Category: Geography

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Blogging Geography Health Home Life Travel Weather

Neighborhood Walks

Welcome back to #TravelThursday. Longtime readers of my blog – going back to its debut here on WordPress some 15½ years ago – may remember a series of blog posts under the heading of “The Major’s Walk-A-Thon”. It’s where I revealed and described my various neighborhood walks – mostly at dawn. They were dedicated to the memory of my Dad – who lost the ability to walk on his own in 2007 – and eventually passed away from the devastating effects of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).

16 months into my fantastic journey (salvation in Christ) I began neighborhood walks to get healthy – physically, mentally, and spiritually. The walks were mostly over 1 mile in length, and up to 2, 3, and even 4+ miles. They were confined to the dry seasons here in South Florida – generally from October to May. They were “power walks” – with a pace of between 17 and 18 minutes per mile.

Season 1 was 2007-2008, and it was a shock to the system, as I had never done such a thing before in my entire life – walk to get fit. It was well-documented here on my blog. At that time in my life – I was slowly rebounding from the worst physical shape of my life. (I actually quit drinking less than 2 months earlier.)

I’m now approaching the end of Season 16. That’s right – 16 seasons of walking. So far this season I’ve walked around my neighborhood 27 times. That’s the 2ND-most number of walks in a season (surpassed only by Season 8 – 2014-2015). Those 27 walks include 8 in my longtime Homestead neighborhood (or the nearby city park) – and 19 in my new Sebring neighborhood. (My new 55+ neighborhood is near-ideal for such walks, and many of my neighbors are doing it too. I need to keep-up with them.)

So far this season I’ve walked a total of 37.80 miles. That’s the 4TH-highest number of miles (surpassed by 2014-2015, 2015-2016, and 2016-2017).

This season is not yet complete. We’re still getting (weak) cold fronts up in the Florida Heartland, and those cold fronts are still delivering the refreshing 60s into the region at dawn, and low humidity during the day and into the early-evening hours. Eventually it’ll get too consistently wet, warm, humid, and buggy to walk, so I’ll just be resting-up in preparation for an early debut to Season 17 come September !

Next #TravelThursday it’s all about the miles – on my car. Let’s keep traveling together.

All rights reserved (c) 2023 Christopher M. Day, CountUp

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Blogging Driving Geography Home Travel

Carnival Jubilee

Welcome back to #TravelThursday. A couple of days ago I observed exactly 2 months in my beautiful new dream home in my dream neighborhood in my dream part of Florida. I closed on it (officially became the owner) on March 16TH, and I actually purchased it on February 16TH, so that marks 3 months since I first walked-in to my new home and almost immediately decided that it would be mine.

But this week’s edition is not about that. It’s about a cruise that I took with my parents exactly 19 years ago this week. It was a 5-nighter out of #JAXPORT (Jacksonville Florida). (My parents lived in the area at the time.)

Over the course of 32 years (1991-2023) it was my only cruise out of Jacksonville. It was on an old Carnival cruise ship – the Jubilee – that was in-service from 1986 to 2004. In fact she was sold to an Australian cruise company just 3 months after our sailing.

I don’t remember much of anything from that cruise, and I have no photos of it – mostly because I didn’t take photos back then before the smart phone era. I don’t even remember the ports-of-call. Maybe Nassau ?

It was 1 of just 3 cruises that I went on with my parents. It was the middle cruise. (The first one was 13 years earlier when we all went on our very first cruise ever. I instantly fell in love with the idea of cruising, and I continued on with 23 more cruises after that first one in 1991.)

I’ve been telling friends recently that I probably won’t be booking any further cruises at this time. This past January I was on the newest, biggest, and best that Carnival has to offer – their brand-new Carnival Celebration – and I documented it for 6 weeks in a row here on #TravelThursday. It was perhaps a perfect ending to my cruising experience. Now that I have 2 homes and a 30-year mortgage on my new home – I’m on a budget now. I’ve declared a spending freeze of sorts. I need to figure out how to live my life with less than half the money I make today once I retire at the end of the year.

As for travel opportunities I really want to explore more of Central and North Florida – and into Georgia and Alabama – and the Carolinas – on a series of road-trips. I’ve conquered the sea, and now I wish to explore the land. I want to visit with some good friends along the way.

Next #TravelThursday I’m not driving – I’m walking. Let’s keep traveling together.

All rights reserved (c) 2023 Christopher M. Day, CountUp

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Blogging Commerce Driving Food Geography God News Shopping Travel

Orange County Florida

Welcome back to #TravelThursday. Last Saturday morning I headed northward from my new home in the Florida Heartland (rural South Central Florida). I drove through Polk County – and then into Osceola County – and then into Orange County. (That’s where Orlando is, and I did enter into its sprawling city limits.)

Once I entered into northwestern Osceola County – rural evolved into suburban – with more homes, and stores, and restaurants, and of course – heavy traffic.

I spent the day with my brother, sister-in-law, and two nieces – visiting from the Dallas Texas area. As an aside – news broke that (Saturday) afternoon about the mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets. My family lived in Allen for about 6 years from 2007 to 2013, and since 2019 they’ve lived in a nearby suburb within a half-hour of that large outdoor shopping mall. I’ve been to that mall countless times with my family while visiting them. I lift-up to our God Almighty the family and friends of the victims of the shooting. May He comfort them in this difficult time.

Back in the Orlando area – me and my family spent much of the day at the Orange County Convention Center at a national cheerleading tournament. (My youngest niece is a cheerleader with her 9 and 10-year-old peers.) After that we spent several hours at Disney Springs. Once upon a time (mid-1990s to mid-2000s) I spent many vacation nights partying at Pleasure Island – which is now known as The Landing. I even had an annual pass to the nightclubs for many years. We enjoyed a late-Lunch at Chef Art Smith’s Homecomin’ Kitchen at The Landing. The food was good, abundant, and expensive. The front of the restaurant faced one of those former clubs that me and my brother loved to hang out at.

It was a fun but exhausting 189-mile day-trip. It was about 14 miles longer than it should’ve been. That evening I accidentally missed the entrance to the hotel that my family was staying at, and we ended-up on I-4 for a frightening 7-mile stretch. As you may know (as a longtime reader of this blog) I don’t drive on interstates, expressways, or turnpikes anymore (with rare exceptions) due to anxiety attacks. Luckily – it was near bumper-to-bumper slow-moving traffic during the entire stretch, so I was sort of fine with it.

It was good to finally return home to paradise in the Florida Heartland after that Saturday adventure !

Next #TravelThursday I’ll look back at a fun cruise from exactly 19 years ago. Let’s keep traveling together.

All rights reserved (c) 2023 Christopher M. Day, CountUp

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Blogging Geography Photography Travel

My Flickr Photostream

Welcome back to #TravelThursday. You know – I’m still on Flickr. I’ve never created an Instagram account. I don’t even know what Instagram looks like. I tried Google Photos for a little while, and I realized that it was too complicated to use, and it’s inferior to Flickr. It was disappointing since I use Google (the search engine) all day every day.

Flickr has been around for 19 years, and I’ve been on it for the past dozen years. I like Flickr. It’s easy to use. It’s relatively glitch-free. I have unlimited storage as a paid Flickr Pro member. I’m approaching 4,000 photos on it. I’ll be on it for as long as they exist.

My goal is to upload and caption at least 10 new photos per month onto Flickr. I’ve done that for the past 53 months in a row – since the end of 2018. I’ve been asked – “why don’t you just do a photo dump of all of your photos all at once and be done with it ?” Well that would be no fun at all. Flickr is my personal electronic scrapbook, so each new photo is meticulously selected, uploaded, researched, captioned, and placed in its appropriate album. I have 65 albums – most of which are public.

This month I’ll be populating my Puerto Rico album. I was in Old San Juan on January 11TH 2023, and I have some very nice photos to share of that wonderful day – courtesy of Carnival Celebration. On the previous day I was in Amber Cove, Puerto Plata, and the surrounding north-central coast region of Dominican Republic. I uploaded 34 photos from that day in February, March, and April. I actually took 81 photos that day, so only about 42% of them made it onto Flickr. I call them – the best of the best. (Check-out my Dominican Republic album.)

I’m not a professional photographer, but it is a hobby of mine when I’m visiting the world. It’s a relatively new hobby of mine since the start of the smart phone revolution – and Flickr. One of my biggest regrets in life is the lack of photos of my travels before I owned a smart phone.

If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page you can see thumbnails of the last 6 added photos to my Flickr Photostream. It’s a good way to keep-up with what I’ve uploaded and captioned onto my favorite photo hosting service.

Next #TravelThursday I’ll head-up to Orange County Florida. Let’s keep traveling together.

All rights reserved (c) 2023 Christopher M. Day, CountUp