I am writing this on Sunday, Aug 17. There is one picture.

This week’s theme is travel. We spent the week working on two trips. The first is a conference Danita will attend in Coronado, an island right outside San Diego. I’m tagging along. The trip will be Oct 19 – 25. The conference reserved rooms in several hotels, all upper-class resorts. The kind where it’s such a bargain to get a room for $300/night that nobody should mind paying the extra $50/night fee that adds such amenities as parking and WiFi. (But not breakfast. The brunch is about $30/person plus tip and tax.) UMBC is paying for the conference days, but we’re paying for the extra days. And even if UMBC were picking up the entire tab, I would have trouble sleeping comfortably in a bed that costs that much. The issue was resolved when Danita found all the conference rooms were already taken. We got a room in a Best Western hotel about a mile away. It’s close enough that if I get hung up in San Diego one day, Danita can easily walk to the hotel from the conference. As a bonus, UMBC will pay for the rental car on conference days. Both we and UMBC will save significantly, compared to what we would have paid for an official conference room. And the breakfast, parking, and WiFi are free.

The other travel we’ve been working on is next year’s vacation. I’ve long wanted to visit Greece. Danita is willing, but she only wants to go once. She advised me to make a list of all the things I want to see while we are there. I did. Key items on the list are at the end of this post. We found a cruise that covers all but one the important locations on my list. Then we found that they are running that cruise this year, but not next year. No other cruise or tour we can find comes close. We are not willing to do a “roll your own” trip to Greece because we think English is not very well known in Greece, and there’s not much chance we can figure things out by recognizing a few key words of Greek. So we decided to put Greece on hold for a year and go to China instead. For China, we looked at the tours and picked the one we like best. It turns out there’s not really all that much choice. The core of all China tours is pretty much the same. Once outside the major cities, there’s not a lot of choice of accommodations and restaurants. The tour we’ve pretty much settled on includes a visit to Tibet. I like that because not many people can start a sentence with “When I was in Tibet …”. Helpfully, the hotel in Tibet sells oxygen for those who need it. The tour we picked out has several possible dates. The next step is for Danita to talk with her boss about when we will be gone. Next year is an important year for Danita because UMBC will apply for an extension of their research contract with NASA. Danita has a pretty good idea of what’s required to write the proposal, but this is a big enough issue that she should get approval from her boss first.

Deer – taken from our back porch yesterday

That’s plenty of excitement, but wait — there’s more! My body was advising me to make major adjustments to my bike riding. Last week I felt better and started building back up. I am pleased with my progress. We had a neighborhood crab feast yesterday. I’m not big on crabs, and the party was kind of expensive. Danita went to the crab feast and I got a hamburger. We enjoyed very unusual weather for August. We had a huge amount of rain Tuesday — over 6″ in one day. This was a record for that day of the year. The most amazing thing was that as late as Monday afternoon, the forecast was for 1 to 2 inches. The drainage system in our neighborhood held up pretty well. So far as I know, nobody got flooded out, although most everybody’s sump pump got a good workout that day. I spent most of Tuesday sitting on the porch under our recently renovated deck, totally dry and enjoying the view. Other than Tuesday, it was cool, sunny, and dry all week. It was so cool that I had to wear a sweatshirt in the mornings and didn’t go barefoot until after lunch. We also completed several of our walks. We’re just one walk away from finishing the set.

That’s certainly a lot of excitement for one week. I hope this finds everybody doing well. My “Greek list” is below.

Things to see while visiting Greece

Athens, the Parthenon, and the Parthenon Museum. This is pretty obvious, be there are tours that do not include Athens, or do not give it enough time.

Constantinople (also called Istanbul). Capital city of the Eastern Roman Empire (also called Byzantium), which lasted for 1100 years. Hagia Sophia, built by Justinian 1400 years ago, has a dome that was the largest in the world for 1000 years. Also has the Topkapi Palace and Hippodrome.  Believe it or not, there are tours that skip Constantinople entirely. One needs at least three days to see this city.

Delos is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece. 1000 years before Greek mythology, Delos was the birthplace of Apollo.

Rethimnon, Crete contains an amazing restoration of an important palace. While modern archaeologists heartily condemn the restoration, it is the only site where one can walk around and get a true feel of what the palace was like and how it functioned.

Volos contains the famous Byzantine monasteries built atop the rock towers of Meteora. These monasteries were an essential part of the Eastern Christian Church, and would be well worth visiting even without the amazing surviving frescoes and icons.

Çanakkale, Turkey contains an archaeology site that holds 9 civilizations, including Troy.

Delphi, site of the prehistoric Oracle, a major temple to Apollo, and site of the Pythian Games. Apollo talked to mortals through the Delphic Oracle, which exerted considerable influence throughout the Greek world. Sadly, we cannot find a tour that includes this site that was so important to the early Greeks. This is the one site I will not see.