for a traffic report. There was nothing.

At one point, I came on a three car accident. Someone had rear-ended another car and sent them into a third. I had to go around them, but that wasn't what had traffic backed up. It took 50 minutes in stop and go traffic before I saw why no one was moving.

On the other side of the freeway, headed east, was the remnants of the most horrific car accident I had ever seen. There was one car that looked as if a bomb had gone off and destroyed it, a second had the front end bashed in, and a U-Haul trailer off on the grass. It didn't appear damaged, though. There were clothes and personal items strewn all over the road and there was a child safety seat sitting in the middle of the carnage.

When I got to the hotel that night, I searched to find out what happened. I got the bare bones that night. The next morning, the news had the rest of the details.

At 11:40 that morning, a black 1996 Toyota Camry headed west on I-24 crossed the median into the eastbound traffic. It made impact first with the U-Haul, but did only minor damage to the truck. Then it slammed head-on into the Rav 4 driving behind the U-Haul. The man driving the U-Haul was uninjured. His wife and two daughters were in the Rav 4.

On the Saturday after the accident, the wife (who was wearing her seat belt) was said to be in stable condition per the news articles. The two daughters, aged 6 and 7, were in critical, but stable condition. They'd been restrained in child safety seats.

The car that caused the accident was the one that had looked torn apart. There was a father and two daughters in that vehicle. All of them died. The 11-year-old girl was dead at the scene. The father died at a local hospital, and the 16-year-old daughter died after being transferred to Vanderbilt hospital in Nashville.

What I read said that the father driving the U-Haul was freaking out and that people who stopped to help had to calm him down. Another quote was from a woman who was a former first responder who happened to be there shortly after the accident. She tried to save the 11-year-old girl who was in the Camry.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about this. I imagine the father in the U-Haul watching his family get hit head-on. I wonder if he sat in the hospital replaying the accident, trying to come up with what he could have done differently. I wonder if he thought if only he'd done this, it would have deflected the Camry away from his family's car.

I wonder about the wife and the two girls who are in the hospital. Stable doesn't mean well. It doesn't mean they don't have serious injuries that could take months to heal or might even cause them lifelong issues. I wonder about how much therapy—both physical and psychological they'll need to recover.

I wonder about the mother of the girls who died in the other car. How terrible it would be to lose both daughters like that. How does someone deal with that kind of sudden loss?

I think about the people on the scene. The people who saw the accident happen. The people who ran over to help. The people who saw the injured and dead loaded into ambulances. I think about the police and the firefighters and paramedics who arrived on the scene and did their jobs—and what they'll have to live with for the rest of their lives. And I wonder if they've seen other accidents this bad before.

When I saw the scene, I started praying for everyone involved—both victims and families and first responders. And I said a thank you that I was safe and that I hadn't seen the true nightmare images of people hurt, dead, dying because I don't think I could have seen that and not had it impact me strongly. Just seeing the cars impacted me incredibly hard. And the thing is that I could have seen that accident. I could have been in that area at 11:20 if I'd left on time that morning, but I was tired and dawdling and didn't leave until later than I'd planned. And I said thank you for that, too.

I still can't think about that accident or talk about it without tearing up. I can imagine the pain and confusion and hurt and aftermath too easily. How do you do a job like the police and firefighters do and deal with that day in and day out? I couldn't do it, but I'm very grateful that there are men and women out there who do what they do.

Special Moments

One other thing happened on the trip that I wanted to talk about. My parents were with me and my dad was wearing his army museum cap when we stopped for the night in Illinois. A pack of motorcycles stopped with us at the hotel.

They reached the lobby first mostly because I couldn't identify the lobby. Most of the time there is something to give it away, but all sides of this motel looked exactly the same. There were six couples and we ended up behind all of them, waiting to check in.

As we're waiting, one of the men noticed my dad's baseball cap and asked him if he was a veteran. When my dad said yes, he was, something pretty awesome happened.

The biker said, "Thank you" and held out his hand to shake my dad's hand.

I don't think anything like that had every happened to my dad before that evening. If it did, he never said anything about it. I also think it meant a lot to him. Heck, it left me tearing up.

It was such a nice thing for this guy to do and it made me wish I could do stuff like that. I can't, though. I'm much to shy to attempt it. Written words are my thing. I dedicated one book to the men and women of the US military and I'll take the opportunity here on my blog to say: Thank you for serving.

Bucket Lists

Since I've joined Pinterest I've seen a lot of Bucket List posts. I started a board of my own, but as I write this, I only have two things pinned to it. The first is to visit all fifty states. I've actually done a good job on this so far.

The states in white are the ones I haven't gotten to yet. Five of them, though, are within spitting distance of Georgia (where I live now).

My other item is Join Starfleet. What can I say? I love Science Fiction Romance for a reason, right? :-) Plus, how hot is Chris Pine? heh!

I guess I've been really fortunate in my life. The Pinterest board I set up for the Bucket List items I've already completed is much fuller. And if I took the time to seek out items for it, there'd be even more pinned there.

I've done a lot of traveling, both before I went to work for the airline and afterward as well. My parents believed that traveling was educational and they scrimped and saved to send me to Germany and Austria with my German class in junior high school. They also let me go on a class trip to Washington DC and accompany the Spanish class to Mexico.

I've been to Alaska and Hawaii. I saw a humpback whale breach alongside a catamaran I was on in Alaska and I've gone whale watching in Hawaii. And the big travel bucket list item--I went to Australia and spent four weeks there. Most awesome vacation ever.

But the biggest bucket list item of all time for me was selling books to New York and having others read my stories. Getting email from readers who loved my books? Best. Thing. Ever.

Yep, I'm definitely a lucky person.

European WINcation

A time lapse journey through Europe.

The Atlanta Trip

I was down in Atlanta last week to look for somewhere to live. Despite working for an airline, we drove down because Thanksgiving had the flights packed. Over the course of the week, there were lots of events that I thought would make entertaining blog posts. Unfortunately, I forgot most of them by the time I got home.

There are some things, though, that are stuck in my mind:

It gets dark early now. We were in Illinois and there were no lights on the sides of the freeway. It was drizzling. I was going 70, which was the speed limit. I got passed. Constantly. By cars doing 80-85 mph. There was one guy driving so fast, he had to doing 90. In the dark. So FYI, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Michigan drivers go far too fast. I wasn't even a little surprised when we came across an accident in the center median involving 4 vehicles.

And in the dark, somewhere in Illinois, I had to slam on the brakes. I was lucky no one was tailgating me at that time. As I zipped down the freeway, my headlights picked up an animal in the middle of the two lanes. I don't know if it was a dog or a coyote, but I nearly hit it. That was major scary.

My impressions of Atlanta. I liked it. They drive like maniacs there, too. Seriously. I didn't think it was possible to get a more stressful commute than I have in Minneapolis. I was wrong. I might have to check into a van pool to get to and from work. Although if I had a clue where I was going, it might not have been so bad.

The weather was great! Okay, so the people in Atlanta were complaining about how cold it was, but I'd been wearing my winter jacket and hat in Minneapolis. In ATL, I was wearing my spring jacket and I was comfortable. I actually hated the idea of going home because I didn't want to go back to the cold (and it snowed the day after I got home). The weather in MN got even worse since then. On Tuesday, it was 15 degrees in MN at 5am. It was 62 in ATL. I'm thinking Mother Nature is trying to make me eager to move.

The trip home also had a few moments. Like the rest area we stopped at in northern Georgia where I almost got a cat. The two workers who clean up around the place found an abandoned house cat who was as friendly and sweet as could be. First thing in the door, they asked me if I wanted a cat. I thought about it while I washed my hands and thought, well, why not? Then I found out the cat was pregnant and I was like I can't deal with that on top of all else I have.

After dark, again in Illinois, I caught movement in the corner of my headlights. A deer was on the edge of right-hand lane. All I could do was think: Please, don't let her run out in front of me. Luckily, she didn't, but that was enough to encourage me to stop for the night. In the hotel room, the radar showed freezing rain ahead of us so stopping was definitely the right choice.

The next day, in Wisconsin, we stop for gas. My dad notices my tailpipe is broken. We stop at a Ford dealership at the next exit and they took it off. The mechanics were awesome! They didn't even charge us for doing that, but the rest of the trip home was a little on the loud side. ;-)

And of course, we hit Minneapolis in rush hour. But it was good to be home. When I saw the snow coming down on Saturday, I reconsidered that statement.

The Kiribati Revelation

I've been to Kiribati. I just found that out over the weekend.

I did know I'd been to Fanning Island. I was just unaware that Fanning Island belonged to the country of Kiribati. Next time I'll have to check my passport more closely and see who stamps it. :-)

It's actually kind of sad. Because I work for an airline, my geography skills are pretty strong. It's all self-taught, too. When I was in school, they quit teaching geography when I was in the second grade. That isn't enough time to learn more than some of the United States. World geography? Forget about it.

iTunes U had some free geography classes from Stanford's Continuing Education program that were outstanding. I learned even more there than I'd picked up on my own. If you're interested, I highly recommend these classes--they were awesome! Not all of them are available any longer, though, which is sad since they used to have three or four.

Then there's Sporcle.com. They have geography quizzes. Some of them include naming all the countries in Africa, Oceania, Europe, and so on. I did these in preparation for the big quiz--naming all the countries in the world.

There are 195 countries. I can name all of them, but I still didn't realize that I'd been to Kiribati.

So how did I make my grandiose discovery? My cousins were up over the weekend and they'd been on this same trip with me. Two of them were wearing their Fanning Island T-shirts and one of them said "Fanning Island - Republic of Kiribati." And I went oooohhhh!

Yes, I am easily excited, but you have to enjoy the small stuff. The other thing is that because of one of my Works In Progress (WIP), I have a fascination with all things Polynesian happening right now. I have to find my pictures from Kiribati so I can post some for you, but it'll have to wait till I finish the proposal I'm working on.