Adventure

So, I'm doing a thing. I'm a little bit nervous. No, I'm a LOT nervous. But I want adventure.

I'm going on a TWO WEEK VOYAGE aboard Pride of Baltimore II, my schooner. They posted the itinerary Wednesday, I slept on it and signed up Thursday, and I have to pay by Monday. And the trip begins March 15. That's right, March. Before the first day of spring, even.

We're going from Baltimore to Saint Petersburg, Florida. That will be down the length of the Chesapeake Bay, out into the ocean, around Cape Hatteras, down along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts, along Florida and around or through the Keys, and back up into the Gulf of Mexico to St Pete. It's about 1400 nautical miles.

The way these voyages go, they set a longer than absolutely needed period of time to make the trip, and then study the forecasts and actually do the sailing in the best weather window. I figure at only six knots, it's about 10 days, so there is a lot of room for adjustment at either end. Probably, once we set off, we pretty much stay out until we get there. No stops are planned along the way. And for a ship the size of Pride II you can't just pull into any marina along the way for a break. I understand any impromptu stops are generally anchoring rather than tying up to a dock somewhere. I'll book my flight home in a refundable way, because it might need to be changed based on what we do.

When we get closer, I'll be able to refine what clothes I need based on the weather. But it'll be winter, and colder on the water, so bundling up for the first week seems in order. Then, Florida in March? On the water? Mild, not freezing, but not hot by any means. Layers. And rain gear. And nylon undies so I can wash them out - no laundry on the boat, and two weeks is too long to pack for. 

Six weeks from now, I can be a little bit stronger than I am today, and I actually feel pretty good today. But this is a very big kedge to help motivate me to action to stay strong! I know I can do the basics aboard, up and down ladders, standing and sitting around, holding the wheel, pulling on ropes, coiling lines. In the unlikely event it gets really rough, I'll opt out of anything that makes me nervous. But the stronger I am, the better off I'll be. 

Yippee! Looking at the photos from previous trips are making me smile!

Five Things for 2023

Snapped right after a new color in the hair.
Also shows the hips, as big as ever!

The month is nearly over, but I'm finally getting around to sharing some of my notions for 2023. I like to use milestones to take stock and think about changes, whether or not they fit the mold of "resolutions", and whether or not you are doing it at year end. So here I am. New hair and all.

I am very influenced in how I'm doing these things by Gretchen Rubin and her podcast, "Happier". For several years, she and her sister have been promoting ways to think about what you want to accomplish and tools to get that done. So some of this is borrowed.

There is not a word about weight here. I've tied with the highest weight of my life. I can't say I don't truly care, but it is not my focus right now. What is my focus is getting stronger and getting out there and doing things.

1. Word of the year
   Funny, this word just came to me yesterday. I'd been mulling it over, various iterations of how to describe being more active in a single word that would resonate. Maybe because it's movie season, it finally clicked: "ACTION!". Less sitting on the couch planning to do things, more actually doing them.
   
   
2. Outside 23 for 23
   This is pure Happier podcast. For several years, they have been promoting a specific action to be done for a certain amount of time every day for the year. They did things like "walk 20 minutes in 2020". This year, it's be outside for 23 minutes every day in 2023.  There are so many benefits to being outside, proven often. And, one is more likely to do things outside if you are trying to be outside anyway.
   
   The only rule to participate is there are no rules - just do something that is meaningful to you. So passing between house, car and stores can count if you want it to. I had a very low energy day where I sat in the sunshine in back wrapped in blankets watching Bixby. Definitely counts.
   
   I have to confess that despite the lax rules, by any construction I have failed at this three times already this year. Each of these was a nasty cold day with solid rain and wind. Still, I think I can do better. I do have a covered front porch - I could swaddle in blankets and sit out there. Even better, I have rain gear, and it works.
   
   
3. Minimum Baseline
   This is an idea I got from a running coach. She used in the context of "every run feels like crap as you start". And so the idea is to get out there and tell yourself there is an absolute minimum you can do no matter what - even if it's just put on the running clothes and jog 100 yards. In my case, it's not about running goals, but overall activity for the day. I've tracked my daily steps for more than a decade. For the past several years, in addition to looking at monthly average steps,  I've looked at the metric of how many days had fewer than 5,000 steps. If you look at my previous report card post, you will see that December had 15 days where I walked fewer than 5,000 steps! That is an all time high! An all time low for sluglike days! Without an office to go to, and with fewer and shorter dog walks in the works (see below) I do have to work at 5,000 steps. But it is ridiculous to be that inactive. I do need to walk my feisty little dog. In addition, while I did succeed in getting rid of my treadmill (yay!) I still have my little trampoline. That gives me about 1,000 steps for every 10 minutes of bouncing. Bouncing is definitely a workout - generally gets the heart rate up higher than just strolling. That is my backup if it's a nasty day where neither the dog nor I want to go out.
   
   So I've only had one day so far this year where I fell below 5,000 steps in a day. I think what happened is that it was a nasty day, I was thinking I'd get a chance to bounce my way to the finish line, but then I discovered I had to be on the phone or zoom from 5 pm to 9 pm. When I finished with talking to people, I was 2,000 steps short of the goal and not prepared to work that hard for at least 20 minutes instead of going to bed.
   
   But having been caught up once, now I'm alert to this. I can manage my time better and make sure this particular trap doesn't catch me again.
   
   
4. Bixby Training
   Bixby is the snuggliest dog in the world, for me. But he is very barky. He lives in a high state of arousal, which is not good for him nor for me. He can get into a barking frenzy, and he moves into Rumpelstiltskin mode where I think he will simply explode if he doesn't stop.  (He appears to have a very solid bite inhibition so I don't think there is any danger, but it's a lot of barking and lunging.) I am working on training him out of this. I have known general approaches to this for years, but I've decided to really buckle down and work on this right now. Very specifically right now, I'm working on the leash reactivity, rather than a big focus on the home barking. My trainer recommended to pick one where I can be consistent and focused. I decided that right now, it's more important to me to be able to take him on walks than to calm him down in the house.  During this time, it's better to avoid ever getting him over the reactivity threshold when we're out on the leash, so it's close to home, with a full pouch of very high value treats, and a close eye on what is going on around us. I believe I'm making progress with him. Today, I took him down into the park (at 7 am!) for the first time in a while. I was able to keep him calm the whole time despite seeing some dogs from a bit of distance, but he was very near the threshold when we got home. But, progress!
   
   So I also am striving for a Bixby minimum baseline, on leash and off our property for at least ten minutes every day. More short sessions is better than long ones like today's more than 30 minute walk.
   
   
5. Have Adventures!
   I love staying home and reading about other people's adventures. But when I get out there and do something different than usual, I love it. My threshold for "adventure" is very low. A trip I took to a resort/shopping development in January for a couple of hours counts. Hiking in new places count. Participating with a bunch of strangers in an usual performance art activity will count, too, if it comes together. Actual objective adventure also counts!
   

Let's Put 2022 to Bed

 Let's wrap this puppy up. While I didn't do a lot of posting about the metrics of my life, I did keep up my spreadsheets and graphs. I find it is helpful to have a "just the facts" look at how my life is unfolding. Memory is unreliable, and these numbers tell a story.

Here is 2022 by month, and yearly totals for the last four years. In general, darker is better. 
I put migraines in red and reversed this (darker is worse).  And in the bottom (yellow) section, I'm not sure more is always better - more books, for example, is not always better.

 The whole overview of the year is above, complete with context from prior years. Looking first at the yearly trends, look at the first section - activity measures. It's been downhill since 2019 (when I retired partway through the year). But I managed to turn around the downhill trend on some of these things - 2022 was more active by some measures than 2021. This was and is a hard fought battle. I didn't bike at all, I ran one whole mile, but I did get out there and walk! But not every day, by no means. I had more low activity days (days with less than 5,000 steps) than ever before, by a fairly wide margin.

The next little section shows the sad story of my weight - after holding it steady for the previous three years, I put on fifteen pounds and tied with my previous all time high. Let's just leave that there for now.

The next section contains some measures of wellness. I fell off the formal meditation bandwagon big time, this year. I believe I incorporate moments of mindfulness throughout my life in ways I didn't before I started meditating, but I don't sit for a practice much any more. In fact, many of the times I show I meditated, I put on a recorded meditation in the middle of the night in order to try to get back to sleep. In good news, migraine hours continue to decline! Two months with NO MIGRAINES at all! Woohoo! Sleep is relatively steady, and resting heart rate bounced around during the year, but the overall average didn't change that much.

The last section tracks various enrichment things. Again, these are not necessarily the most important things, but are things that are relatively easy to track and do show some softer aspects of my life. I was a reading machine this year, I wish I'd seen more movies, I hardly blogged at all, and likewise I failed to enjoy the delights of the city and city friends. But I traveled a lot, and I got a decent amount of sailing in. 

I've found the story of the ups and downs of the year are best captured in a graph of my daily steps throughout the year.

The dots are the daily step totals. The dark blue line is a running monthly average, and so shows the longer term trend hidden within the noise of daily variation. The lighter blue line is a running weekly average, so shows a shorter term trend than the monthly one.

So follow along the graphlines to read the story of my year. We start with an optimistic and motivated January, with several very busy days, followed by a steady decline in late winter and early spring as the bad weather and my bad knees dragged me down. There were some high points, but the trip to the Utah desert in March was disappointing as the weather kept us in. The weather got better during spring in Maryland, and I went out to California in April and I walked my brains out. Back home, I tried to get off the couch to train for my trip to the Nordic Isles in June and July, but pretty much I just hoped for the best and as a result I failed to enjoy the trip as much as I could have. I overused my knees and was often in pain.

I vowed to do better for my planned trip to Greece. We see a steady increase in average steps, facilitated by cortisone shots in my knees at the end of August, and steady physical therapy during September and October. Greece went really well, until I got covid. 

So the rest of the year was in the cellar, with constant struggles to get off the couch and move. The month of December has the lowest average steps of any month in years. It also has the most number of very low activity days. So I went on some walks, but consistency is lacking.

Steps are clearly a proxy for overall activity, but I think it's a pretty good substitute. I know that studies have shown that there is a clear relationship between few steps and all-cause mortality. From 4,000 steps a day to 8,000 steps a day, there is a clear relationship where more steps and better health are very tightly correlated. This is a correlation, and there is NOT a clear demonstration that moving from fewer steps to more steps results in better outcomes. It could be that folks in an unstoppable decline walk less. Is there such a thing as an unstoppable decline?

I don't want to end on a sour note, so let me say that right now, in the beginning of January, I feel pretty good, and very motivated to keep moving. I know deeply that moving more makes me feel better - there can be a virtuous spiral upward. So let's leave last year behind us, with maybe a few lessons learned, and go forward to the new year.

Go As You Mean To Follow

We've had delightful weather so far this year (creepily warm). I'm taking advantage of it to get out there and walk. I plan (hope) to do a post recapping 2022, and share my current thinking about goals for this next year. I've got a little data collection to do for each of those, so I thought I'd start off by bragging about my streak (THREE WHOLE FREAKING TIMES IN A ROW!!!!) days of walking. None of these are marathons, but it's good to get out there at all.

The first, on a crisp and sunny New Year's morning, is my "normal" walk - the mile and and half that goes down to the creek and back up through the neighborhood. I'd like to make this my minimum.

 

The following day, Monday, I went up to check on the boat and took a walk in the county park near-by.

And today, I dropped my big boy off at the airport this morning, and went exploring to a new-ish development, National Harbor. I had never been there, though I think it may have been open for a decade. It's got a Gaylord Resort, a convention center, and a mixed retail/restaurant/residential development built as a brand-new playground along the Potomac River across from Alexandria, Virginia. It was drizzling, I moseyed along looking at things, I didn't stay long, but I'm glad I scratched my exploring itch at least mildly.

I think I'll post these on my Quick Log, and I'll pick up posting these kinds of things there.

My Year in Books

OK, I read a lot this year! I actually had a goal to read slightly less this year than last, but here it is, more than 200 books, versus my goal of 150. Last year was 185, and 2020 was 180. The reason I set a lower goal is because I believeI spend way too much time on the couch reading. I do some listening to books which allows multi-tasking, but more than 2/3 of these books were read, not listened to. And, most evenings end up with me on the couch playing idle nonverbal games on my ipad while listening, so not so much multi-tasking going on. I've got to get some new hobbies, or sign up for additional volunteering!

I read most of these books on the kindle (70%) and when I finish it, it posts automatically to GoodReads, simplifying the keeping track. I manually enter hard copy and audio books, though I'm not so accurate in getting that right. Still, I think this is pretty good. (Actually, I just found a half dozen Audible books I hadn't added but I just did; not reflected in these totals!) And, of course, GoodReads makes the graphic, and also allows exporting to excel to make your own statistics. 

Folks, I only acquired and read less than twenty books on my own this year - all the rest were library books or audio books! Let's hear it for the library! Especially because my habit is to find an author I like, and then read my way through the entire oeuvre. The digital service my library uses tends to have all-or-none of authors I stumble across. With ten spots for checking out books, and another 10 to join waitlists, I keep them coming. 

I grade on a curve, and I think that makes me a harder grader than many others. In fact, a quick scan shows my score is higher than average for only six books this year. I assume a book will have three out of five stars, and it needs to be very good or very bad to deviate from that. So the graphic above shows the only three five-star books of the year. Here is a quick recap of them:

The absolute BEST indoor plant book! And Christopher Griffin, the Plant Kween, is the cutest guy I know - I found him on Instagram before I bought the book. So this book is luscious in its photography, but serious in its plant information. Latin names, proper botanical terminology, very precise notes about care. But luscious! (Bonus for Brooklyn readers: It contains portraits of the best plant shops to be found in the borough.)

Written entirely in the first person, this is a sprawling and moving book. VERY faithful to David Copperfield, which I read as a child. I had to get a plot synopsis of the original, which was fun then to figure out the modern characters, though it did result in hints of spoilers. Most of the books I read this year, the typical mystery, takes maybe five hours to read. This was more like fifteen! But worth it!

The story of a woman enslaved by her father, and how her life evolves as her circumstances change. Very moving depictions of the compromises made to survive. There is an historical note at the end, showing how this is closely based in reality. Not so very far from here, in place or time. It really gripped me.

 

 

 I rated just two books at two stars. One was really a short story; it seemed to me to be just exploiting the popularity of a series and squeezing some extra and unnecessary and not very entertaining mileage out of it by tossing in this story. The other was an historical mystery set in England in the early nineteenth century, the first of a series. I didn't even finish it - very rare for me - because I couldn't handle the historical anachronisms and inaccuracies, right down to rich people routinely drinking water. (Water wasn't safe to drink.) When I checked reviews on GoodReads, it turns out many others also noted these problems.

 My book count is up this year partly because I read more books written for children and teens. They go quickly, and can be very engaging. The bulk of these were fantasy novels. I raced through a series, The Ranger's Apprentice, that basically eschewed magic for craft and skill to create fantasy adventures in a imaginary medieval world (with a million anachronisms). With two offshoot series (new characters, same world, some overlap) there were a total of 25 of them! 

I whiled away much of my Covid isolation by re-reading a fantasy series by Megan Whalen Turner, The Queen's Thief. The big idea is a world much like Greece in the sixteenth century, but with different geography and a different pantheon of gods. I had read all six books a while back (written from 1996 to 2020), but downloaded them to the kindle to take along with me to Greece. There are conflicts ranging from families to nations to international dynamics, as the "Medes" (think Ottoman Empire) continually try to take over the Greek pennisula, with the (European analogue) "Great Powers" on the other side maybe or maybe not helping out the three squabbling Greek kingdoms. Nothing is as it seems in any of these books, told from different points of view. I hadn't read the last book, and the others had been read so long ago I had forgotten a lot. (Hey! In double checking the dates, I just discovered a new book out this year! A collection of related short stories and trivia to supplement the series. Happy Christmas to me!)

Nearly half the books I read this year were mystery novels, many of those in series. (I don't distinguish between mystery, thriller, suspense, spy, and related concepts, just lump them all as "mystery"). There was a charming and lighthearted series by Rhys Bowen called "Her Royal Spyness". Our heroine, when we meet her, is 25th in line for the British throne, but penniless and having to survive by her wits. Downton Abbey meets Dorothy Sayers in the 1920s, with fifteen books in the series so far. The author is prolific beyond this series, but I've not really sampled her other stuff. A more hardboiled series I'm nearly caught up with is the Walt Longmire set, by Craig Johnson. He is a sheriff in the least populated county in Wyoming. The descriptions of the physical landscape are gripping, and many of the characters are Native Americans, as there are a lot of tribal lands around. There is a TV series out, Longmire, inspired by these books but not at all a literal translation to the screen. I watched just the very first episode, and put it on my ever growing "to watch when I have time" list. My favorite mystery writer ever, Louise Penny, had a new volume out from her Inspector Gamache series which I devoured in previous years. The latest is one of the best ever. There is also a brand new television series, Gamache, out as of early December, again inspired by the books but not a literal translation. I've watched the first two episodes, and will watch the rest of the 8-episode season soon. 

There isn't a clear line always between fantasy and science fiction, but I do try to break them apart. I'm drawn to these genres because, as long as you are making things up, you can create a really appealing world, one I might like to visit. Many of my science fiction reads come from John Scalzi's blog, where he devotes space to allow authors to promote their books by talking about what they were trying to convey in the book ("The Big Idea"). An author I stumbled onto from the blog, Becky Chambers, is fabulous. The first book of hers I read is set in a universe she uses for several other books, but she focuses on different characters in wildly different settings. My favorite of this year (4 stars!!!!) is The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. The story takes place in a hospitality rest stop for interstellar travel, where a half dozen characters from different species from different planets are stuck together during an unexpected delay of undetermined length. Complex tensions and interactions ensue, but they all pull together in the end to save an endangered child.

An unusual book I read (also tipped off by Scalzi's blog) might be in the mystery genre or in the fantasy genre. The Peacekeeper, by B.L. Blanchard. It is set in an alternate world where the Americas were never colonized, and the Ojibwe nation surrounds the Great Lakes. There are crimes and mysteries, but "justice" is different in a society where restoring harmony is the main role of peace keepers. The physical description of an Objibwe Shikaakwa (Chicago) reminded me of the Afro-futurist vision of Wakanda, but with a Native American orientation. Refreshing! And a very good contemporary novel, Firekeeper's Daughter, by Angeline Boulley, is also set in Ojibwe culture, but in our world. Another hat tip to Scalzi's author's platform.

I read four books by Connie Willis, which share a common plot device - time travel is possible and Oxford University sends back scholars and historians to view historic events. Two are WWII in England books, one mixes WWII with a lighthearted take on Victorian England based on the Victorian book Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, and one takes us to the Black Death. They are entertaining in different ways, and transporting a contemporary observer to these settings makes for interesting situations. Recommended.

OK. Time to investigate new hobbies, other ways to spend my time.

The Twist

 So about a week into my trip, I got Covid. Ugh.

It came on me like a freight train, moving from afternoon fatigue requiring a nap, to shivering and putting on extra layers as I went to bed, then waking up in the middle of the night drenched with sweat, throwing off the covers and lying on top. My throat had been getting steadily more and more sore, and in that middle of the night session I felt like there was a knife down it, and a hammer hitting my head on top and in the back. I had been taking my temperature throughout, and it went one time just above 100, barely a fever. So I thought, maybe it's allergies. Maybe the headache is a migraine. But at first light, I dug out the test kit I'd brought along, and was frankly terrified when it turned positive. How many times in the past three years have I felt poorly, and tested, only to have it be negative? But here it was, and likely true. 

The fear wasn't for how sick I was going to get, it was the implications of being sick while on a ship in a foreign country. What was going to happen to me? How would I lose control of what would happen to me?

When, according to my daily schedule in my room, the medical office was supposed to be open, I masked up and went down. There was a Greek doctor and a Philipino nurse on duty. I told them my symptoms, but not about my self-test. At that point I had no more fever. They gave me a release to sign before giving me another test, and I hesitated several minutes before going ahead with the official ship's test. Again, the issue was, what will happen to me? How will I lose control over what will happen to me, once I'm in some system as being positive? But I went ahead, because I'm so much of follow-the-rules person. Of course, their test was also positive.

They told me I should isolate in my cabin. They gave me some kind of decongestant, to be taken at night. They gave me so tablets for a cough. They gave me some vitamin C. I asked what was in the decongestant, the cough tablets the ingredients, but I didn't understand the answer, and they seemed to think being told when to take it should be enough. They assured me the progression would probably be no worse than a bad cold, and they had no access to antivirals, but I shouldn't need them anyway.

So back to my tiny but cozy ship's cabin. They brought me menus, and took my meal orders over the phone, and delivered them by tray into my room. I took my Extra Strength Tylenol, religiously every 7-8 hours (no more than 3 doses per day) and took my temperature just before renewing each dose. Never again did I have even the tiniest fever. I did not take the nasal decongestant or cough medicine, never needing it. The nose dripped but wasn't plugged. My throat was sore, and I had brought a long a large collection of cough drops / throat soothers, which I partook of liberally. I had loaded up my kindle with books and my iphone with recorded books and my ipad with TV shows and movies before leaving home as I knew there wouldn't be internet available on the ship. The first day, I slept more than half the time away. I woke up the next day feeling almost normal, so time passed as I devoured some books, marched ten steps up and down my room, did a few desultory body weight exercises and stretches, sat on my tiny little veranda to get a glimpse of Greek scenery going by.

And I worried. I mentioned no internet. What I had was my cellphone with an international data plan. So when we were cozied up to the land, and I had connectivity on the phone, I had slow and small internet access. Generally at night we were at sea and there was no coverage. So I tried to look up international regulations about traveling with Covid, any regulations on the airline site, hotels in Athens, etc., and was more frustrated than satisfied. The first couple of days it was more formless worrying in between feeling bad and choosing to drown in some books rather than actually figure out any plan of action. I realized how having money makes everything easier - if I needed to stay in Athens for some days, it wouldn't ruin me. But I had done absolutely no research on Athens, since the only time I would have spent there would have been while staying on the ship. Hotels.com had 967 hotels available in Athens, and I had no notion about neighborhoods, properties, etc.. I felt I couldn't cope and just went back into my books.

The day before we were due to leave, I went back to Medical and asked them about leaving. The doctor and nurse worked for the ship, and they said folks from the tour company that chartered the ship would be contacting me. They said guidelines recommended isolating for five days, but there was no ban on flying, and in their experience most people just went home. So I reached out (not for the first time) to the program people on the ship, and they finally got back to me. Their main question was, "do you feel well enough to fly?" and for me, clearly, the answer was "yes". Except for a mild sore throat, a slightly dripping nose, I had no symptoms except tiredness. I wanted home, in my own house, in my own bed! So they made arrangements for me (and, it turns out, a few other covid-positive passengers) to be transported to the airport separately from the other passengers. I was able to check in for my flight on my phone, and there was a moment of trepidation about what questions I would be asked. But the airline asked many questions about documentation and paperwork, most of which did not apply to US citizens, and never about symptoms or test results. 

We had been divided into small groups for the trip, and on the last day one of the women from my group came by to ask how I was doing and if I needed anything. She had NOT been told I was Covid-positive, and I was ... embarrassed to tell her. As if it was my fault, and I worried that I might have infected the others.  We spoke through the open door of my cabin, distanced, and she didn't run away from me when I told her. 

The same sense of shame pervaded me at the airport. It's very inefficient to get from Athens to the US east coast. Basically, you have to fly to central Europe and then catch a US bound flight from there. In order to make the connections, you have to be on the first flights out of Athens in the morning (mine was 7 am). Because it was recommended being at the airport three hours ahead, and it took up to an hour to get to the airport from the ship, it meant leaving the ship at 3 am. The airport was crowded with many of the other 200 passengers from the ship all doing approximately the same thing. I was double-masked - surgical mask inside KN95 - put on headphones, stuck my nose in my kindle, and avoided any eye contact or acknowledgement. I *really* didn't want to have an out-loud conversation in the airport gate room about my flying with Covid. I also was not happy with the idea I was typhoid Mary spreading germs intercontinentally. I rationally thought the risk to others was low - Day 5, double masked - but I still feel like deciding to fly home was one of the more selfish things I've ever done. 

It was a tough trip on my virus-battered body. It might have been better for me, as well as everyone else, if I'd gone to a hotel for a couple of days. But that's behind me now, no longer an option. It took me several days after I got home to recover simply from the fatigue of the trip: up in the middle of the local night after 2 1/2 hours sleep, then 22 hours before I reached the front door of my house. I was masked all but about half an hour of those 22 hours which added to the discomfort. I switched out masks, going with a really good N95 with behind-the-head elastic straps on the long flight. During what turned into five hours in Frankfurt airport, I bought a sandwich and found a deserted section of the terminal with no-one around me for a big distance, and took off the mask and ate slowly. My nose was never so congested I couldn't equalize my ears on the flights, hooray, but still it was a slight drag to be breathing through the mask all the time. I ubered home, and the trip from the airport was double the normal time. I was so happy to get home and just fall into my very own bed.

I missed a big family wedding on Saturday to my great regret. Thanksgiving dinner is up in the air (so happy again to be a perpetual guest, not on the hook for hosting or cooking). I am likely to show up masked to chat for a while, and then take a doggy bag home to eat alone, unless I get negative tests by then. (Not yet). Still the little dripping nose and slightly sore throat, no fever.

As I assess my condition, I'm not sure what is fatigue, what is boredom, what is laziness. This is a perpetual battle for me. I've been for short walks, done small amounts of raking, worked out slowly, body weight exercises, with my trusted trainer over video. My big boy is living in my basement, did some grocery shopping for my empty refrigerator, leaves on Saturday. We've only talked in passing, me masked and keeping my distance. He turns THIRTY tomorrow, and we're going to have a partially outdoor celebration for him. 

So that's me. Poking along. Not terribly ambitious. But so happy to be in my sun-drenched room, in my favorite chair, not feeling too bad, puttering every now and then with my plants. Excelsior!

Greece

Syros

I went to Greece! This has been on my travel wish list since I was a teenager, but this particular trip was a bit of an impulse. I decided to experiment with taking a trip with a tour company all by myself, without knowing anyone at all on the tour. The company is Road Scholar, once upon a time known as "Elder Hostel". Their thing is old Americans that have intellectual curiosity, so their programs include an educational element, not just gawking and shopping. 

My cabin had a small balcony!
Also a very comfortable bed.

Road Scholar has chartered a small(ish) cruise ship for the next few years, and in line with their approach, they refer to it as their "floating campus". So there were about 200 passengers aboard, larger than the ship I took to Iceland but orders of magnitude smaller than regular cruise ships. They divided us in advance into groups of about 25, based on one of two activity levels we could select in advance, with a Greek guide. It was all old people, and I was surprised (but shouldn't have been) that I was on the young end of age distribution. Thanks to my conditioning work, I was also at the more fit end, though not at all alone in my abilities.

The first night, we had a welcome aboard talk in the lounge. We learned that contrary to plans, instead of staying in Athens and touring the Acropolis the next day, we were instead setting sail to the island of Syros, which had been scheduled for our last day aboard. They swapped out the two days because of a planned general strike in the country - much of what we wanted to see in Athens wouldn't be available. I was happy at their flexibility and responsiveness!

About halfway up the steps in Syros

There were two restaurants on board, one a sit down dining room and the other a buffet. (It turns out they served the same food in both.) That first night, I walked myself down to the fancy dining room, where there was a line and a person doing the seating. I told him, "I'm on my own, but would love to be joined to a table with others." He sent me to a round table for eight, where there ended up one couple and the rest single people on their own like me. Good conversation! People are really interesting! 

The ship cast off some time during dinner, and arrived at the island of Syros very early the next morning. We met with our groups for the first time, and were issued "whisper devices". These are a very good idea, especially with old people. They are basically low-power radio receivers that fit over one ear, with the group leader having the only transmitter and microphone. It made it much easier to hear what Antonis was saying, while maybe wandering a few feet away and looking at something else. 

So we went around the port town of Syros, which was actually built in the nineteenth century by refugees from other Greek islands who were displaced by the fighting against the Ottoman Empire as Greece emerged as an independent country. We only went a couple of miles total, with a few hills. Everything was interesting! After lunch, I returned to the town alone with my camera and toiled up the hill into the oldest part of town and to the church on top. There were warrens of streets and narrow alleys with stairs the only way to reach many destinations. I lost myself in the picture taking, loving the shapes and textures of light. 

Iconic Mykonos

Before dinner that night and almost every night, there was a session in the lounge, recapping the current day and previewing the next. I joined a group of single women in the lounge, and we ended up eating dinner together. More interesting stories!

The next day was Mykonos! My parents had been to Greece in 1967 and my mother had raved about Mykonos. That's when it went on my wishlist. She said the light was like no other place on earth. 

Iconic Windmills

The light was certainly great. This place has the classic whitewashed stucco with brightly painted wood trim that is iconic of the Greek islands. But according to our guide, nobody goes to Mykonos anymore because it's too crowded. We were the off season, and that meant we could make our way through the tiny twisted alleys of the old town just fine, but nearly everything, from restaurants to boutiques, were closed. I was enthralled with the romantic images. But the high end names on the various closed-for-the-season shops indicates how high end the season must be. But beaches! We didn't see them, they were on the far side of the island, but that would be my suggestion for an in-season visit, rather than the crowded town and shopping.

Me learning from the trip photographer

When our tour was over, we had the rest of the day and night to explore the town on our own. I fell in with another group of women to eat lunch in one of the few open restaurants, and somehow the conversation turned to death. Widows all, they each had gripping and heartbreaking stories of lost family members, children and siblings and spouses. At one point, they turned to me. "Do you have a traumatic death story you want to share?". "Not that I want to share" I said. 

After lunch, I had another solo session with my camera and scenery, very content. Dinner that night was with the same people from lunch, with a much more lighthearted conversation. The ship stayed put for the night.

Ruins on Delos

The next morning, very early we took a small local ferry boat to the nearby island of Delos. No-one lives on Delos, except for the watch cats, and a few rotating guards. The island was a sacred place in ancient times, and now the whole island is reserved as an archeological site. Our guide made the piles of rubble very relevant, describing the temples, the marketplaces, the life in the houses. Returning to Mykonos, we had another afternoon of photography before another dinner with the widows. 

A note on the cats: nobody claims to own cats, but they are well taken care of. People feed and water them everywhere, at least partially in acknowledgement of their important vermin control role. When our boat, the first of the day, pulled into Delos, a parade of cats, maybe twenty of them, came trotting down to the dock to greet us. They all had their tail sticking straight up in the air, very cute!

Mary's House?

The next day was Turkey! We put into a port city, and boarded buses to Ephesus, another ancient city partially excavated. Our first stop was a house that legend says Mary the mother of Jesus lived in, though documentation is sketchy and the most of the actual house is newer than her time. But John the Evangelist was definitely in Ephesus, and supposedly he would have been taking care of Mary. I think our guide made a good point when he said, "So many people are praying here, it must have power whatever the historical truth is."

Ephesus

Then we were off to the huge city of Ephesus, where there is a partially excavated site stretching for more than a mile along a hillside. Again, our guide made things come alive in a way that would have been hard to get on our own. One of the highlights is a collection of houses they have excavated and preserved by putting a roof over it, and putting ramps and skywalks to allow you to see things without damaging them. As an inveterate reader of historical fiction and fantasy based in the various vaguely Greek settings, I loved picturing life in these fairly large, several story high, houses.

The Houses at Ephesus

Dinner that night was with our small group, with our leader. We closed the restaurant down and I was exhausted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Italian architecture - Synagogue, Kos

The next day was the city of Kos, close to the mainland of Turkey. Our guide has a lot to say about the various occupations of the Greek islands throughout the tour. Kos was occupied by the Italians in the 1920s through World War II, and because an earthquake leveled much of the town during that time, the architecture of the rebuilt city clearly reflects their influence. The tour was to an ancient site dedicated to healing, and then a walking tour of the town. We had time to eat in a cafe and do a little low key shopping in this not-very-tourist oriented place.  Losing energy and with no date for supper, I ate alone in the buffet restaurant, much more quickly than the sit-down place would have been. Very early to bed.

Santorini ahead: note white clifftop cities

Recovered frescoes - Santorini

But I was up before sunrise the next morning to watch us coming into Santorini! I saw sheer cliffs capped with white, and it took a moment to shift from Iceland spotting of glaciers to understanding these were whitewashed stucco towns clustered on the edges of the cliffs. This time, we had to anchor out in the big bay and get on a small boat to a small dock on the island. We boarded buses and were off to another ruin and museum. The town of Akrotiri at the southern end of Santorini was covered by volcanic ash (just like Pompei) in an eruption in 1627 BCE, and so it is an exceptional snapshot and well preserved. A small portion has been excavated, and all of that has been covered over by a roof with walkways. The best and most fragile furnishings and decorations have been relocated to the museum, but again, it is fairly easy to picture the town the way it must have been. If there is only one archeological site you visit in Greece, this would be it. 

Clifftop views!

After the tour we had an opportunity to wander the cliff top town. Again, a lot was closed because of the season, but me with my camera was content. But I was tired, my head hurt, my nose was stuffed, my throat was sore, and I rode the cable car down to the boat landing to go back to the ship and lie down.

Next: An unexpected twist to the story!

I am hanging on for dear life here - scared of heights!
Also too tired to stand up straight.