Category: Travel

My Favorite Music Decade

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date October 29, 2020

Greetings my friends. It’s Thursday October 29TH 2020, and it’s the start of another 4-day weekend of blogging – today, tomorrow, Sunday, and Monday. I don’t blog on Saturdays. That’s my day of rest. That’s my day with God’s Word. I also don’t blog on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Those are just my days off from this blog. There are a few Tuesdays each year when I do blog for a special occasion. The next one will be in December.

I normally don’t blog about music on Thursdays because I already do so on Fridays and Mondays, but I’ll make an exception this week.

When I was in the Wichita Falls Texas area last month we were listening to 50s On 5 on SiriusXM in my Uncle’s big Ford pick-up truck. He’ll be 90 in a couple of months, so the 1950s were his decade for pop music. He was 18 to 28 back then, so he heard those great hits on some great old-fashioned AM radio stations. Every so often he would hear a song that he wasn’t too fond of, so he would switch it over to 60s On 6. From there he would switch it over to the Love music channel. That wouldn’t last long, as it was soon back to 50s On 5.

My brother is 45. His favorite decades channel is 80s On 8 – followed closely behind by 90s On 9. That’s what we listened to in his SUV while driving around the northeastern suburbs of Dallas Texas. Every so often he’d switch it over to 70s On 7 – knowing that it’s my favorite music decade.

I loved ’70s music back in the ’70s when it was brand new on the radio. I was 2 to 12 during the ’70s. I remember listening to Top 40 radio for almost as long as I’ve been alive. I remember those childhood years in Prince Georges County Maryland with my very first radio – listening to WWDC AM-1260 out of Washington D.C. – and also WPGC AM-1580 (and then later on FM-95.5). Those were the best pop music years of my life !

But then 1980 hit, and I all but abandoned ’70s music for the next 30 years. Top 40 music continued on, and the ’70s seemed so outdated to me. It also brought back some bad memories for me. I wanted to leave those behind forever.

But then something weird happened in 2010. After 3½ years of listening to only Christian pop, rock, hip hop, and dance music from the day of salvation – I started listening to a local South Florida “oldies” station that was playing ’70s music on my coworker’s radio at her desk. I began reminiscing about the decade that I had left behind. I soon went all ’70s all the time, and that lasted nearly 7 years until 2017. It was actually during those 7 years that my weekly hit music chart was on its longest hiatus since its inception 35 years ago.

I still listen to ’70s music today alongside Christian pop music. My two favorite radio stations are both nationwide – K-LOVE and ’70s On 7. My iPod Shuffles that I listen to at work contain 305 (my area code) of my greatest hits of all-time (interchangeable), and almost 40% of them are currently from the ’70s.

The music that used to remind me of the bad times of my childhood now remind me of the good times. There were so many happy days back then, and now I see the light. The memorable music was the soundtrack of my life and times as a toddler, child, and preteen.

Tags Music, Radio

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Miles

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date October 22, 2020

I’m currently on-track to drive just a little over 300 miles this month for the 3RD month in a row. That’s an improvement over April and May (during the peak of the pandemic) when I drove a mere 120 miles and 173 miles respectively. The anomaly months since the pandemic began were June and July when I drove 1,175 miles and 1,227 miles respectively. (Of course I also drove to and from South Alabama while on vacation.)

I’ll finish 2020 with less than 6,500 miles driven – well below my 2015 to 2019 annual average of over 10,200 miles.

I hope to get back to driving in a more normal year in 2021 with a few fun road-trips in the mix. I may also drive almost 3,000 miles to and from North Texas next November. I usually do so every 2 to 3 years, and I last did so last year.

And now for a different type of miles – my walking miles as per my Fitbit. In 2019 I averaged 17.27 miles per week. In 2020 I’m down to an average of 14.95 miles per week. I need to get more exercise in by walking more. I also need for it to cool down a bit here in South Florida. We typically drop into the 60s (20°C and below) in the morning for the first time in 5+ months in late-October / early-November once our 7-month dry season becomes fully entrenched. Once we start feeling the 60s I can get out early in the morning and walk around my neighborhood or drive down to the city park and walk laps around the asphalt track.

It’s all about moving from here to there whether it’s on 4 wheels or 2 feet. It’s all about the miles.

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I Just Flew To And From Texas, And Boy Are My Arms Tired !

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date October 15, 2020

For the first time in 10 months – and first time during the COVID-19 pandemic – I flew the friendly skies between South Florida and North Texas on September 24TH and October 01ST (both Thursdays).

Aside from the “new normal” of constantly wearing a face mask while inside the airports and on the airplanes everything else was close to the way it’s always been. Security was the same. You still had to remove everything from your pockets and take your shoes off. You still had to remove laptops and tablets and liquids from your carry-on bags.

I tried something new for all of my flights. I checked-in via my airline’s iOS app up to 24 hours in advance, and I even paid for my baggage on the app. I used an electronic boarding pass. Once I got to the airports I simply walked-up to a kiosk, scanned my boarding pass, printed my baggage tag, slipped it on my baggage, and turned it in at the counter. It all worked flawlessly. One of the advantages of doing all of that electronically is that the app gives you a current location status of your checked-in baggage. I didn’t have to worry whether or not my baggage was on the same airplane as I was on. I knew it was. I’ll be going electronic on all future flights.

My flight from #MIA to #DFW early in the morning (boarding began a little before 5 AM) was jam-packed at or near 100% capacity. Social distancing only applied up until the point that you entered the aircraft. After that you were pretty much piled on top of each other. I actually took a short follow-on flight from #DFW to #SPS (Wichita Falls), and that flight was perhaps 30% full. #SocialDistancing

A week later on the return trip back to #MIA (out of #DFW) my mid-morning to mid-afternoon flight was once again at or near 100% capacity, and it was a Boeing 777 ! I was actually blessed with extra legroom on this flight, as I was directly behind the main cabin restrooms. Seats were 10 across, and I was in 1 of the 4 middle seats.

Air traffic is down about 70% from last year, and one of the advantages of that are most flights are departing their gates, taking-off, landing, and arriving at their gates early – before their scheduled times. That was the case for all 3 of my flights. At both #MIA and #DFW it was quite eerie to see so few people walking around inside the terminals. At #MIA there were parking spaces available starting at ground level in their main parking garage. I had never seen that before. I pulled-in to a parking space less than a minute after entering.

Want something to eat and drink while inflight ? You’ll get an individually-sealed plastic bag with a small package of cookies and a small bottled water inside. No coffee. No soda. No snack boxes for $5. Those days are over.

Finally it just wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t bring back this gem from the classic days of this blog. This is the way flying used to be en route to Miami, and then once you got here – it was #GoGo time !

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Road Trip !

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date October 8, 2020

I spent a week with my family (immediate and extended) in North Texas during the last 7 days of September. (I actually flew back home to South Florida on October 01ST.)

During the #Texoma portion of my visit we continued tradition by going on a fun road trip about an hour or two away from the Wichita Falls area. In previous years we’ve gone north, east, southeast, and south. This year we went a new direction – northeast – about 70 miles to the historic town of Duncan Oklahoma. We visited a fun museum – the Chisholm Trail Heritage Center & Garis Gallery Of The American West. We also checked-out a large nursery (garden store) as well as some antique stores along the way.

Up until a couple of years ago I was made aware of the destination(s) of our road trips days and even weeks in advance. That allowed me to do research to find out more about it. But then last year my first cousin once removed (leader of our road trips) decided that it would be more fun if I knew nothing about the destination until we got there. She wanted it to be a surprise to me. We’ve occasionally made a wrong turn and gotten lost along the way to some of our destinations, so it seemed like a surprise to her as well. But getting lost along the way is part of the fun of a family road trip.

We didn’t get lost on this road trip to and from Duncan. My cousin knew exactly where she was going.

Another educational and entertaining road-trip is in the books, and I’ve got the photos to remind me of the good times that we shared together. I’m looking forward to the next destination in September of 2021.