Travel

Leaving on a jet plane

~ MaryG ~ 11 Comments
Daily writing prompt
You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?
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If we’re talking about my country (the U.S), I’m going on an airplane. The days when I may have fantasized about doing a Jack Kerouac/Hunter S. Thompson/Bob Dylan/Route 66 Great American Road Trip are over. It always sounded cool and like something you should do at least once in your life, but I never did it. I once drove from Massachusetts to Florida with a boyfriend. We had no particular plan. It was spring break and we just wanted to get warm, so we headed south. I think we made it to Daytona Beach before heading back.

Driving all the way to California from Massachusetts would’ve been a great adventure in my twenties, but I won’t be adding it to my bucket list now. I’m too old for that shit. And a bus would be even worse.

Actually, my mother took a bus from Massachusetts to California with two of her friends (one from high school and one from college) in 1960, between her junior and senior year of college. This was before women could get birth control or hold a credit card in their own name. They got jobs in Los Angeles and stayed for the whole summer, then took the bus back. They just wanted to see the country and have an adventure. I’ve always been impressed that my grandmother allowed her to plan that trip and that she had the guts to go.

Los Angeles in 1959 (photo by Railroad Jack on Flickr)
My mother in the 1950s

I suppose you could take a train across the United States, but nobody I know has done that, so perhaps it’s not that great of an experience.

Six years after my mother’s adventure, I was born. Two years after that, Peter, Paul and Mary wrote Leaving on a Jet Plane. I always loved that song.

Roma 🇮🇹

~ MaryG ~ 4 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Where would you go on a shopping spree?
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OK, so it’s fantasy Saturday?

I’d be miraculously transported to Rome, with no airports, passports or wait times involved. (Beam me up, Scotty)

I’d spend the morning shopping on the Via del Corso and then head over to Trastevere for the afternoon. I would replace the buttery-soft, knee-length black leather coat that I bought on my semester abroad (which was subsequently stolen in NYC) and also get some new black leather gloves and whatever the heck else I want (it’s a fantasy, right?)

I would have plenty of time to take breaks in outdoor cafés. The weather would be 70 degrees and sunny. My feet would not hurt. My husband would cheerily accompany into every single store and carry my purchases without complaint. The dollar/euro exchange rate would be in my favor.

My friend Andreada and me in NYC in 1988. This is the one and only picture of my Italian black leather coat. It was so soft. It got stolen that very night from my chair in a Manhattan bar.

Related posts:

Semester abroad

Europe calls me – still

Novel lessons

~ MaryG ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
What is the last thing you learned?
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Sometimes I feel guilty that I read mostly fiction books. Typically, I read a couple of memoir-type nonfiction books each year (i.e. Michelle Obama, Anne Lamott, Prince Harry – couldn’t resist!), but I don’t prioritize the big, serious nonfiction bestsellers, like The Persuaders, which I know I should read.

Still, I learn a lot from novels by great writers. (I realize this is not an amazing revelation. Readers of fiction know this already.) Great novelists do so much in-depth research that you end up learning a lot of stuff, while engrossed in the lives of fictional characters.

Yesterday, I finished “Unsheltered” by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Kingsolver. As with all Kingsolver books, I learned new things about the natural world, but I also learned a few things about Cuba in this one. There’s an endearing character named Tig, a GenZ anti-capitalist who has returned to the US after a year in Cuba. She tells her mother about “the yellow guy” (El Amarillo) in Cuba, which is a government-organized hitchhiking facilitation system. (The facilitators wear yellow/beige uniforms.)

Who knew? I mean, it doesn’t put Cuba on my bucket list or anything, but it’s interesting that they’ve found a way to cut down on all the wasted seats—in all the gas-guzzling vehicles—that are heading to the exact same destinations. American soccer moms could use a yellow guy.

A yellow guy in Cuba

Related post:

Book group

Air travel

~ MaryG ~ 6 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What bores you?
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Even in ideal circumstances, air travel is “boring” at best. You arrive at the airport hours early to sit and wait to be herded onto a thin metal tube (uncomfortably close to scores of strangers—some with pets), only to wait even longer (as a strapped-in captive) to be launched into the sky for an undetermined length of time, during which you’ll definitely have to pee.

Throw in a snowstorm, a pandemic, turbulence, a baby, a maintenance delay, or God forbid – a connecting flight, and you’re really just asking for trouble. Heading to the airport soon. Wish me luck.

An animal’s tail poking through to my seat on a recent flight.
De-icing the wings: a familiar sight to many New Englanders
Boring can be beautiful

Experiences over stuff

~ MaryG ~ 11 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Write about your approach to budgeting.
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Budgeting is hard. In the old days, when we first bought a house and got a mortgage, there was no extra money at all. We already had one child. My husband got a second job delivering newspapers at the crack of dawn to make ends meet. When we moved again, we had two kids and the expenses were even higher, so I went back to work. In the old days, when we felt like we were low on money, the solution was always to work more.

Now that we’re empty nesters, I am able to budget for optional stuff like travel. Typically, I make a list of expenses on the notepad in my iPhone. I plan for the big stuff (airfare, hotel, car rental), book it (so I know what it’ll really cost), and then determine how much I feel comfortable spending on other stuff (dinners, excursions, etc). Now that I’m older, I’m prioritizing experiences over stuff.

For example, when we went to Paris, we had dinner IN the Eiffel Tower. It was very expensive, but it was amazing! It was such a special setting and the food was delicious. We sat next to some Germans and a young American couple from the Bronx who were clearly splurging too. We had a lot of fun chatting with them and it was surreal to be eating in the actual Eiffel Tower. I could’ve purchased a nice French designer bag for the same price, but this was so much better.

Now, when I watch the Paris Olympics this summer, I’ll be thinking of that night whenever they show the Eiffel Tower.

We got lucky. Our table was right next to the windows. And yes, of course we sprung for the €25 souvenir photo.

Related post:

Bucket List Progress: PARIS

Hot air balloon flight

From Sea to Shining Sea

~ MaryG ~ 11 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?
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One thing that makes me feel patriotic is beautiful, sweeping American vistas. I have been known to break out singing “America, the Beautiful” in public. I think it should be our national anthem. The words are better than the “Star Spangled Banner.” And most people can sing it. It’s not as hard.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountains majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

I’m also a big fan of “This Land is your Land.” I can – and will – join in singing harmony whenever I hear it.

This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.

Here’s the Woody Guthrie original version from 1940.

Other countries have spectacular scenery too, but ours is so vast and varied—from sea to shining sea.

🎵 🇺🇸 🎶

Maui, Hawaii, 1993
San Francisco Bay, California, 2012
Palm Springs, California, 2010
The incredibly blue Lake Tahoe, California, 2012
Moonrise, Lake Tahoe, California, 2012
Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado, 2009
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, 2009
The hallowed ground of Gettysburg National Park, Pennsylvania, 2017
Taughannock Falls State Park, Trumansburg, New York, 2022
Lake Cayuga, Ithaca, New York, 2021
Saratoga Springs, New York, 2019
The Green Mountains, Stowe, Vermont, 2014
The White Mountains, Bartlett, New Hampshire, 2013
The rocky coast of Maine, Kennebunkport, 2022
Nantucket, Massachusetts, 2007
Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts, 2023
The beach border of Westport, Massachusetts and Little Compton, Rhode Island, 2006
Newport Harbor, Rhode Island, 2023. This is the 1970 America’s Cup contender Heritage.
Watch Hill, Westerly, Rhode Island, 2021
The Outer Banks, North Carolina, 2003
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 2009
Delray Beach Florida, 2021
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, 2014
The aquamarine Gulf of Mexico in Longboat Key, Florida, 2022

LAST ONE: the iconic Grand Canyon, Arizona, 2023. Pictures don’t really do it justice. There’s a quiet awe to the place that perhaps this video captures just a tiny bit.

If you made it to the end of this post, THANK YOU for looking at all my pics. I loved taking them.

🇺🇸

Related posts:

Family Road Trip: Colorado edition

TO READ list

GenX Mom Not Calm

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

If there was a biography about you, what would the title be?

According to my son the subtitle of this blog—GenX Mom Keeps Calm & Carries On—is not accurate. According to him, I am not calm or “chill.” He says his father’s the calm one.

I started this blog shortly after I turned 50, in the fall of 2015. The name seemed about right at the time. I wrote six posts about regular mom/life stuff in 2015-16. Then all hell broke loose. The pussy-grabbing star of “Celebrity Apprentice” won the presidential election over a highly-qualified former Secretary of State and US Senator, even though she got 2,864,974 more votes than he did. Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the popular vote by more than the population of the City of Chicago, which has 2.66 million people. I’ve been to Chicago. It’s huge. It’s a huge city. Hillary Clinton beat Trump by more than a Chicago. Think about it.

The big city of Chicago, 2006

Clearly I was traumatized by the election of Donald J. Trump and all that followed, including learning that I had Trump supporters among my nearest and dearest.

Blogging suddenly seemed pointless. I didn’t even think about blogging regularly again until Trump was safely out of DC and Biden was sworn in.

That whole time period after the 2020 election, when the networks took forever to declare Biden the winner and Trump kept saying the election was rigged and would not concede, was SO F***ED UP. Those crazy images of “Stop the Steal” rallies in Arizona and endless, needless recounts in Georgia with Trump caught on tape telling officials to “find him 11,780 more votes” like a mafia boss. WTF. We are the United States of America. This doesn’t happen here.

And then…and THEN…two weeks before Biden’s inauguration a fucking RIOT inside the United States Capitol while Congress convened to certify Joe Biden’s electoral win—a perfunctory, procedural, ceremonial event that never caused a stir before in my entire life. And now we’ve got Senators hiding under benches and Vice Presidents being whisked away by the secret service?!?

OK, so clearly I’m not calm anymore. I may never have been. It’s sad that I’ve been like this for so much of my son’s life. He was just 15 when Trump won, and now he’s a senior in college.

I probably won’t change the name of my blog (because I’m not sure how to do it and I’d probably end up deleting the whole thing by accident), but I’ll try to find a more accurate title for my imaginary forthcoming biography. Suggestions welcomed.

Here are a few more pictures of my one and only trip to Chicago. I went with high school friends not long after we reunited for our 20th reunion. We were 40. We liked it!

Grandparents

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What were your parents doing at your age?
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When my parents were my age, they were new grandparents to my daughter. They only have two grandchildren and she was their first. They were thrilled to have a granddaughter and helped me out a lot. My mother would visit and babysit at least once a week. I was lucky that they lived within an hours drive.

Outside of being grandparents, they were big travelers. They went on many trips to countries around the world including China, Japan, Russia and all over Europe. I have some beautiful gifts from places they traveled to.

All families have issues (mine included), but I know I’ve been extremely privileged to have two responsible, caring parents who are still alive and well and married to each other! How many GenXers can say that? I know I got really lucky in the parent department.

They’ll be celebrating their 85th and 90th birthdays this summer, as well as their 62nd wedding anniversary.

Here we are on the beach in Florida five years ago. I’m looking forward to visiting them in Florida next week. It’ll be my first trip down to see them in their “snowbird” locale since the pandemic. I feel so lucky that I get another chance to make this trip.

Swimming with Sharks

~ MaryG ~ 6 Comments
Bloganuary writing prompt
What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?
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I can’t think of anything I’m scared to do that I actually want to do. I’m scared to jump out of an airplane, but fortunately, I don’t have a burning desire to go skydiving.

Hmmmm….

I love the ocean and have been snorkeling a few times. I guess scuba diving would be cool, but it also seems scary. What if your air tank fails? What exactly are “the bends” anyway?

I remember I couldn’t get myself back onto the boat fast enough when our guide pointed out a shark on a snorkeling excursion in the Bahamas. (I whacked my leg on the boat’s ladder so hard that I had a huge bruise on my shin for weeks.) I did NOT enjoy seeing a real shark without 4-5 inches of plexiglass between us. I prefer aquarium sharks.

In order for me to go scuba diving, I would need to feel very safe and have a highly qualified instructor. In addition, I would need one of those shark-repelling electronic shields, like Annette Bening had in Nyad. If all that could be arranged, I think scuba diving would be amazing.

Underwater selfie (Bahamas, 2012)
Snorkeling scenery
The SHARK – tiny at first, then pretty damn big when it came right up to the boat
The shin-whacking boat ladder (with shark in the water) – I was the first one up and out of the water, even though both of my kids were still in. I guess I figured my husband would save them.
The snorkeling group