We could have done Avignon in 2 days instead of 3, even with adjusting to the time change. We went to a spectacular light show in the Pope Palace called “Vibrations”. We were in the courtyard, standing on a platform that filled the entire courtyard. There were projections of amazing images, music, and as the name indicated, the floor vibrated. It was the best light show I have ever seen. I don’t have any idea how they projected the images on all four walls of the palace. I never saw a seem or a misalignment of an image.Here’s a couple of pics from the show, plus a couple of extra pics from Avignon.

Light Show

Light Show

Outside the Pope Palace

We took a free ferry to the island. On the way over, we saw this tower which was part of the Cardinal Town. I thought it was on the island, but it was much further away than it looked. We never made it to Cardinal Town.

We found out that yesterday was museum discount day. We decided to spend the day viewing the museums. The most well known landmark is the bridge from the song Sur le pont d’Avignon, On y danse. This bridge is unique for several reasons. For one thing, you have to pay a fee to go on the bridge. Once you pay the fee, you can’t cross the river, because the bridge broke apart in the 1600s and was never repaired. This may be the only bridge in the world where one pays a toll to not cross the river.

Broken Bridge

Another unique feature of this bridge is that nobody danced on it. It was so narrow that two people could barely walk by each other. It was replaced with another, wider bridge later on, but people didn’t especially dance on the larger bridge either. The bridge connected to an island on its way across the river. The island became a popular recreational area. The dancing people did was near the bridge, or even under the bridge, but not on the bridge. Another reason the bridge is unusual is that the purpose of the bridge wasn’t to cross the river, but to collect tolls from barges going up and down the Rhine river. Still another unique feature of this bridge is that it has a chapel. Most people wouldn’t think a bridge was a particularly great place to put a chapel. But the folks at Avignon just do things their own way, I guess.

Avignon Bridge Chapel

We spent quite a bit of time at the bridge, because it has a unique and interesting history. And also because we wanted a relaxing day. The other really cool thing in Avignon is the Pope Palace. Not all popes lived in Rome. They lived in Avignon from 1309 to 1374. Of course, popes need a palace, so Avignon has a Pope palace. The Avignon bridge was important because Avignon was a stinky town back in the day. The bridge let the pope and cardinals build their residences across the river where it wasn’t so stinky. Popes need is to live in their own sovereign territory, because a pope can’t be ruled by a king. In 1374, the popes were invited to leave so Avignon could become part of France.

Pope Palace

The palace was restored but not decorated or furnished. The tour came with a tablet that had a very nice program. When we entered a room, it would play a few minutes of audio. It displayed what the room looked like when the popes were using it. As we moved the tablet around the room, the display changed so show a fire place over here, a table with monks over there, a painted ceiling overhead. We weren’t permitted to enter the Pope’s chapel, but the tablet let us view the chapel as if we were inside the room. One could press icons on the display to get additional information. It was incredibly well done, and available in 6 languages. The tablet included one feature that backfired for one family. There was a game: find all 8 hidden gold coins and win a prize. We met one 3-year old boy who was inconsolable because his family found only 7 coins.

The weather in Avignon is delightful. It’s warm and sunny with a high around 25 (that’s 80 in Fahrenheit). Avignon is a wonderful city with great food, wonderful people, interesting stuff, old buildings, and everything else one would expect to find in France.

We made it to Avignon. We took the red-eye flight from Dulles airport to Paris. There was a 4-hour lay-over waiting in the airport. Then we took the high-speed TGV train from the airport to Avignon. They say the TGV train travels up to 200 MPH. What I can say for sure is that the train traveled 460 miles in 3 hours. Considering it had to crawl slowly through Paris and Lyons, and stopped twice, I’d say we probably got pretty close to 200 MPH.

The first part of the ride was very smooth and quiet. We traveled through mile after mile of farm land. All the cows we saw where pure white, with no black or brown markings. I saw very little that was painted John Deere Green. The fields and buildings looked very well maintained. I didn’t see a single derelict building. Of course, I didn’t see everything. We were both incredibly tired and were desperately trying to keep our eyes open until bed time. After Lyons, the area changed. There were more hills, with mountains frequently visible. There was less land suitable for farming. The farms we saw were maintained just as well. The ride was still good, but noticeably rougher.

Our hotel is in the heart of historic Avignon. The area is all narrow streets that form an incredibly difficult-to-navigate maze. Outdoor dining is available everywhere. Many of the smaller streets are closed to motorized vehicles — except motorcycles, of course. The French seem to accept that motorcyclists can drive and park wherever they wish. We had a delightful dinner at a table in a pedestrian-only cobble stone street. We were interrupted by motorcycles only twice.

The time zone changes affected both of us quite a bit. In spite of having .had an exhausting trip and staying more-or-less awake for most of it, I woke up and was wide awake at midnight, which is 6 AM in Maryland. I forced myself to stay in bed, and finally fell asleep about 4 AM for another couple of hours of shut-eye. We plan to take it easy today, exploring the area and visiting a couple of museums, and acclimating ourselves to the local time.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Before I start the news … We will be traveling from Monday, Sept 24 – Thursday, Oct 25. The best way to contact us is to send me an Email. Or you can call at 410-417-8854 and leave a voice mail. We will receive the voice mail by Email. Every place we are staying advertises internet access. I will check Email daily if possible. I will also post frequently while we’re traveling.

There’s no hurricane effects around here, but it was a wet week. The forecast was “cloudy with a chance of rain” almost every day. Thursday, the forecast changed to “cloudy with no rain”. I took a 2-hour ride. The rain started half an hour after I got back. That’s a lot better than a half hour before I got back. The rain broke Saturday. I was able to ride, but had to start a little later than planned because the overnight showers hadn’t ended yet. Today is nice, but we are looking at more rain Monday and Tuesday. Here’s hoping the forecast for sunshine for Wed – Fri holds.

I put LED bulbs in the our ceiling fans. The fans in the two master bedrooms have remote controls. The remote controls don’t turn the lights off. They let just a little current trickle through, and that’s enough for the LEDs to light up. That means we can’t run the fans at night. I don’t like having rotating machinery over my head when I sleep, so I didn’t care that much. But Rick and Suzy wanted a fan. We got out an old, ugly, noisy box fan for them. It was time to fix the fans. I called the manufacturer. Their advice was to put incandescent bulbs in because their fans “aren’t compatible with LEDs”. That’s a bunch of bunk. The problem is their remote doesn’t turn the lights off. I looked around Amazon. It turns out that lots of people buy inexpensive fans with two chains — one for lights, one for the fan — and later decide they want a remote. And there are companies who want to make these people happy, for a price. I found a $20 remote that controls the fan and the lights, and turns the lights off. I ordered, received, and installed two if them. End of problem. Almost. The way these remotes work, if one turns the wall switch off, then on again, the lights always turn on. You can turn the lights off with the remote, of course. But if the wall switch is off, and somebody is sleeping, there’s no way to turn the fan on without waking that somebody up. The world isn’t perfect yet.

We had a neighborhood party Friday. We have a dinner party Sunday. It’s called “Farewell to Summer”, but Danita and I are calling it “Farewell and good travels”. We leave for France the next day. I think it’s nice of the neighborhood to send us off like that. ;-)

That’s it for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had an unusually hot week last week. Highs were in the 90s Monday through Friday. Some schools in Baltimore and Baltimore County that aren’t air conditioned either didn’t open or closed early. Tuesday, during the hottest part of the day, a small shower came through. I happened to be sitting at my desk and looked at the deck. I saw snow. There were very large, widely dispersed drops of very wet snow. By the time I got downstairs to take a closer look, the snow had melted.

From Friday afternoon to Saturday, the temperature slowly dropped to 60 and stayed there. This is usually the hottest part of the day, but the temperature is still below 65. We’ve had continuous rain, and it promises to continue to rain continuously through the rest of the week. My joke is that I’m not riding to get ready for France. Its a perverse kind of anti-training.

Other than that, there’s not a lot to report. We started planning for a new phase in our financial lives. I will start Social Security in January, and have to start taking distributions from my 401(K) next year. Danita starts her retirement pension next August. There are significant changes to the tax laws for 2018. (Significant to us.) We are collecting facts and asking questions. There are QCDs, DAFs, survivor/spousal benefits .. the list appears endless. We could go to a financial planner, but it’s more fun to do some research and figure it out for ourselves.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Rick and Suzy came up from Texas for a visit. They stayed at Ed’s house for a couple of days. Friday they brought Bud up to visit with us. Danita made sour beef, which was pretty darn good. Saturday Rick and Suzy cooked a family dinner at our house. Ed & Lynne joined us, as did Lynn and Gene. We had excellent lasagna and an outstanding bread pudding desert.

The Schmauses: Lynn, Ed, Bud, Danita, Rick

Ed, Lynne, and Gene

There’s not so much to report this week. We had a neighborhood party yesterday. We plan to attend a free concert in Catonsville this evening.

Danita’s computer has shipped and should be in Monday. That will make her pretty happy. My computer is a little smaller than hers, which means the keyboard is a little smaller. She didn’t like typing on it until I pulled out the keyboard Mark gave me. Mom agrees it’s a very good keyboard. Whatever went wrong with the computer, it must have been unusual. The computer was put on “Engineering hold” and spent time on the “escalated bench”.

Next week will be a busy one. Rick and Suzy are visiting from Texas. They’re going to pick Bud up and show up at our house Friday. They’re cooking a family dinner Saturday. Sunday, we’ll get Bud back to his place, then go to a Circle lunch at the Sochurek’s. It will be time for me to sign up for Social Security. I will start in January, the first full month when I’m 70. Add in my monthly lunch with Tony Chaprnka — how will we have time to get it all done?

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are things in life that should be easy, but just aren’t. Danita wants to consolidate Bud’s 3 checking accounts into one. Bud’s primary checking account is at PNC, which has two branches right in Riderwood, and a branch less than a mile from us.

She started by closing Bud’s account at Wells Fargo. Danita is a signatory on both accounts, so this should be an easy deal for her to do without bothering Bud. She got it done, but ended up making two extra trips this week, both of which required using the gas car. She discovered at the last minute that the Wells Fargo account had a safe deposit box. It wasn’t a total shock. After all, there were two extra keys that looked a lot like safe deposit box keys but nobody knew anything about. Of course, the only way to return the keys and make sure the box was empty was to drive to Rockville. Danita called ahead to make sure she would be able to get into the safe deposit box. The branch manager assured her that everything would be set up and ready for her. I volunteered to be the driver. When we got there, everything was not set up, and the manager was no where to be found. I finally got bored and went next door to grab a hamburger at 5 Guys. I had plenty of time to enjoy the hamburger plus a bowl of peanuts before Danita was done. We drove to our PNC branch, where Danita presented a completed deposit ticket and a certified check. PNC agreed that Danita was a signatory, but insisted that only Bud could deposit the money into his account. Who would think it’s easier to take money out of a checking account than it is to put it in? So it was back to Riderwood the next day for Danita, where she met Bud and finally got the deed done.

Yesterday, Danita went downstairs to watch Ben Cartwright in “Bonanza” and tool around on her PC. She plugged her PC into the charger. Smoke came out, and the PC got very hot (melting some of the case). The PC is under warranty. Dell wisely decided not to ask us to turn the computer back on for remote diagnostics. Danita will be without her computer for at least a week.

All this made us re-evaluate the warranty on my PC. My computer is a year older than Danita’s. The warranty expires at the end of this month. It’s a way-cool warranty that covers anything, even accidental damage. If I accidentally drop the computer in the ocean, and I can retrieve it, I can get it fixed for free. Dell offered me a 20% discount on a 2 year warranty extension if I would be willing to part with $580. I have a very nice computer and it’s not cheap. But I couldn’t see spending that much on a 2-year warranty. So Dell offered me a second discount, then a third. I turned them all down, and hung up. Less than 5 minutes later, Dell called me back and offered the warranty for $330, still including the accidental damage coverage. That made sense. I won’t be replacing my computer for at least two more years. I was amazed how much the warranty came down simply by saying, “Sorry, it costs too much”.

My week was considerably less stressful than Danita’s. (Other than driving in the DC area, that is.) I finished reading two very good books recently. The first is “Rocket Men” by Robert Kurson. This is the story of Apollo 8 — the first manned mission to leave the Earth, and the first to orbit the moon. According to Kurson, this was the mission where the US beat the USSR to the moon. Russia could have beat us by launching a week before we did, but they didn’t think we would be crazy enough to leave earth orbit on the first manned mission using the Atlas rocket, plus the first mission to use the lunar orbiter. It’s a great story that explains the risks NASA took, and why Apollo 8 is just as important as Apollo 11 in the history of deep space manned exploration.

The other great book is “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles. This is a fictional account of a Russian “non-person” who is sentenced to house arrest in a luxury hotel in Moscow. I don’t know if there was ever a similar situation in reality. Probably not. But the story is extremely well told. The book is absolutely worth reading.

We have a SOCA dinner party this evening. Danita is especially looking forward to kicking back tonight.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It was a Laid-back week. I got some good rides in. I’m close to meeting my goals. I did a little work on the WiFi for our clubhouse. I went with Danita to visit Bud Friday. He was getting his carpet cleaned. We had to move furniture out of the way. The carpet came out looking very good. I gave blood before Church this morning. I wasn’t able to give blood while I was on Plavix, and got out of the habit. This was right at the Church. They took me as a walk-in right away.

The Emile Fischer vase was auctioned off this week. I listed it for shipping in the US only. A guy from Hungary told me he wanted it and asked my permission to bid. We traded jokes about paying import taxes on a vase that was made in Hungary, but had made its way to the US. I told him I thought shipping would be too expensive, but he could bid if he wanted. (I set this up so the buyer pays shipping.) He was the only bidder, and bought the vase for $1. He hasn’t paid his $1 yet. I wrote to him, but haven’t heard back. He hasn’t said, but I think $100 to $400 is a lot of money for shipping the vase.

After a week of chilling, we enjoyed the “Chill and Grill” party at the clubhouse Friday.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This was a week of small accomplishments.

Change our website calendar – done! The board asked me to make a change to our website calendar. That’s fine, but before making the change, I needed agreement not only on what we were removing, but what we would do to replace the old. I went through a long chain of Emails with no agreement. I have not been successful presenting plans to the board in the past, so I asked an ally to do the presentation. We all agreeded on a new plan. The changes are done.

Kitchen faucet — fixed! Moen sent some cool parts, but the only part I needed, the faucet handle, wasn’t included. When I called back, they sent the handle express at no charge. Thanks for the first class service, Moen.

Bike adjustment — done! The bike chain was rattling against the side of the derailleur cage. A decent bike mechanic could fix this in a couple of minutes. It took me a couple of hours. But the bike rides fine.

Rear porch trim boards — fixed! I spent about 90 seconds trimming the boards with my new small circular saw. One could say I spent $66/minute for the repair. Or one could say I saved a bunch of money on a contractor and had the satisfaction of fixing it myself. Thanks to Mark for being an excellent ladder holder. And thanks to the guy at Lowe’s who recommended the correct screws.

Rear porch cleaning — done! The porch was filthy, but I wanted to fix the trim boards before wielding the pressure washer.

Paint the rear porch — deferred. I probably should paint it this year, but it’s just not in the cards.

Nail down the details of our trip to France (tickets, etc.) — done! Actually we did this last week, but it fits on this list rather nicely.

Nail down the details of our Thanksgiving cruise — almost done. Thanksgiving dinner is my favorite holiday. This year, it was going to be just 3. Even Danita would have difficulty preparing a proper Thanksgiving dinner for 3, so we decided to have Thanksgiving dinner on a cruise ship. Danita found a deal on a cruise leaving Baltimore, using a travel agent Bud and Leona had used for most of their cruises. Bud was talking about wanting to take a cruise. We invited him to cruise with us. He thought that was a great idea. Unfortunately, by the time we got home and called the agent, it was too late on Friday afternoon. I expect to get this done tomorrow.

Nail down a winter cruise with Mom — Done, and with more excitement to come! I wanted to visit Mom in February. Danita found a great price on a cruise out of Ft. Lauderdale, and asked Mom if she was interested. She was. The tickets are purchased. We will take the car-train to FL, visit Mom for a couple of days, then drive to the cruise ship. When we come back, we’ll drop Mom off and take a car tour of Texas. Our first stop will be the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. This is a very popular destination because it is also a popular cruise port. That Cape Canaveral hotel ticket is done. (It was one of the last rooms available.) We have a rough outline for the rest of the trip. It looks to be a fun and interesting tour.  On the way home we’ll visit Danita’s cousin Darlene in Atlanta. The trip topper will be a visit with Julia.

If that’s not enough excitement, we also have a neighborhood party coming up this weekend. The good times just keep on rolling in.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.