A year ago, we were at what we thought was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Jessica and I spent a relatively quiet night at home, playing games and watching movies before taking a lovely hike along the coast near Santa Cruz to usher in 2021. That night, that day…they were pleasant, but a bit sad. You see, for the […]
An Interruption: the worst day of the year.
NYC5: New York Goes Over the Top (Arts and Holidays)
New York is big. Shocking information, I know. This means there’s a lot of pretty much everything. One of the things that there’s clearly a lot of is museums, particularly art museums. We passed up visiting several dozen that we either wanted to go to or simply walked by on the street. On one of our architecture walking tours, I […]
NYC4: Underground, Out Loud, and on the Table
And…we’re back with more of my favorite bits of New York life. One of those is without a doubt the subway. I’ve always loved the New York subway–and public transit in general–since I’ve been a kid. For much of high school and college I wore a necklace with a NY subway token on it, and my college thesis was about […]
NYC3: From the Past into the Future
Everyday as we walked around New York we saw signs of construction. At one point we even debated the ratio of blocks that had scaffolding (to protect pedestrians from construction) to those that didn’t. At least on the major north-south avenues, I think we decided it was something like 1-to-1. Slightly less on residential streets, but the crosstown streets in […]
NYC2: It’s Been a Long Time Coming
So, if you didn’t notice, I failed to write anything for the past month or so. Jess and I continued to absolutely love our time in New York, but all of my “work” time (i.e. when Jessica was working and I was at home getting stuff done and not just enjoying life) ended up being dedicated to studying math. I […]
NYC1: First Impressions, Friends, and Family
Jessica and I have been in New York for almost three weeks now and are absolutely loving it. It feels completely different from our last three months of travel, but also has some bits of similarity. Let me see if I can explain… To start off, I have a very different relationship with New York than anywhere else we’ve been […]
It’s All Fun and Games (and some work)…in Germany’s Rhineland
The last couple of weeks of our zipping around Europe were definitely our least touristy, but also incredibly pleasant for completely different reasons. By a series of lucky accidents, we had two sets of close friends, two important work contacts for Jess, and one huge game convention for Gabe all within a couple hours train ride of each other in […]
Borderlands Through the Ages…from Strasbourg to Trier
Our last stop in France was Strasbourg, a city that, like the rest of Alsace has passed back and forth between France and Germany numerous times. Today it is the seat of the European Parliament, one part of the complex system of governance that rules the European Union. It seems like a fitting place for such an institution, along the […]
Roundabout France…a driving adventure, part trois
On the road again… That may not be my greatest photo ever, but one of the cutest things about French rural roads were the rows of trees planted along the sides. Here, the trees are well-spaced away from the road, but in other places the trees were quite close, often squeezing roads down to only one lane wide. But these […]
Roundabout France…part deux (wherein our car just sat in a driveway for a few days)
After leaving Carcassonne behind, we drove along the northern edge of the Pyrenees and eventually up into the foothills to reach Mendive, a tiny village of about 200 people. One of those people just happens to be an amazing advocate for children’s participation in political decision-making, and was the first person Jess was headed off to meet with in order […]