Been thinkin’…

It’s been months. One of my last posts questioned why I was inclined to write when traveling and not so much when home. Is it the increased level of adventure? More deep thinking when away from my nest? Is it the slipping back into old, comfortable routines?

Whatever it is…here’s my thought for today…two years ago WHO declared a pandemic. That day will go down in history like JFK’s assassination, Hiroshima, D-Day, December 7, 9/11, and other life altering events. It’s one of those days where you can picture yourself when you heard the news. Time stopped.

I think the difference this time was that we didn’t really know what a “pandemic” was going to mean for our lives. And we certainly didn’t see the “moment” in history lasting two plus years. In the USA, only our grandparents had any personal experience with a pandemic. Vaccines had erased earlier pandemic scares from our world. This “pandemic” news created a sense of uncertainty and with access to all the news sources, there was a lot of conflicting mis/dis information, much of which was not useful. It felt like we were immediately thrown into hyper info-processing mode on a rapidly changing topic of which we had no experience.

On March 11, 2020, I was home planning our annual St. Patrick’s Day party when all of a sudden Glen, Blair, and Niels came through the front door bearing their computers, monitors, and sundry other equipment announcing they were going to have to work from home “for awhile”. Awhile?

I immediately went from planning a party to figuring out how to serve three squares a day to four adults. All this as I navigated the new grocery shopping experience. (Remember wiping down each product before setting it on the counter?) AND we “postponed” our St. Paddy’s party – as we told our guests – for a week or two. A bright side? The party postponement did leave us with 15 pounds of corned beef to consume as I had already purchased it!

We all have memories of those first days – all the same and yet individualized by our circumstances. And here we are two years later, just beginning to open up our lives, our world when BOOM – literal “incoming” occurs in Ukraine. No words.

So at this new, strange time of uncertainty, I’ve been thinking…

Glen and I are finalizing our upcoming two month stay in New Orleans …

AND we are in the throes of planning a three month adventure in Europe with a fourth month back in New York. The strangest thing about this planning process is that so many of my research sources – blogs, websites, travel magazines, etc. are so outdated – back to 2019-20 because that is when our world as we knew it, stopped. It feels like a sci-fi movie scene as I turn from blog to vlog to magazine article to travel website – Literally, there are two missing years from our history, from our lives, from our world.

Do-do-do-do (Sing the Twilight Zone music and you’ll get it.)

I’ll close with this – Is it time to create our new (his/her) story? Are we crazy? Maybe.

Time will tell.

And just a tease…here are a few photos of the places we will be staying in Europe…There are a few more weeks at the beginning and towards the end that we are still filling in. Let the blog restart begin!