We’re on board. We’ve had our first meal. The ship is preparing to sail. What better way to start our journey than a map showing where we’re going. Here it is!

We had a trifecta of good things this week.

My bike is fixed. I was able to get a couple of pretty good rides in. The bike rides great. Life is better with a bike.

We signed a contract for upgrades on the house. We came to terms practically at the very last minute. If we did not have agreement by Friday, I was going to put our plans on ice until sometime next year, starting with a new contractor search. We will replace all the cabinets in the kitchen. In our master bath, we will convert that huge tub we never use into a larger shower. That will let us put in a more spacious vanity and give us a small closet where the old shower stands now. We will paint the entire first and second floor. And we will fix a few smaller things to bring our upper two floors up to snuff.

The third piece of good news is our cruise. We leave early Friday morning, taking the Amtrak train to Boston. We’ll stay in Boston overnight, then board our ship on Saturday. We stay on the ship 5 weeks, taking Amtrak back to home on August 23. We will visit Canada, Iceland, Greenland, Ireland, Scotland, and a few more places. The Vikings were masters of these waters in 1100. We’ll be nosing around and enjoying how much things have improved since then. Who knows? We might even get to raid an English castle. (Not.) This is Holland America’s most popular itinerary. They only offer this cruise once a year, due to extreme weather conditions outside the summer season.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It was a fairly standard week. That’s not all good. We should have had some exciting news about house updates by now. We don’t. We rejected two builders. The third has not been able to give us a contract after two weeks of our initial contact. Even if we get a contract this week, there seems to be little chance of having construction done before Thanksgiving. Maybe next year …

We had some very nice weather for the July 4 holiday. I spent many long hours. At home. My bike has two busted spokes. I discovered this late July 3 while prepping for several days of rides. The bike shop should be open Monday. I’ll get it back in plenty of time to sit on the porch and watch it rain. Bummer bummer bummer.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Other than that minor nuisance, all is good here in Columbia land. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

The highlight this week was a visit to the Reeds. It was a low key visit. There was a birthday party commitment. The weather was very hot, limiting outdoor activities. And there were scheduling conflicts. The biggest mis was the demolition derby. We had localized thunderstorms every evening while we were there. We decided it would be unwise to try to attend. In spite of all that, we had a good time being with each other. And you know we were able to do some (indoor) minigolf. Here are some pics.

Elizabeth is an expert at crochet. She made this shark bag.

Letting Google settle the argument.

Having fun jamming.

A sibling discussion and a tired mom.

We gave home renovation a high priority this week. We started with an in-home visit from a company that advertises bed & bath renovations. We had an in-house meeting, followed several days later with a visit to the company’s showroom. We picked out cabinets, counter tops, shower tiles, and much much more. It sounds simple and fun, and it was kind of fun. But there are about 1 zillion details to be discussed. We started at 9:30 and ended mid-afternoon. We were both stressed and exhausted. I think Danita was affected more than me.

At the end of the showroom visit, we were supposed to get a list of all the work to be done, all the models and colors we selected, and the project cost. Unfortunately, when we came to the point of receiving the file, the salesman got extremely busy and said he would Email the document in a couple of hours. That was a day ago. Also, there was a 10% discount available only if we signed a contract immediately. The salesman warned us this was coming. I thought I was prepared. I wasn’t. It felt amazingly sleazy. Why is the company so afraid of us talking to someone else? Maybe they’re on the up and up. We’ll see how this all shakes out. We started discussion with a second contractor and have an appointment with a third. It would be nice if we had this done before Thanksgiving, but it’s not like we are obligated to do anything.

House renovations ended up dominating our week, Hopefully the rest of the process will offer more fun and less stress. One thing is for sure, We will have fun visiting Jul & family next weekend. Our first activity is a demolition derby. What can be more fun than that?

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It’s been a nice week. We went to Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”. The venue is an old woman’s college that failed shortly after the civil war. They stabilized the ruins and built a stage. Performances are outdoors without a sound system. It’s a unique experience. After all, how many Shakespeare companies offer free bug repellant? The actors and audience were largely young folks. Even the grand dame of the company looked like she was under 40.

Our other major entertainment was the Solstice party at Charlestown. We went with Mom, of course. They did a bang-up job. Kids has face panting, pony rides, inflatable bouncers, and more. A live band provided music. A half dozen food trucks provided just about any kind of fast food imaginable.

It wasn’t all fun and games here in Columbia. We are starting to plan some upgrades to the house. Danita has long said that we should have a larger dining area. We wondered whether we could just get rid of the pantry and store food in the kitchen cabinets. We spent a day on a rampage of removing, discarding, donating, and reorganization the kitchen. Now when I want to get my breakfast or lunch together, I have to walk around opening cabinets at random until I find my food. It was all worthwhile. We learned that the pantry can hold lots of stuff. We need a pantry, but we can make it much smaller. That will create the additional table space that we want.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We spent last weekend visiting Ryn. We hadn’t seen her since Thanksgiving, and hadn’t ever seen her house. Ryn planned a wonderful weekend and made us feel totally at home.

The area has had record rainfall. The creek behind Ryn’s house was quite high. Fortunately, measures taken by the local government for flood management worked.

Purchasing a house means inheriting some strange objects. Ryn says this is an outdoor space heater, but that isn’t nearly as much fun as a robot or an artifact left behind by an advanced race of beings. We all agree it would make a really great marker for the entrance to her driveway.

Saturday we spent a lot of time at the Walton music fest. The music was mostly quite good, but when the Beetles tribute band started playing obscure music from their origins, it was time to move on. It rained on and off, but tents provided rain-friendly venues. Walton has many other interesting attractions, including the best ice scream in this part of the county. We had raincoats and umbrellas, but it we were lucky. It didn’t rain while we were waling around Walton.

Sunday was spent largely at the closer town of Delhi. Danita’s favorite was the Rip Van Winkle Put Put Golf. This was a tremendously fun and original course. The owner leaves putters and balls out 24 x 7. There’s a jar if you want to donate. The owner is quite an interesting person. We enjoyed a half hour of conversation after we finished our game.

My favorite was the Arkville Rail Road. These days, most engines are diesel electric. A diesel engine turns a generator. Power from the generator turns the electric motor. The concept has been refined to the point that our hybrid car uses exactly the same architecture. This engine was one of the first diesel electrics, built in 1947. There is a selections of passenger cars, including a refurbished passenger car pre-1947, an open air car, and an observation car with hints of an art nouveau design. The dining car offered quite a sense of opulence.

They have a wonderfully simple way to offer rides. They run the engine backwards, pushing the train uphill. When they get to the end, the let the train drift back downhill. Of course the engineer can’t see what’s behind the train. So a conductor sits in the observation car and reports the status of the track through walkie talkies. Both enjoyed their jobs, and offered stories and answers to all our many questions.

The rail was shut down during Covid. They just re-started rides on Mother’s day this year. The conductor offered us the most interesting story. Between the tracks and the river, there is a house with a rather large plastic sheet greenhouse. They never specified exactly what they grow, but they complained loud and long about the presence of so many tourists. If they are growing what everybody assumes they are growing, it’s legal these days. But these folks don’t appear to be the type of people that would apply for a permit.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

These are the last days of our trip. We had an excellent visit at a winery that makes port wine. We visited the cork museum. Today we split off on our own and visited the drinking museum. This has almost nothing to do with Portugal but is absolutely fascinating. We saw all manor of drinking vessels going back to the 7th century BC, and always about drinking wine.

I learned about a civilization I hadn’t previously known about. They were contemporaneous with Mesopotamia. They were the largest civilization in Europe. They were experts at long-distance trade. They made sophisticated metal, pottery, and ceramic vessels. They were the first to use copper tools. The were the first to use a bird as a symbol of rebirth and also as the transition between the earthly world and the heavens above. The museum did not give them a name, other than the civilization along the Danube River. Take that, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece.

The earliest vessels were made from horns or clay. They held a generous pour of wine on the top and a hole at the bottom. One would put their finger over the hole and fill the horn with wine. To drink, they removed their finger and let the wine shoot into their mouth.

Many drinking games were documented by Pliny the Elder, among others. Taking interesting pictures in a wine glass museum is quite a challenge. Here’s one of radioactive glasses.

On the way back to the boat, we encountered this famous rabbit, composed solely of metal trash.

Tomorrow we leave for the airport at 4:00 AM. We fly to Amsterdam, then Atlanta, and arrive home after 11 PM. I hope this finds everybody doing well..

We visited the CAO museum today where we saw 30,000 year-old rock art. This is contemptuous with the cave art we saw on our French trio a few years ago. There is a lot of similarity between the two. Initially, both displayed only animals. Depiction of humans came much later. We have proof of a robust trade with other humans over large distances. The cave art used colors that weren’t available locally. The rock art uses lines etched into shale rock using tools made from flint. Flint is not available locally. Both sometimes depicted animals with two heads to indicate motion.

There is also a lot that is different. Cave art was more expressive of the spirit of the animals. It’s more difficult to scratch lines than it is to paint. Paint can be used to express more than an etched line. Cave artists often used the three-dimensional cave rock to make the depiction more life-like. Rock artists were stuck using shale, which is flat.

I’m including just one picture which clearly shows a cow. The other pictures are of less interest to most folks. Some of the images are high-definition (which makes opening the page take way too long). If you want to see the other pics, click the link at the top of the page. Be prepared to wait.

I hope this finds all doing well.

Early rock art displayed only four animals.

Here’s our museum guide, along with a copy of a rock.

Here’s a second rock. You will see more if you zoom in. If memory serves, this rock has over 60 animals. I zoomed into the upper left corner to display the cow in the Email version of this blog.

The town of Salamanca (in Spain) is a 2-hour bus ride one way. But the town was worth the ride. The cathedral is one of the most unusual. They built it in the 11th century. Then in the 1500s they decided it wasn’t big enough, and built a new cathedral adjacent to the old one, Then they decided what the heck, why not keep both. Finally, in the 1980s they decided to renovate both. We didn’t take the option to view the cathedral interior, but we did see some unusual things in the exterior facade. Below you can see an astronaut in the upper left corner, and a creature eating an ice cream cone in the lower right. I’m fairly certain these characters weren’t in the original building.

The most interesting part of our visit was the Museum of Art Nouveau and Art Deco. We have never before seen a museum with this focus. Unfortunately they didn’t permit photos. Too bad, because they had an extremely interesting collection.

After dinner tonight, we will get a dance troupe. They will do some folk dances, then do some flamenco dancing.

I hope this finds everyone doing well.