Category: Travel

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Animals Health Travel Weather

The Major’s Walk-A-Thon

Sky: Mostly Sunny
Temperature: 66°F
Dewpoint: 37°F
Relative Humidity: 34%
Winds: Calm
Barometric Pressure: 30.02 Falling

1.  This was my first classic ‘walk-around-the-neighbourhood’ outside of my own neighbourhood.

2.  It wasn’t the coldest, but it was certainly the dryest ‘Walk-A-Thon’ ever with a desert-like relative humidity and a dewpoint just a few degrees above the freezing mark. That rarely occurs in South Florida. The air was crisp, and it just felt so great to be out in it walking the beat.

3.  My brother and his wife and their dog live in a real nice (and large) modern neighbourhood of hundreds and hundreds of houses that are perhaps less than a decade old in the heart of Allen Texas – itself a northern bedroom community of Dallas. Allen is one of the TOP 10 safest cities in the entire country as reported in a recent annual survey.

4.  It was a 33-minute and 33-second walk at a slightly faster pace than I’m used to. My brother and his dog Buddy joined me for this nearly two-mile excursion. We could have walked around this place for miles and miles. Buddy was the one that was holding us back. I’m 41. My brother is 33. Buddy is in his late-40s. Buddy was totally exhausted towards the end of the two miles. Buddy is sleeping now.

5.  Me and my brother worked up MASSIVE appetites for Thanksgiving Dinner – coming up within the next couple of hours. We’re so truly looking forward to the ‘Dinner Of The Year’ !

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Food Health History Travel

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

If it’s Tuesday night then you just know what I’m up to – no matter where in the world I may be located at:

1.  I don’t have a cold yet. My 9TH cold in 13 months has not yet materialized. Give it a few days. It’ll make its presence known. I guarantee it. North Texas is full of germs. So are airplanes. I fly back in one this Saturday afternoon.

2.  I’ll be flying to South Florida this weekend on the 21ST anniversary of my very first flight to South Florida (from the Washington D.C. area). I landed at MIA on the 30TH of November in 1987, and I arrived so late in the night that it wasn’t until the wee hours of the 01ST of December that I actually arrived at my new home at (then) Homestead Air Force Base. I was 20 at the time. That was more than a half a life ago.

3.  Remember this family vacation of a lifetime that I identified in an early-September edition of these ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’ ?:

America's Magnificent National Parks
Magnificent National Parks - Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, And Nevada

It’s not gonna happen. The trip has been cancelled due to a variety of logistical reasons. Now we’re planning a replacement trip for sometime during the Spring, Summer, or Autumn of 2009. I cast my vote for Bermuda (which I just mentioned this past weekend on the ‘Saturday Night Retro’). Maybe we’ll take a 5, 7, or 9 day cruise from the U.S. to Bermuda and back ?

4.  Yesterday was quite the ‘Tex-Mex’ day for me. For Lunch we ate at Chili’s (not my choice), and then for Dinner less than 5 hours later we ate at a place called Mexi-Go. I delighted in the ‘Guadalajara’. That – mis amigos – is a chicken enchilada, a cheese enchilada, a grilled chicken fajita taco, rice, and beans. Oh yeah we enjoyed the standard appetizer of chips and salsa at both joints. I can’t deal with anymore Mexican food until I return back home to the Mexican restaurant capital of South Florida – Homestead 33030.

5.  TOMORROW me and my brother are going to visit the place where Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed John F. Kennedy exactly 45 years ago this past weekend. I’ve always wanted to visit this essential piece of world history. It’s a single event that lasted a few seconds that forever changed the United States Of America.

Those are my thoughts on this Tuesday night. I’m so glad that I could share them with you. Thank You for being a part of my Life.

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Travel

Monday Night Countdown

I’ve never done it, but if I did it I would drive through 5 U.S. states to get from South Florida (south of Miami) to North Texas (north of Dallas). It would be over 1,400 miles of Interstate highway shenanigans. Maybe some year I’ll do it. But for now I’ll just blog about doing it – and the 5 states I’d travel through to get there.

5.  Florida – More than half of the 1,400-mile excursion would be from Homestead to Pensacola. That’s about 12 hours of driving along Florida’s Turnpike, I-75, and I-10 just to get out of Florida. I think that reaching the Alabama state line would be cause for celebration – and time to call it a night at a nice hotel just across the border.

4.  Alabama – It’s where it all started for me. I was born in Selma on the 05TH of June in 1967. There was once an Air Force Base in Selma – Craig. The USAF isn’t there anymore, but it’s still operational as a local-use airport. Alabama has it all – beaches along the Gulf Of Mexico, big cities dotting the state, and the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains to the northeast.

3.  Mississippi – I’ve been to Keesler Air Force Base (near Biloxi on the Gulf Of Mexico), and I’ve driven along I-10 along the south coast of Mississippi. That’s pretty much my entire life history of the great state of Mississippi (in 1994 and 2004 respectively).

2.  Louisiana – I’ve been there once before in my entire life – during the Summer of 2004. I spent a week in New Orleans on U.S. Government business a year before Hurricane Katrina wrecked her havoc on the region. Guess what ?  I’m going back in about 2½-months. This time I’m flying there instead of driving. I’m taking a Carnival cruise out of New Orleans straight to Mexico.

1.  Texas – It’s too hot and dry here in the Summer. It’s too cold and dry here in the Winter. They have long droughts here. They have tornadoes here. They have blizzards and ice storms here. I couldn’t live here. I adore humidity. My skins demands moisture. My brother and his wife live within the northern suburbs of Dallas. I don’t like this part of Texas. Actually there’s no part of Texas that I really like a lot. I’ve been to San Antonio a bunch of times over the past 23+ years – most recently this past Summer. That’s a fun place to visit on vacation. I don’t think that I could live there either. I belong on the U.S. East Coast. I need to be within eyesight of the Atlantic Ocean. That’s my ocean. That’s where I rock and roll.

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Advertising History Television Travel

Saturday Night Retro

TODAY I flew on an airplane from Fort-Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. It was the umpteenth time that I flew anywhere. (I actually don’t keep track of all of my airline flights via an EXCEL spreadsheet.) I’ve lost track of my flying over the past 23½ years. I’ve flown first class once or twice (wasn’t too impressed), and I’ve flown most of the major airlines that are still in business today. Flying is not as fun as it used to be (prior to September 11TH 2001). This morning I left my home at precisely 6:30 AM to get to the off-site parking area at the airport by 7:30 AM to get to the terminal by 7:45 AM to check-in, get through security, and get to my gate prior to boarding at 9 AM and departure from the gate at 9:30 AM. And then there’s the 3-hour flight. It basically took longer to get from my home in Homestead to the aircraft at the airport than it did to actually fly that aircraft more than halfway across the country !

Check out this classic 60-second television commercial for the legendary Eastern Airlines of the way things used to be. Compare our baggage handlers of today with those depicted from the 1970s.

Before I turned 18-years-old and moved away from home to join the circus USAF I recall flying only twice in my life – twice to and from Bermuda on summertime vacations as a little kid during the mid-1970s. I recall Bermuda to be a fun little place out in the middle of the Atlantic – sort of a hybrid between a Caribbean nation further south and the United Kingdom further east. I wish to go back there one of these years to check it out all over again for the first time in over 30 years.

And now Ladies And Gentlemen – IT’S GO-GO TIME !  Let’s kick it old school !