The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 74 (574)

 It's not going to be a long post today. Son #2 came from Richmond to give me a weaving lesson, and I spent the afternoon with him what else weaving. Now, thanks to the laptop from Hell's being from Hell, I'm using a small burner laptop we got for our 2017 trip to Peru,with the emphasis on small. Anyway...

Speaking of something like our 2017 trip to Peru, international travel these days is not for the faint of heart. Which vaccines are approved for which countries and how likely are those to change while you're traveling? The UK, EU, and Shengen countries accept the four vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency--AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. The UK and many EU countries do not recognize the Chinese Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines despite their being approved by the WHO. The US is still considering which vaccines to accept when it reopens to fully vaccinated travelers in November.  The FDA so far says that vaccines approved by the WHO would be accepted--Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, AstraZeneca made in India, Sinopharm, and Sinovac. One concern is that we could end up with a two-tier system. People vaccinated with the most effective vaccines will be able to travel freely while people in developing countries won't be able to if they have gotten a "lesser" vaccine.

As for international travel, The Professor and I are thinking 2023 ... maybe ... with all things being subject to change at a moment's notice. Who knows, I may take along this annoyingly small laptop on one more great adventure.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 446

The Professor and I got our first shingrix vaccines this morning. The Professor has had a case of shingles and assures me that I do not want to get it. A second dose comes in two to six months. The best thing about it? Our health insurance covered it in full. I'd heard that some insurers don't, so I salute you, Aetna via the local university.

POTUS announced that the US would immediately share 25 million covid vaccines with countries around the world. There are 30 Democratic House of Representatives members who want him to be even more aggressive in helping countries such as South Africa and Brazil. I'm not sure to what extent those two countries need vaccines more than some of the very impoverished African countries. 

XPot has a new Hillary Clinton to attack in the dinners and rallies he has planned for summer. Who might that be? If you guessed Anthony Fauci, you are correct. XPot's advisers think that his base has a "visceral" reaction to Dr. Fauci because he reminds them of when businesses and schools had to shut down. To take it a step further, XPot's buddy Tucker Carlson thinks that Dr. Fauci should be criminally investigated. Let's criminally investigate XPot instead. Oh, wait, we already are.

Discussion of the coronavirus's origins continues. Dr. Fauci has said that China should release the medical records of nine people whose records could provide clues into the origins. He said, "I have always felt that the overwhelming likelihood--given the experience we have had with  SARS, MERS, Ebola, HIV, bird flu, the swine flu pandemic of 2009--was that the virus jumped species. But we need to keep on investigating until a possibility is proven."

How about we tie together the coronavirus pandemic and climate change, two things XPot denied existed or, if they did, were problems? They are, indeed, related. Deforestation and hunting of wildlife are bringing animals into closer contact with humans and livestock. Some 70 percent of new infectious diseases have come from animals including SARS, bird flu, Ebola, and HIV. Recent research estimated that the annual cost of preventing further pandemics would be $26 billion, or only two percent of the financial damage due to covid. Measures that could be taken to help prevent viral transmission include protecting forests, shutting down wildlife trading, better protecting livestock, and improving disease detection in wildlife markets. Some of the world's experts on the subject say that the world is in an "era of pandemics." Pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, and kill more people if we don't stop destroying the natural world.

Vaccination of teens needs to be accelerated. Covid hospitalizations among 12- to 17-year-olds are increasing. Of more concern than basic hospitalizations are the number of hospitalized teens who require ICU care with mechanical respiration. Teens aside, the NIH director says that states that don't reach high vaccination thresholds may be "sitting ducks" for another outbreak. I'm thinking the coronavirus will fire at will, and the results will not be pretty.

France will on Wednesday start a new system for incoming travelers. There will be three levels: Green, Orange (or Amber), and Red. Green countries include EU members, Australia, South Korea, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, New Zealand, and Singapore. Travelers from Green countries are permitted to travel to France with no restrictions. Travelers who have not been vaccinated will need to provide a negative PCR or antigen response test result within 72 hours of travel. It is not clear how travelers from countries without vaccination passports will prove that they have been vaccinated. Orange countries include both the UK and the US. Travelers from Orange countries must also show negative test results. Travelers who have not been vaccinated can enter France only for essential purposes and are required to self-isolate for seven days. The vaccine a traveler has had must be one of the four approved by the EU--Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, or Johnson & Johnson. Red countries include India and Brazil. Vaccinated or not, travelers from Red countries may only enter for urgent reasons. They must provide a negative test result and quarantine for 10 days. Of note, the quarantine will be monitored by police officers.

Variants of concern continue to be of concern. Delta now appears to be the dominant strain in the UK. Seventy-three percent of Delta cases are in unvaccinated people compared to 3.7 percent in fully vaccinated people. Only five percent of confirmed Delta cases that were admitted to hospital and only two deaths were in fully vaccinated people. Says the director of University College London's clinical operational research unit, "I get the desire to be optimistic (honestly) but minimising delays action and ultimately makes things worse. Exponential growth is a red flag. We *now* have evidence that delta is (a lot) more transmissible, partially vax resistant, and more severe. It's now 80 percent of our cases. The genie is out of the bottle."

I'm not sure I'd use the genie in the bottle as a metaphor here. Aren't genies supposed to grant wishes? I'd think that Pandora's box might be better given that when opened, it spread ills throughout the world. Some of the reading I summarized above makes me more afraid of the--not a--next pandemic. I would like to think that we could take some of the environmental action that would help prevent a pandemic coming via some animal. But how can we do that if a large proportion of the population deny or minimize the impact of the current pandemic? How do we put at least some of the ills back in Pandora's box?

The View from the Hermitage, Day 401

I checked my phone to pull up any late-breaking coronavirus news, but the only new news is that the jury in the Derek Chauvin trial has reached a verdict. Word is that the verdict will be announced between 4:30 and 5:30, or potentially in about 30 minutes. I haven't written about the trial because I didn't want to open floodgates on the trial and possible consequences of whatever the verdict is. If the verdict is not guilty on all three charges, Minneapolis will burn tonight. The riots in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict will seem bush league compared to what could happen tonight. Part of me thinks that the jurors would not have reached threenot guilty verdicts this quickly, but perhaps that is wishful thinking. 

Back to the novel coronavirus that is far past seeming "novel." The WHO announced there have been 5.2 million new confirmed cases over the latest week, and deaths rose for the fifth straight week. India was a major contributor to the number of new cases, with six consecutive days of over 200,000 new cases, for a total of 1.5 million cases in a week. The number of cremations suggests that the announced death toll there is smaller than the actual toll. Some Indian hospitals may start running out of medical oxygen this week. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has cancelled the trip he was about to take there. The US State Department is updating travel guidelines to more closely match the travel recommendations issued by they CDC. Once they've completed this, 80 percent of countries worldwide will become Level 4: Do Not Travel countries. Currently about 16 percent are. 

One discussion of international travel listed the following points as guidance in any decision to travel. (1) Check where you can go and what you can do there. Germany, for example, prohibits entry from the US, and tourists are not permitted to stay in hotels. (2) Consider travel insurance. Personally, I won't get a plane ticket without also getting insurance. (3) Pack your vaccine card with your passport ... then check if you also need a vaccine passport. (4) Prepare to be tested before, and potentially after, you travel. You may even need to be tested even if you have been vaccinated. (5) Make sure you still have pandemic essentials. Don't assume you won't need masks, gloves, disinfecting wipes. You might. 

A survey found that 91 percent of Americans were aware that administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had been paused, and 88 percent thought that pause was a good thing. There was very little difference between Republicans and Democrats on whether the pause was good. Seventy percent of the people responding in this poll reported that they had already been vaccinated or will get vaccinated as soon as possible. Finally, 63 percent said that they wore a mask whenever they were outside their home, a proportion I wish were higher. From another poll, two in three of the Americans who haven't gotten a vaccine say that they don't plan to, another statistic I wish were different. 

Finally, on a less serious note, coronavirus restrictions dropped Czech beer consumption to its lowest levels since the 1960s. The Czechs have long boasted of having the highest beer consumption per capita in the world. During the coronavirus, average consumption has dropped by almost seven percent. 

The verdict is still to be announced.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 399

Three hundred ninety-nine days, or 57 weeks if that's how I should count it. Five days out from my second dose of Pfizer, or does that mean I get to start counting down to when I can safely re-emerge if I so desire? If so, it's RED (Re-Emergence Day) minus nine. 

This morning's Washington Post Travel section had a column on the decision to travel again (or not) as the pandemic wanes (or not). Those who wish not to travel now (or ever) may be suffering from what a Miami psychiatrist has termed "cave syndrome." He defines it as "loving isolation to the point that you become dysfunctional." He has patients who have become reluctant to leave home as a result of the pandemic. Some people are taking a temporary break from travel in the flesh but may travel virtually. Some other people have a more permanent view and say they don't think they can ever feel comfortable traveling again. I'm not really sure where I fall along that continuum. I have grown to love the sense of isolation I've cultivated, but I'm not sure it's to the point of being dysfunctional. It is, I have decided, to the point of being picky about when and why I might leave the family cave. Overnight travel, especially in the form of traveling internationally, will require some personal reflection and intention. I may well be more inclined to do an organized tour than before in that a tour should have some safeguards built in. I'm not yet at that point of thinking, so I'll see how things shake out over the next months and into the next year.

The president of the International Olympic Committee will visit Japan but not until May 17. The Japanese prime minister is on a state visit to the US right now. He's been able to obtain extra doses of the Pfizer vaccine, the only vaccine approved for use in Japan. He's gotten enough to guarantee that all people over 16 can be inoculated by the end of September. What that means for the Olympics in July is anybody's guess. I'm still in favor of cancelling them much as that will hurt all the athletes who have trained for years for these Games. 

Canada has pulled ahead of the US in new daily cases per capita, and officials are saying that the worse may be yet to come. By Friday, hospitalizations were up 22 percent, ICU admissions were up 34 percent, and deaths were up 38 percent (to 41 per day) from the previous week. Children's hospitals in Ottawa and Toronto have opened ICU beds to adults. Ontario has relaxed some of the restrictions I wrote about yesterday. Police will not be stopping people at random but will only be able to question people they believe are "participating in an organized public event or social gathering." Playgrounds will remain open, though tennis courts, basketball courts, and other outdoor recreational grounds will be closed.

It doesn't help things that Moderna has begun shipping less vaccine to Canada. Pfizer will be sending an additional eight million doses, though. Unlike the US, Canada has been concentrating on giving as many first doses of vaccine as possible before proceeding to second doses. As a result, only two percent of Canadians are fully vaccinated compared with 25 percent of Americans, and 19 percent of Canadians have gotten one dose compared with 39 percent of Americans. Canada should catch up over the next few weeks despite the reduced number of Moderna doses. 

I've avoided the possible surge(s) here in the US, but I'll try to write more about that tomorrow. Denial is a great defense mechanism. 

I made notes relating to the bar shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin that left three people dead and two people injured. Now, there has been a shooting in Austin, Texas that has left three people dead in Austin, Texas. Shootings are happening faster than they can be reported. It has come out that the gunman who killed eight at the FedEx facility in Indianapolis, Indiana was known to the local police. His mother had informed police that he might commit suicide by cop. The police took a gun away from him a year ago, and he was still able to buy another. When will we ever learn? Oh, when will we ever learn?

On a lighter note, POTUS played golf yesterday for the first time in his term. Interestingly, he did not own the golf club at which he played. 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 391

Yesterday, I mentioned that some cities here in the US were working to increase tourism by offering gift cards or money that could be spent locally. Extend that idea to countries, and you have what Malta is considering doing for foreign tourists. Those who stay at least three nights in a 5-star hotel would get 200 Euros. Half that amount would come from the Tourism Authority, and the other half, from the hotel. Staying at least three nights in a 4-star hotel would be rewarded with 150 Euros. You probably see where I'm going with this, but at least three nights in a 3-star hotel woould be rewarded with 100 Euros. If you're  concerned about safety, Malta has the highest vaccination rate in the EU: At least 42 percent of adults have had at least one vaccine dose. 

The European Medicines Agency, having looked into the possibility of a link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and a rare form of blood clotting, is now looking into a possible link between the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and blood clotting. I do not know whether the specifics of the clotting problems are the same for the two vaccines. Reports are that there have been four serious cases in the US, one of which was fatal. Three of the cases occurred during vaccine rollout, and one occurred during the clinical trial. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is not currently in use in Europe, though it has been approved for use there.

Michigan is now home to nine of the 10 metro areas with the country's highest recent case rates. The governor shut things down during previous surges, but has now asked people to take a two-week break from activities such as indoor dining, in-person high school, and youth sports. The change reflects the "shifting politics" of the pandemic. The public grows impatient with any answers that are not vaccines. Cases are rising even with one in three residents having gotten at least one vaccine dose. One in five is fully vaccinated. 

Not that it might have any impact on national defense (yeah, right), but nearly 40 percent of Marines have declined to get vaccinated. Whether this is personal preference or a distrust growing out of previous military vaccination campaigns isn't clear. Vaccines cannot be deemed mandatory until they have full authorization from the FDA. Right now, they have only emergency use authorizations. 

Possibly due to skies lacking much of the light pollution that is usually out there and more people home during the evenings, UFO reports have surged during the pandemic. Sightings doubled in New York to about 300 in 2020. Sightings rose by about 1,000 nationwide to over 7,200. There is evidently lots of UFO footage on TikTok, a claim I am not going to try to verify. I expect that there is more detail available from NUFORC, the National UFO Reporting Center. The article I read reported that one woman who had been "taken" by aliens says that she was not "abducted" but went willingly. As Dave Barry may still write, I am not making this up.

My trip down Memory Lane continues. Next to be scanned are slides from my summer study in Spain and travel in Europe in 1975. Franco was still in power in Spain then; he did not die until November 1975. I remember sitting in a garden with two other students, one of whom was Cuban-American and postulating what we would do should he die while we were still there. I'll consider it fortunate that we did not have to find out. One of the first nights I was there, I went for an evening stroll, alone, and was not prepared to see someone in uniform patrolling while carrying what appeared to be an uzi.

As I have scanned slides, I have marveled at the different places I had somewhat forgotten I have been. Last evening and this morning, I scanned slides  ranging from the Great Smoky Mountains to the Bay of Fundy, from the mountains of Montana to the farmland of Nebraska. Besides Spain and Europe in general, tomorrow, I shall scan slides taken in Hong Kong.  I am reminded just how fortunate I have been in terms of the paths on which my parents started me and then prepared me to continue on my own, and in the traveling companions I have met along the way.

 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 367

St. Patrick's Day! I guess my army green cargo pants will have to count since I didn't feel like finding a green t-shirt to wear. I do have some Irish ancestry but not so much as to ever have relatives going all out on St. Paddy's Day. I don't recall ever drinking green beer in my wayward youth. I would not make a good leprechaun.

This evening I will Zoom into the 49 Day Ceremony for my sister-in-law. She did not consider herself a Buddhist, but she was a practitioner of Zen meditation. The ceremony is being held at the Zen center she frequented. I did a bit of Googling, so I know a little bit about what will be going on. It sounded to me similar to the idea that, upon death, a Christian goes to Purgatory while the question of Heaven or Hell is debated. The spirit of the deceased person remains in the realm between the world of the living and the dead for 49 days; the ceremony lets it proceed to the world of the dead. My brother will attend the ceremony in person. I even cleaned up my office desk in the basement so that I have a quiet place to "attend" the ceremony.

Here in Virginia, the joke is that school is sometimes cancelled because snow is in the forecast. In that vein, the health district coronavirus vaccinations scheduled for tomorrow have been shifted to Friday due to the forecast of rain. I think this is because the location has people lining up outside. I can wait an extra day. 

Even getting vaccinated won't open the door to my visiting China (it is not high on the list of places I would like to go). They are opening up to tourists but only those who have been vaccinated with a Chinese-made vaccine. Getting a visa means you have taken either a full two-dose course or single-dose vaccine at least 14 days before traveling. Negative covid test and quarantine rules still apply. No Chinese-made vaccine has been approved for use in the US. In fact, it is really only used right now in Thailand, the Philippines, Iraq, and Hong Kong. The reported efficacy rates of the Chinese vaccines vary wildly, and it is not known how well any of them block transmission. 

The European Union is considering a covid-19 certificate that would show proof of vaccination, negative test result, or documented recovery from covid. Individual countries could decide which of their current restrictions such as quarantine would be waived for certificate holders.

While acknowledging that people do have the freedom to choose, XPot urged his supporters to get vaccinated. I give him props for that. He did not have to do so, but he did. Thank you,  Mr. XPot. And while we're speaking of the devil, I find it interesting that Russia meddled with the election lead-up seeking a victory for XPot, while Iran did the same seeking his defeat. China evidently stayed above the fray.

The CDC reports that two covid variants first detected in California are "officially" variants of concern. They may be 20 percent more transmissible than the original strain. More worrisome is that it appears some of the current treatments may not be as effective against them.

There was more news about the vaccine disparity between richer and poorer nations. None of it was breathtakingly new, so I'm not going there. I will wonder why one-third of US military personnel have refused to get vaccinated. Do they not trust the vaccines in general, or do they not trust the army that wants them to be vaccinated?

Discussion of the social distance required in school settings is gaining speed. With six feet of distance, a school can serve 50 percent of their student body at the same time. With three feet of distance, that jumps to 75 percent. There are states that already mandate only three feet of distance, and they report on increased risk to students or staff.

In a survey by the American Psychological Association (disclaimer: I was a member of this while I was in grad school some 40 years ago), about half the respondents said that they were worried about re-adjusting to in-person interaction. It seems that lockdown has offered a respite to a lot of people. Some people have essentially forgotten how to socially interact. I sometimes wonder if I am one of them or if I never learned how to do that in the first place. Some people say that they will miss the predictability of pandemic life. It should be noted that in many regards people can choose how much of pre-pandemic normal they want to go back to. Long meditative walks one started to do during the pandemic don't need to be stopped as the pandemic eases. Past pleasures with which one may have reconnected--listening to a certain genre of music, reading a certain magazine--do not need to be returned to one's mental closet. 

Finally, the current crop of high school seniors had a bumper crop of essay subjects from which to choose. The pandemic, Black Lives Matter and civil rights, the value of family. Interestingly, politics and the 2020 election were not popular topics according to the people who know such things.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 219

We are almost to the end of Tuesday business hours on the East coast, and so far The Orange Foolius has not withdrawn from Thursday night's debate. I figured that once the organizers committed to cutting off the Candidate A's microphone while Candidate B was delivering his opening statement, The Foolius would call foul and go sulk in a corner. I do like the sound of the format, though I know many people don't. The 15 minutes each on different topics will, I hope, give some focus to the discourse, though I expect The Foolius won't let himself be limited to the topic at hand. And I fully expect him to interrupt post-opening comments as long as his microphone has been turned back on. Of course, if this debate mirrors the first fiasco,we may not have candidate debates in 2024.

And here's a headline I grabbed off the Facebook feed of The Washington Post: "Most Trump supporters believe the president is dismantling a sex-trafficking ring involving top Democrats." They may know nothing about QAnon but simply believe whatever the Foolius or his associates tells them. How they can take this at face value without seeing any evidence boggles my mind. It also frightens me. These people are allowed to vote, and likely will in large numbers. If The Foolius wins a second term, I fully expect we will move uncomfortably close to being a police state, though some may say we're already there. I'm not sure we'll get to martial law because military leaders may balk even if the person giving orders is the Commander-in-Chief. So much uncertainty, too much uncertainty.

We got an expedition catalog today from Hurtigruten, the company that runs the mailboat along the Norwegian coast. We did their 12 day Bergen to Kirkenes back to Bergen a couple of years ago during the Polar Night (the opposite of the Midnight Sun). They do expedition trips to Antarctica, Svalbard in Norway, and the one that I might think about were I to win the lottery, the Northwest Passage from Nome, Alaska to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The "if only" thought didn't last long; it was replaced by the thought of when we-I might feel safe going on such a trip or any cruise, actually. Or a plane. The CDC is now recommending against any sort of public transit if you don't stay masked and at an appropriate distance from the other passengers. I'd even be nervous about hopping in the car for a trip that would involve spending an overnight in a hotel. The idea of being with even a small group of other people  scares me. 

I went through a couple more boxes this afternoon. My kindle continues to elude me. I made a visible dent in the pile of stuff outside the door to my office/studio. Tomorrow I will likely deal with boxes in the master bedroom/bathroom. There are decisions still to me made about just how many pairs of weird earrings I need to have. The handcuff, marijuana leaf, and razor blade (not real  razor blades) ones will stay, definitely, and some of the dinosaurs, but how many dinosaur pairs do I need, really? I actually don't know how many such pairs I have. That might be a good place to start tomorrow.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 90

I think I wrote a few days (weeks? time runs together) saying I didn't really feel like traveling. That lasted until I got the 2021catalog from Odysseys Unlimited. They've dropped Turkmenistan from their Silk Road trip and beefed up the locations visited in Kazakhstan. What really caught my eye, though, was a new tour that also touched on the Silk Road. "Exploring the Caucasus" visits Georgia and Armenia with an optional add-on trip to Azerbaijan. They have late May 2021 departure dates that would fit with the husband's academic schedule. We have no intention of booking this in the near future. It might be one we save for 2022 or 2023, if it takes a while to develop a coronavirus vaccine.

I've been satisfying my travel desires by watching a course developed jointly by National Geographic and The Great Courses, Polar Explorations. I've had a "thing" for polar regions for some time. I can't remember when I first read about Shackleton's Endurance expedition, but it was many years ago. The husband finds my polar fascination intriguing since in real life I tend to prefer hot days to cooler ones. We joke that my optimal temperature is 85 degrees Fahrenheit while his is 65.

I checked the state's coronavirus metrics this morning. The seven-day moving average of new cases is still going down, but the raw numbers have been going up for about four days now. The seven-day average of percent of tests that are positive is also going down, but they're testing nowhere near the 10,000 daily tests recommended as a minimum. If the number of cases continues to increase, I hope the governor is willing to delay reopening. I can't see him imposing another lockdown, but that would be okay with me if that's what's needed to get things under control.

He Who Shall Not Be Named (HWSNBN) has moved his Tulsa rally to the day after Juneteenth. Fox News or OANN must have run something noting how folks would view the date. The coronavirus waiver is still going to be used. Considering that Oklahoma's number of cases is once again increasing, the waiver might be a very good idea. I wonder if the Republican National Committee will require delegates to the convention now planned for Jacksonville, Florida to sign waivers. Florida's case numbers are also on the rise.

Tomorrow is HWSNBN's birthday. There's a movement afoot to flood social media with Obama pictures. HWSNBN may not even notice, though, unless someone could hack one of his accounts and post something there. I can dream, can't I?

The View from the Hermitage, Day 84

84 days.
12 weeks
3 months
25% of a year

Any way you look at it, this has been going on for a pretty long time now. I've tried to remember what I was thinking, back when this all started, in terms of how long it might last. I'm not sure I even had a duration in mind. There is some evidence from Los Angeles of an increase in cases since the reopening and discounting the protest crowds. Seven-day rolling averages of the number of cases and the percent of cases that come back positive both had very slight increases here in Virginia. I'll be watching the next couple of days to see if the arrows continue to point up. Would the governor slow down reopening as a result, having the state remain at Phase Two for longer than two to three weeks? What relative increase might motivate him to take the state back to Phase One. I can't see him taking the state back to Stage Zero; the uproar would be deafening. That duration may be longer than I igiht have thought.

We took our Sunday morning walk in the park earlier than usual today. Besides being cooler, there were fewer people there. I expect, though, that it did get as crowded as last week later. As of Tuesday, the restrooms will again be open, as will the playgrounds and picnic areas. Playground equipment will not be cleaned, so it's up to parents or caregivers to clean as they wish. If I had small children, I'm not sure how I would feel about taking them to a public playground. It would certainly amuse them, but just how worried would I be about their catching something?

I thought that as things reopened, I might be tempted to eat out even if it's just picking up take-out, or pop into a store for something I didn't want to wait to get until older son did the weekly grocery shopping. That hasn't happened. I'm learning that many of the things I think I need are things I really don't even want enough to try to get them. More goodness resulting from the pandemic, I guess.

In trying (unsuccessfully) to straighten up the dining room table yesterday, I came across a catalog from the tour company we used to visit Peru and were going to use to visit the Silk Road. I leafed through it, seeing several trips that appealed to me--Morocco, Jordan, Ethiopia--after which I stopped and pondered. Do I really want to visit those places? Not really if it has to be soon. The wide, wide world that used to look so inviting, stoking my curiosity, kindling my sense of adventure, no longer does, or no longer does at this specific moment. I have the image of one of the monsters from Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. It's standing outside my immediate frame of reference, where my here and now opens to that wide, wide world. It's got a conspiratorial look on its face as its index finger slowly bids me to come. Not right now, Monster, not right now.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 72

The governor, who left his mask in his car while visiting Virginia Beach over the weekend and who got up close and personal with some folks who wanted a selfie, today announced that as of Friday, anyone over the age of 10 must wear a mask inside any public building or brick and mortar establishment. Masks do not need to be worn if a person is exercising or eating and drinking. This did not make many people happy judging by the number of angry faces shown rising up on the Facebook feed I was watching.

So can a person be arrested, fined, or otherwise penalized for not masking up while inside a business? Not likely, given that the mask issue will not be enforced by law enforcement but will instead fall under the purview of the Department of Health. A reporter's question of how this enforcement might be manifested was given a somewhat rambling answer about how a business that did not enforce the wearing of masks might, at an uncertain point in the future, find their business license in jeopardy.

The governor announced that it was likely that the localities who did not enter Phase I of reopening a week and a half ago would enter Phase I on Friday. This of course raised the question of whether the rest of the state could move on to whatever Phase II might be on Friday. The governor hedged on this, which I hope means he's not going to move to Phase II that soon. He said that Phase I had not at this point lasted two weeks, and the time scale of the novel coronavirus suggested now was not the time to study what had happened in the last ten days. He said officials would be looking at the relevant metrics as the two-week point came closer, and he would be able to say more about that on Thursday. I've got my fingers crossed that he announces two more weeks of Phase I, putting the whole state on the same schedule.

My Facebook feed this morning showed me my post on this day in 2017. The husband and I were on a Treasures of Peru tour and visiting Machu Picchu. It was the afternoon that six of us with an average age of 67 hiked up the side of a mountain from the main tourist area to the Sun Gate. I was the baby of the group at age 60. It was not an easy hike but was well worth doing. Reading this memory reminded me that the husband and I have discussed how good it was that we did not keep putting trips off until some nebulous point in the future such as after he retires. Because of that, we've visited the places we most wanted to see which, for me, were Angkor Wat, Iceland, and Machu Picchu. If I had known how great it would be, I would have added taking the mailboat along the coast of Norway to that list. There is no way of knowing whether international travel will ever be the same or how long it might take for that to come to pass. There are international places I'd still like to visit--Nepal and Bhutan, Morocco, possibly some of the 'Stans--but it won't break my heart to not be able to go to those places.

I'm working on a new list of places to visit that are closer to home. The first on the list is Yellowknife in Canada's Northwest Territories, a trip to be taken at a time when viewing the aurora borealis is probable. Except for the fact that I really have no desire at this point to visit Hawaii, it would be nice to knock off the US states I have yet to visit. There aren't many besides Hawaii: Arizona, Mississippi, Louisiana, and possibly Oklahoma. I can't recall if I went through part of Oklahoma while driving to Dallas, Texas back in my single days. And if we're going to knock off the US states, we might as well add the Canadian provinces and territories. And I have no desire to go to Mexico unless the safety issues there have been addressed.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 59

We've tried two new food things this week. On Monday, the husband made a Peruvian rice and beans dish known as tacu tacu. It was a late Mother's Day present since we'd had leftovers the night before. The tacu tacu recipe came from Joe Yonan's "Weeknight Vegetarian" column in the food section of The Washington Post. It was quite good, and we will definitely be having it again.

Last night, we cooked steak on a rock. For Mother's Day, older son gave me two stones from a company known as Artestia. He gave another set to the husband as an early Father's Day gift. He also provided the steaks. You heat a stone for around 40 minutes in a 525 degree (F) oven. When you take it out, you plop the steak on it. You can cook the whole steak and then eat it or cut bites off to cook more quickly and eat the steak as it cooks. You can also cook eggs on them, though that seems a bit too much work for scrambled or fried eggs. We first had steak on a rock at a now-closed Caribbean restaurant in a city up north Route 29. Again, something we will be repeating.

In the old-normal, pre-coronavirus world, I would be packing right now and trying not to obsess over making sure all the paperwork was in order. Tomorrow, the husband and I would be driving up to Dulles International Airport and taking an overnight Turkish Air flight to Istanbul. There, we would get on another Turkish Air flight to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, the start of a 17-day trip through three countries commonly thought to be along the Silk Road of Marco Polo's day. We recovered the full cost of the trip plus insurance when the tour company cancelled things. It's hard to say if we'll have the chance to do that tour again or, if we do have the chance, we would take it.

Travel as we've known it may never be the same again. It's not at all clear when different countries might change their current border lockdowns. You can probably get out of your home country, but it's not clear what other countries would admit you right now. Even state-to-state travel can get complicated with some states requiring a 14-day quarantine period for anyone entering from another state. And should those state quarantine requirements be lifted, I'm not sure I want to get on an airplane. Will "Road trip!" be the new way to go? "Shotgun!"

The local paper ran an article yesterday reporting that a majority of local residents do not support the partial reopening of the state (minus Northern Virginia) starting Friday. I hope those people vote with their feet and stay at home. I hope that things work out and that the decline in the relevant metrics continues, but I won't hold my breath. We'll see what things look like after Memorial Day.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 2

I ventured out for my annual breast-squishing today, and that's it until the husband and I take my car to the shop tomorrow night for its annual physical. We'll leave her there tomorrow evening, and see about getting her the next day. She seems to be running well, so I'm hoping it's just topping off various fluids and checking various other things.

Older son has been keeping a close eye on us. He insists that he will bring us anything we need from the grocery store, drug store, and so on. This morning, he took my mother's laundry back to her assisted living facility so that I would not have to. When he heard we would be dropping my car off tomorrow evening after the shop had closed (social distancing), he said that he would go by the next afternoon to pay and pick up the key so that we could go get it after the shop had closed.

It's a bit hard to get used to a kid, even an adult kid, offering to do so much. I guess that if he were doing something because he thought we were not able do it, it would be different. While emailing him a recipe (for rice, corn, and cheese casserole), I thanked him for all he was doing or offering to do. He noted that we were important to him, and that knowing we were "squared away" helped take away any worries he might have. We raised a good adult.

We heard today from the company with whom we had booked a May 14 trip to part of the Silk Road, in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. Needless to say, the trip has been canceled due to covid-19. The company said we could defer the trip until a later date or take a full refund. I told them that with the husband's being a university professor, it was tricky to find a tour that meshed with his teaching schedule. I asked for the full refund but noted that if a rescheduled, later tour did fit with the husband's teaching schedule we would re-book with them.

I must admit that while I had my fingers crossed that we would get a full refund, I wasn't 100 percent sure that we would. I know that hotels and flights are often booked in advance, and that money might not be recoverable. We had purchased trip insurance from the tour company, and I figured that if it was the insurance handling the reimbursement we would not see the money we'd paid for the two policies. Not so. We are getting the full cost, including what we paid for the trip insurance, back. In case you're wondering, the tour company is Odysseys Unlimited, and we think they're a pretty class act.

And so we have survived Day 2 in the hermitage. I haven't gotten bored yet even if I might be boring anyone reading this. I checked the news feeds less today than I did yesterday. I hope that doesn't mean that life in the hermitage is becoming the norm.

Are We There Yet?

Below is what I wrote last Sunday night before getting interrupted. I thought I would finish it the next night, in our hotel in Bergen. The cancellation and rescheduling of one of our flights the next day meant getting up at 3:00 a.m. meaning that bed took precedence over blog. I had a tiny list of other things I had planned to include in this post. Even if I could find it now, they seem somewhat outdated. I will, however, share the photo I got from the Into the Ice excursion discussed in my previous post.

I am the third person from the left side; the husband is on my right. The lack of light makes detail hard to come by. But in terms of the lack of light, the walk on this excursion offered our only glimpse of the sun in our time in the polar night. We could see it on the horizon, bright orange against a royal blue sky. No more than a third of the sun's circle was visible, which is what makes it the polar night. I was afraid we would not get to see it and was glad we got that one chance.

The day we saw the sun led into the night we saw the aurora. It was the only night of the trip that could be called "clear." It was not the almost gaudy aurora that we saw in Iceland two years ago, but it was impressive nonetheless, visible on the horizon and curling around the nightscape. I did not take any photos, having done that on our first Iceland trip and feeling that all the technical aspects of aurora photography took away from my simple enjoyment. Our Australian friend did get some good shots with her point-and-shoot and has said she will email us copies. We had two desires in taking the trip, to experience the polar night (nice to visit, but I wouldn't want to live in it) and see the aurora. We scored on both.

The previous, unfinished post:
Tonight is our last aboard ship; the trip draws to its inevitable close. Did I get bored? Not at all. The sitting and reading or sitting and crosswording times, while not what one would call at all exciting, nourished my soul. It is good to do and good to be, and this trip offered both. We got to know some of the staff, even to the point of developing a few inside jokes. Two nights ago we saw the restaurant manager, Ole, come aboard with two pizzas. Besides the obvious threat to tell the chefs, we have repeatedly commented on the absence of pizza from the lunch buffet or dinner entrees. We got to know some other passengers. We met Oliver on New Year's Eve, watching the fireworks, and finally exchanged names after the Into the Ice excursion three days later. Kerrie, an Aussie, boarded at Kirkenes, the turn-around point, and fit right in for a table for four.

Waxing philosophically now, I noted, and the husband agreed, that at meals, our table for four features smiling and laughing, something sadly lacking at every other table. Most of the other passengers seem to be Norwegian or German; I can't accept that those are two so dour nationalities that they swore off humor. Besides, Oliver is German. Is it that people are not making connections with other passengers? Even the tables with obvious family units are quiet. I sometimes wonder if the laughter coming from our table is rude. The serving staff don't seem to think so, approaching with the pitchers of tea and coffee or picking up the used dishes with smiles on their faces.

Cell phones and laptops have airline mode, but so do Apple Watches and BAHA units. My replaced knee does not require airline mode, but then it does force the choice of the full-body scanner over the metal detector at TSA checkpoints. Technology eases some things while complicating others. Based on our experience on the trip here, facial recognition seems likely replace paper boarding passes or passes shown on smartphone screens.

Into the Ice? Into the Wind!

I took exactly zero photographs yesterday. I missed the window of enough light to make trying worthwhile. I am in a photograph someone else took yesterday, but have not yet managed to get a copy.

The husband and I signed up for just two of the ship's off-ship excursions. The first, a visit to a brewery was cancelled. The other was yesterday, and it was a doozy. Said excursion is described here, but I must caution you to disregard the headline photo. They offer this excursion from November 8 through March 22; the light in that photo would be from the very start or very end of that period. They also offer this excursion only if there is adequate snow and only if they have six to 20 people registered. We squeaked in with seven, one of whom was our new German friend Oliver (we finally shared names after we had finished the excursion).

I've always been a bit of a polar expedition junkie, particularly of the stories of the South Pole. Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott competing to see who could get there first. Ernest Shackleton's Endurance adventure and so on. This excursion seemed right up that alley, especially since the other "polar" excursion, a walk in Tromso, did not run on the day we were in Tromso, December 31.

We started the excursion a bit late since that was when we arrived in the port of Hammerfest. The guide was told that the ship would be in port 15 minutes longer than usual and please try to get these seven passengers back in time for that delayed departure. As a result, we missed the normal start of the excursion in the "large cosy tent with fireplace" and headed straight up the mountain. The mountain is not all that steep, but the ground cover varied considerably from knee-deep snow to dry rock to rock covered with ice. I did my best to adhere to my resolution to keep my own pace, but, yeah, I failed pretty badly. I slipped or fell several times; fortunately, the husband and/or Oliver were back there with me (did I mention that I was bringing up the end of the group?) to help me get up. One complicating factor was that I chose to put on one of the replica hats similar to those the original South Pole expedition might have worn, and the brim encouraged my glasses to fog up. Had I kept my own hat on, I would have had less of a problem.

The other complicating factor and not just for me was the wind. Even with the extra weight I've put on since the knee replacement, I could have been blown over quite easily. Early on the walk I asked the guide how fast the wind was blowing; his answer was 15 meters per second. It got stronger later on; the husband estimated it at some 60 miles per hour. I tried to keep my side to the wind to give it a smaller target, but that was not always possible. I don't know if we cut the climb short due to the time constraint, but heading down was even more treacherous than heading up had been. We stopped at one point, and gathered together so  that the guide could take a photo of us planting the Norwegian flag. That's the photo I haven't managed to get a copy of yet.

On the descent, we did stop at the "large cosy tent." The problem was that the zipper was either frozen shut or caught in the canvas. (The suggestion was made that the male expedition members could urinate on it to melt any ice; fortunately, we did not have to resort to that.) It took the guide some time to get us access to the inside, where a second guide was waiting with a hot beverage and some food similar to what might have been served on the South Pole expedition. We scarfed those down rather quickly and made for the bus. We made it back onto the ship only about five minutes late.

Especially with the wind, the excursion seemed a good, if obviously easier, demonstration of what foot travel (even with dog sleds) through a polar environment might be like. It was easy to see how vital proper equipment and experience would have been. Amundsen's time living with the Inuit gave him much better preparation than Scott had had. And there were rules to be played by; when Amundsen realized that he and his colleagues had celebrated arriving at a spot close to but not atop the magnetic south pole, they repeated their flag planting--and celebrating--at the proper location the next day.

The husband slept in this morning, meaning I breakfasted alone. I had a nice chat with one of the servers, though, a young woman probably in her 20s. From her, I learned that this ship, MS Lofoten, will be retired permanently in two years. At that point, she said, she would look for other employment; she did not want to work on one of the larger ships. I also learned that it is possible to overcome seasickness. She said that her first voyage was so calm; then she heard the captain say that it was the calmest voyage he'd ever had. The next voyage, she was very seasick. She now has no problem. I commented about the ability of the servers to carry dishes while the ship was rocking; she said that carrying was not the problem; walking without appearing drunk was. She still prefers serving thick soup to thin. Part of a server's training is to graduate from carrying two bowls of soup, one in each hand, to three, one in each hand and a third one up the arm from one of the other two. She described how, when first graduating to three bowls, she was so focused on putting the first bowl down carefully she did not notice that she was spilling some of the other two bowls. Finally, she worked over Christmas this  year, and then would not have to do so again next year. She said her family was leaving all their Christmas decor up until she got home so that she could still have a small Christmas celebration.

Here are two of the noon photos I took today. The blue light has been with us for all our time in the Polar Night; I'm not sure where the pink light came from.

I'd note that it is now dark, but then it's been pitch black for several hours. We have a two-hour stop coming up in Svolvaer. Oliver will be leaving on the horseback riding excursion and will dine early. We plan to dine a bit later with Cary, an Australian we met at lunch, and then look into a gallery of ice sculpture. Since that will not be an official ship excursion, we'll definitely watch the time and be back on board early enough to keep me calm.

Happy New Year!

I would have a photograph of last night's fireworks except that my iPhone for some reason will connect to the ship's router but not go beyond that to the Interwebs. The photos I took with my camera pale in comparison to the one I took with my phone. You'll just have to take my word for it.

The ship did New Year's Eve up right in Tromso last night. Rather than two dinner seatings for four-course meals, they did one seating for a five-course one. The crew well, the ones not cooking or serving dinner, ate and mingled with the masses. The ship then stayed in port for several hours longer than usual so that we could see the fireworks which turned out to be pretty darn incredible. The husband and I pre-gamed it watching individual fireworks set off all around the city. At one point we were joined by a German who had the same somewhat warped sense of humor that the husband and I do. A good time was had by all,

The part of the city we could see sat at the bottom of a fairly steep mountain up which runs a cable car. We could see teeny lights which ended up being the flashlights of people setting up some sort of flames (super luminarias?) that when lit spelled out 2018. As midnight approached, there were more and more fireworks sent up from the town at the foot of the mountain. At midnight, the official fireworks started at the top of the mountain. The last fireworks we saw were in Hue, Vietnam, in 2012. I actually think these were better. It definitely helped that they appeared as the crown to all the fireworks being set off below. As the fireworks went off, the 2018 on the mountainside became 2019. Those who had not already finished their champagne did so, various hugs were exchanged, and we all, or at least the husband and I, stumbled off to our cabins.

One of the plusses of a small ship and a small number of passengers is that you get familiar with the crew. I never knew who the crew member in charge of the hotel aspect of the voyage was on the ship we took in 2015. I never recognized any of the serving staff, or even the activity director. We've chatted this time with quite a few crew members. Last night, I exchanged New Year's hugs with the bartender, who would not surprise me at all if he asked what was in my wallet. And on New Year's Eve Eve, because we were passing the Trollfjord, they served mulled berry juice with or without alcohol and fish soup out on the flag deck. Both juice and soup were excellent (yes, I got mine with alcohol), and it was fun to kid around with the hotel manager and the other crew member helping with serving.

I realized that I could set one of the options on my Apple Watch to be the sunrise-sunset times of wherever I might be. Right now, it reads as "SUN DOWN ALL DAY." In that vein, here is yesterday's shot under the noonday sun.

And here is today's.

Later today, we will get to what may be our farthest north, 71 degrees, 2.28 minutes North (27 degrees, 51.17 minutes East, if you're interested in the other dimension). While there was snow on the ground in Tromso, none fell while we were there. Further north, there is more snow, both on the ground and in the air. The snow in the air was falling sideways, but not fast enough to be a blizzard (that's using the western definition rather than the eastern one of "hell of a lot of snow" one). There was an excursion to a monument sitting at the northernmost point in mainland Europe. Some 40 passengers went. We had no interest in spending almost $200 to visit an outdoor monument in the night-time dark. We did take a short walk into the town center; only a grocery store was open given that New Year's holiday. The falling snow was very powdery. Returning to the ship, we each dropped for a snow angel.

A couple of hours have passed, and no evidence of those angels remains. Mother Nature wins again!

When we leave Honningsvag, where we are currently docked, we will be in open waters until early tomorrow morning. For our two bouts of weather, I have taken sea-sickness pills, eaten ginger candy or chewed ginger gum, and slept. I am not sure which helps the most, though the ginger candy or gum is what I think quiets my stomach enough that I can fall asleep. Blaine appears not to be bothered, though he has taken the pills when I have. Does this mean I would not sail on this ship again? Heck no! I'd much prefer this small ship to one of the big ones even with the no-stabilizer aspect.

Possibly because of the small number of passengers, the activities director announced yesterday morning that small groups of passengers would be permitted to visit the bridge, something that is usually a huge no-no. I immediately ran down to the reception area to sign up. The husband was just waking up then and somehow missed the announcement. As one might expect, the lack of stabilizers makes the ship harder to sail. The captain said that he could move onto one of the larger, stabilizer-equipped ships in the fleet with no problem, but a captain of one of those ships could not easily move to this smaller ship. There are segments of our course that have been sailed since the coastal ships started in 1893. There are other segments that have changed. They still have the capability to do a depth sounding from the bridge, but never need to given that the information is now readily available. The path to becoming a captain has changed over the years. The captain said that as he came up the ranks, he served in various able-bodied seamen positions before going to school for the technical training to captain a ship. Today, the classes come before the experience.

The husband and I recently learned that the U.S. Naval Academy for several years stopped teaching the students celestial navigation but had recently re-introduced it into the curriculum. I asked that captain whether he had been trained in celestial navigation. He said that while that was part of the training, using it was never needed due to today's GPS. Famous last words? I certainly hope not!

Hunting the Light

"Hunting the Light" is Hurtigruten's catch-phrase for traveling to see the Northern Lights. Given that it has been cloudy every day so far, we may or may not see that particular light. Hunting the polar night, on the other hand, is quite doable.

Our first day out, at noon, I shot this photo from the upper deck with my camera set on automatic.

The next day, at the same time, from the same place, shooting manually with the same settings as the above gave this photo.

I wish I had thought to take a shot on automatic, but I didn't, and I think the cloud cover made this shot somewhat darker than it really was.

Today, I took this photo from the upper deck at noon, in automatic mode.

The same shot, using the same settings as the first day's automatic shot gave this.

I think I might end this experiment now, since I don't think the shots will lighten up again until we're on our way south.

We crossed the Arctic Circle just before 7:00 this morning, There is a marker in the water, but either it was not lit or we got on deck just a hair too late to see it. The activity leader forgot, in the weather excitement of last evening, to announce the contest of guessing the time the ship would cross the Circle. The winner, chosen at random since there were no entries to compare, received the Hurtigruten flag that had been flying above the ship when she crossed the Circle; the captain had added his signature to the flag. The flag was awarded in mid-morning, by which time it was light enough to see, right before King Neptune made his entrance.

The "ceremony" was the baptism of all of Neptune's new citizens, those who had crossed the Circle for the first time. Knowing that ice water and cubes poured down one's back is endurable, especially given the shot of cloudberry liqueur one gets after, I took the empty seat no one else wanted on the first time through. The activity director took my camera and captured the occasion.

I tried getting a shot of the husband's baptism by ice, but found myself behind several other people obviously not shooting the husband.

The fun is when some of the cubes go down between your inner and outer layers of clothing. I had a hoodie on under my coat with a shirt under that. Even close to a half hour later, I was still having ice cubes drop out from the hoodie.

Just after lunch we docked in Bodo (there is supposed to be a line through the second o). We walked into town where just about everything was closed due to its being Sunday. The husband had hoped to find a coffeeshop that sold bagels so as to be holding one while standing next to a Bodo city sign. Alas, while we found one or two open coffeeshops, bagels were nonexistent. Bodo was still a nice-looking small city (or would a population of 50,000 make it a large town?).

I always find the murals put on the sides of buildings interesting. I have no real idea what sort of creature this is supposed to be, but it reminded me of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.

The husband found the angles of this building to be quite interesting, saying they added more visible interest than might have been done in the States.

The sign below caught my eye. It was outside a "golf center" that sold golf equipment and possibly contained a video sort of driving range, but there was definitely no golf course nor any golf carts in there.

And on the interesting playground equipment front, we found this.

I might have bcen tempted to try it, but the pavement's being wet and occasionally icy coupled with a serious desire not to need to seek medical treatment made it easier for me to give it a pass.

Finally, here is our home away from home for another eight days. I must admit that I'm getting spoiled. No cooking, no bed-making, and laundry only if I really want or need to do it.

First Full Day Afloat

It turns out that our cabin, small though it may be,

does have a porthole. The view out said porthole is not too scenic, but the water can be mesmerizing.

It does not let in enough light to make it useful for awakening, though a big portion of that is that the sun does not rise here until close to 10:00 a.m.

Neither of us slept particularly well, it being the fist night in a strange bed and one that rocked a bit at that. We were up, dressed, and going into breakfast just about the time the ship entered the first “open stretch of sea.” There was a quite noticeable change in terms of balance. I was quite happy to have one of the servers pour my coffee rather than carrying it myself from a pot across the room. While my balance walking was definitely impaired, my stomach handled breakfast and after just fine. Perhaps the anti-seasickness wrist bands and doing the trick, though I’m certainly not going to take them off as a test.  

There are a couple of ways to tell how rough the sea might get. For one, the furniture is chained to the floor.

The dining room tables have frames that can be removed, flipped over, and put back on with a lip to keep things from sliding off. It is interesting to watch crew members walk as if everything is stock still. Even carrying bowls of cereal or cups of coffee, they walk as if the floor is totally stable. 

At noon, I took several photos from the upper deck using the automatic setting of my camera (a Canon EOS 60D). Here's one of them.

I looked up the settings that the automatic function used. Tomorrow, I will go to the same deck at the same time and take a photo using the same settings. I plan to do that every day with the exception of the day will be on the "Into the Ice" excursion at noon. I'm hoping to get a nice sequence of shots getting darker and darker then lighter and lighter. We'll see how that turns out.

When it's light enough to see, the scenery is pretty incredible.

The towns themselves are quite photogenic as well. The ship docked in Alesund for three hours. We did the walk-around-town excursion here in 2015, so we just went on our own little walk. 

  

In Southeast Asia, we got accustomed to seeing beggars. It's a bit more out-of-place here.

One way to know you're not in the States any longer is playground equipment that kids big and little would love but that could possibly be deemed "unsafe." My kids would have loved this one as children and would even go crazy with it as adults.

Some shots I just have to take for inspiration. Both of these could make pretty nice quilts.

The ship's program director has told us that New Year's Eve can get quite raucous and that Tromso, where we will be that night, has quite the fireworks display. In the meantime, though it's still Christmas and will be until January 6.

Set an Alarm? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Alarm!

When we visited Iceland last year, we thought we'd set the room alarm to a time that would let us eat the hotel's free breakfast and the get ready for our excursion to a lava cave at noon. We screwed up on how to set the alarm and slept until 10:00, at which time the hotel breakfast was over. We got dressed (no showers if I remember correctly), found a coffeehouse that wasn't too far away, and actually were waiting for the excursion bus without being out of breath.

We had no set plans for today save for visiting a museum or two. Still, we both wanted to shower not to mention get a free breakfast, so we set Blaine's phone alarm to the chosen time. Should I also set my phone, I wondered. We decided that one alarm was enough given that we knew we were setting it correctly. Old Man Time got the best of us. We slept through the alarm we know went off. We did make it down in time for breakfast, though showers waited until after. We ended up only making it to one museum, the Norwegian Maritime Museum, but it was a good one.

Photos, at least with my camera, were few given the on-again-off-again rain. I finally just packed my large camera into my rucksack and let Blaine use his pocket-sized one. As it turned out, cameras were not permitted in the museum, so we have nothing to show from there unless I now take a photo of the book we bought on the rune alphabet.

We've been to our share of maritime museums including the ones in Newport News, Virginia, and Reykjavik, Iceland. The one here was small compared to those two, but still very interesting. The section on the Vikings was especially interesting given that last night I finished reading The Book Of Viking Myths that younger son  gave me for Christmas. The fact that we'd visited the Viking ship Museum in Oslo twice also helped fill in any gaps there were here.

We spent a fair amount of time there and, upon leaving, decided one museum was enough so we'd stop for coffee and a snack and then get back to the hotel in plenty of time for the 5:15 bus to the ship. It was too dark and rainy to adequately photograph the triangle of coffee shops at one intersection. We skipped the first as it looked fairly crowded and two people were entering ahead of when we would. We skipped the second because it was Starbucks, and went to the third, the Camel Coffeeshop. Besides Starbucks, other establishments we chose not to enter were Burger King, McDonalds, Seven Eleven, and Subway.

It was impossible to get a photo showing both together, but it caught us by pleasant surprise to see two bookstores within spitting distance of each other. There used to be a couple that close together on Charlottesville's Downtown Mall, but I don't think there are today.

While killing time in the hotel lobby, I took this photo already up on Facebook.

It was just a hair before 4:30 in the afternoon, giving us a taste of the days to come. It was even darker when the bus picked us up at 5:15.

So we're now aboard, having attended the mandatory safety presentation and eaten dinner. For dinner, I invited a couple to join us at our table for four. He works in South Africa; she works in Khartoum. Because it had been raining, I was not wearing Della, my confidential hearing assistant, what I heard was that he worked in cartoons. Fortunately, the husband asked an appropriate follow-up question before I asked an inappropriate one. As might be expected, they had questions about the current happenings in the States. We told them we hoped that the air traffic controllers or TSA personnel did not all call in sick by then due to mandatory work and nonexistent pay.

We are now sitting in a presentation on the various excursions possible. We know a bit about these having already registered for the one we want, Into the Ice, on polar exploration. We had also registered for a trip to a brewery but for some unknown reason that one was cancelled. My principal goal here is to ask if I really can fish off the deck of the ship. The reservation agent with whom I booked told me that because of the small size of the ship, it was possible to fish from the deck. I do intend to ask if that about deck fishing if it does not come up as part of this presentation.

They just announced that the weather for the next few days is forecast to be good. Up north, the forecasts are more uncertain. In rough weather, we are supposed to always hold onto one thing and, above all, not go out on deck. They do have "stormy weather bags" available at various points around the ship. Interestingly (or not), they're identical to the airsickness bags one finds on commercial planes.