Bucket List

1) Fall and break right shoulder and left knee, slicing head open on the way down. Rack up $15,000 emergency room bill.

2) Sell house while incapacitated from fall, requiring endless moving help from closest friends.

3) Soldier through 7 week injury “quarantine” only to have it merge into 11 week COVID quarantine, for a total quarantine period of nearly 5 months.

I long for the carefree days of complaining about Ron’s unpredictable behavior in airports.

I am omitting every possible comment about politics and and public health. This is a travel blog and nothing more.

Our big news is that we are heading out next week – 7 days in San Diego.

We’ve got (well, I’ve got) a long list of plans for 2021. Some of these plans will be surprises to Ron as he reads this along with you. We’re still hoping to do an Eastern Europe trip in September of this year but my opinion on whether or not we’ll actually get to go varies by the hour. Our backup plan is a driving trip through Maine and New Hampshire, which makes Ron nervous due to the frequency of the helpful driving tips I give as we motor along. I think he feels I might “educate” us right into an accident.

After that, we’re theoretically going to do an archaeological tour of southern Mexico in January, but I have even more doubt about that than I do for Eastern Europe since that’s with a small tour group and the tour companies are cancelling most everything. If that doesn’t go (listen up, Ron) I’ve got my eye on either Morocco or Panama in January. Beyond that…well, I’ve roughed out another World War II tour – this time through Germany – that I’m hoping to take in April. Don’t be horrified – this is exactly why I gave away most of my belongings and sold my house – I aim to see as much of this world as I can. I might only have mere months before I trip and fall on another set of stairs and break the other shoulder so I need to get busy.

Goals for San Diego? I grew up there so it’s funny to return as a tourist. There’s a lot of closed sites but I’ve roughed out a nice itinerary that starts with a mad dash from the airport to Lolita’s Taco Shop, my favorite teenage haunt, where I’ll be purchasing one bean and cheese burrito. I have been discussing my love of this burrito to anyone who will listen (look – now all of you are included) for the last 30 years so let’s hope I’m not disappointed. There’s also some ice cream I need to eat and a stroll through Village Hat Shop, where I used to work, to see if they still remember my gifts for properly stacking the Kangol hats or working the millinery unit.

Surely there’s a museum or two and the zoo or Ron will rebel. If he complains to you, remind him that at least I’m not dragging him down to my old house, to stand around outside looking creepy, hoping the current owners will let me in to poke around. Ditto for the “tour” of Big Top Pizza, site of my very first job, where my well-endowed 15-year-old self had to wear a “Big Top” shirt, which, now that I’m an adult, seems like it should have been a violation of some child labor law.