Friday Check In

OTRdom had "professional" groups?
YIKES! Run! Run!

Folks it's been a busy week but the weather is very nice. Its walks down to the beach weather with the doggo. Lovely sunny day. Spring is here so it's very nice.

Many books came I have officially passed the line of looking like a hoarder house so have promised I won't get anymore. Vinyl and guitars have been my play time.

Hope everyone is having a good week and our thoughts and prayers are with Tom and Carolyn.

Stay safe my friends...

Happy Friday from The Funny Farm. Nuthin' new to report. The weather has been very changeable lately. But we seem to have settled into just cold and gloomy for a few days. There's a slight chance of gettin' iced over for a day or two. But if it happens, we're well prepared for it.

Boss, the trike dream is still on the burner. Right now I'm tryin' to decide if I wanna go really deep and get a custom build. This looks very excitin'. https://www.challengermotorcycles.com/ But me with my usual tendencies, on a trike with a V8 might be more than a little stupid. And then again...

Be safe, be well and be happy,
And of course still thinking of and prayers for Tom and Carolyn,
Space

It was Friday and I missed it?

"Fake COVID" hit me yesterday, shocked I tested negative, but I don't believe them and I'm going back to test again today. People forget that when COVID came all the other wacky stuff around stayed around, too. Whatever it is, it should be done in a few days. Mrs GB was half-listening when she called from the supermarket and asked if I thought of anything else we needed and I said "I just read an article on a medical website that a chocolate iced donut reduces the symptoms of COVID." Pause. I could hear the thinking. Pause. "What????" There was no donut on her return. How did she know my test would be coming back negative just hours later?

Thursday I had an interview, weeks in the making, with Wally Maher, Jr. His father died at 43 when he was 14, but he still remembers the people and the times. One of the Maher kids favorite places to go was the home of Verna Felton because she had a pool! After Wally Sr died, the kids finished that year of school and went to Ohio where there were lots of family left, so they lost touch with lots of the Hollywood group. Bill and Georgia Johnstone always stayed in touch through the years and when Wally Jr was in college in DC he would occasionally go to NYC to see them. Bill had taken a long term role in a CBS TV soap in NYC. Georgia was Agnes Moorehead's secretary for many many years. Wally Sr was sensing he was very ill one day, probably 1950, and pulled Jr aside and told him he wanted him to go to college and to law school and never go into acting. Wally Jr went on to Georgetown U and then Georgetown Law and had a very fine career as a corporate attorney, with much of his career in Chrysler's legal department as a counsel in labor relations and employee benefits. You can even find video of him at C-Span with trade association, think tank, and Congressional testimonies from the 1990s. I'll be editing the recording sometime in the next weeks. But we spent about 2 hours chatting and it was just marvelous.

Friday 2/11 is my Theater Five presentation for MWOTRC. The group has decided to make it available to EVERYONE, not just members. I you want me to send the Zoom information, let me know. They start at 7:00 ET and my part starts at about 8:15ish. Should be done by 9:30 latest.

Just stopped in to see what condition my conditioner was in. 'Turns out my hair is experiencing a wild case of the Bush Baby Syndrome, since the conspiracy of COVID and Plunging Arctic Temps has prevented the fulfillment of my barbering contract. Mrs. Ghemrats has been threatening a singular variation on that famous scene in *Play Misty For Me* when Jessica Walter awakens Clint Eastwood with a scream and a pair of scissors buried in a fierce downward trajectory into his pillow. . . while his head is on it.

"Just let me do a little trim," has become her mantra, which for the uninitiated means employing the atomic-powered sheep shearing equipment set on stun. I rationalize that my ever-lengthening mane is just an homage to my astrological sign, Leo. And at least it's not long enough to qualify as one of those sad old man ponytails gifted with magical powers of youthful regeneration.

I don't know why Ring Lardner's "Haircut" keeps waking me in the middle of the night, but the dreams persist. Besides, with the withering cold I'm just keeping myself warm against the storm.

On another plane, I have enjoyed an Australian/New Zealand show starring Lucy Lawless--*My Life Is Murder*. Light fun indeed. A fan of Edgar Wright films (one of my favorites of all time is *The World's End*, the last in the Cornetto Trilogy), I thoroughly enjoyed the roller coaster ride of *Last Night In Soho*, though admittedly its twists won't be for everyone. So interesting to see Dame Emma Peel's (Diana Rigg) last performance. Glorious to watch. Mrs. G and I are also binging through *Angie Tribeca* which is wonderfully daffy.

Of course our prayers are storming the Gates of Heaven for Tom and Carolyn, expecting some perfect healing of body and spirit.

So, for this week, it's been just another collection of days replaying CSN&Y's "Almost Cut My Hair" as the national anthem for the house. Here's hoping all is safe and well with all in Cobaltia.

Be safe, be blessed.
Jeff

Hi all, I tested positive for COVID about a week ago. It hit me pretty hard. Ran a high fever for about two days, then coughing periodically ever since. Still don't feel 100%.
Then, with the ice/snow storm we had I slipped and fell on the sidewalk and messed up my shoulder. I may be getting an Xray on it tomorrow. Uhg! Hasn't been a great couple of weeks, but I guess it'll all pass.

I'm sorry to hear that Chad. Just keep in mind that life is constantly changing. So, there should be an upswing in your future. When we have ice or even significant snow, I don't even go out in it. I'm not accident prone. But I do have a tendency to push things too far.

Those I know who have had Covid, have had very different recovery periods. Anything from a few days, to gradual improvement over as much as a month. Here's hoping yours will be on the short end of that.

Keep the faith Chad. Things will get better.

Best regards
Art

Friday again? Busy family stuff, already discombobulated by expected harsh weather on Sunday. Everything's being compressed into Saturday.

Tonight's the big Theater Five presentation, and we were making tweaks up through yesterday afternoon. On Tuesday we got firm information about T5 exec producer Ed Byron working for AFRS at the same time Wyllis Cooper did for 1943's series This is the Army. Fine, that's known and easy to find. What we did not know is that they stayed in touch all those years. Copper died in 1955. As we're doing the T5 research on episodes we end up at the good site OTR Plot Spot and find this note for episode 80 "A Nothing Place"...

Actor Frank Thomas's script brazenly steals its plot and three characters from a 1949 TV play by Wyllis Cooper that got rave reviews in Variety and Billboard. Thomas, who played the bellhop role in the original and a 1950 rebroadcast, changes the dialogue, incidents, and ending enough so that it's not a direct plagiarism, but the result is pedestrian and uninvolving. Given that Cooper used to write for NBC's Empire Builders, among the first coast-to-coast drama series, it seems fitting to find a story of his hidden away in one of network radio's last anthology programs. --- Anonymous

(Frank Thomas, btw, is "Frankie Thomas" of TV Tom Corbett, Space Cadet fame, who wrote 8 T5 scripts and acted in 7 episodes).

Okay, so Frankie Thomas remembered a Cooper TV play he was in, needed an idea for a script, and used some plot aspects to write a T5 play. And probably did so with Byron's urging or at least his blessing.

THEN Karl Schadow mentions he saw an article in a 1964 trade mag that says Ed Byron was looking for unused Quiet, Please scripts and the TV show Volume One that Wyllis Cooper did.

In the meantime, I tried to find as much information as I could about Volume One. There were 6 episodes, and we only have plotlines for 1 and 6. They had no titles but were called "Number 1" or "Number 6".

Karl finally locates the trade mag clip, and here's the essential paragraph. Byron was at an April 1964 trade event and had just been hired to be EP for the brand new T5 that was months away.


Okay, so now we get suspicious. It was not Frankie T ripping off Cooper, it was Bryon who probably started the conversation with Thomas that led to the script. Thomas performed the script TWICE, once on Volume One and then as the fourth episode on the TV version of Escape that Wyllis Cooper ran. Yes, Escape had a TV version that people forget perhaps because it was not memorable and was not on the air for long.

So Thomas knew the script very well, and could come up with a plotline inspired by the story.

The question -- were other Cooper-inspired T5 scripts created? We are suspicious but may never know...

And in the meantime, I was alerted that one of the six Volume One episodes was recently put on YouTube. It's "Number Four" and Cooper is on camera and introduces it. So if you've never seen him or heard him before, here's your chance! https://youtu.be/7Ed-P_VmQwI

The script was a Quiet, Please script from just a few weeks earlier. In fact Volume One was supposed to be the Quiet, Please television program. The radio version and VO overlapped by two weeks.

The TV show was very experimental and from what we can tell was only in the NY metro area. This gave them the ability to use the same scripts on shows with wider geographic coverage, if not national, as Escape and also the Cooper TV series Stage 13.

We're doing our best to find plot descriptions and match them up with T5. It could be just this one episode. Byron was obviously familiar with the series and his late old friend's work, and if he told the press that Cooper's work could inspire scripts, he probably told many, many others. You never know what inspires some of these radio writers, and if they saw a Cooper script and were inspired, it they could have gone off on a different direction by the time they got to page 3.

Here's another article I stumbled upon in the process of figuring out the Byron-Cooper connection... hilarious!


I may not get to post today or this weekend... but will by Monday.

To get into the T5 presentation tonight (Fri 2/11/2022 7:30pm ET) send me an email at suspenseOTR@gmail.com

Howdy Folk's. It's that day again. And as usual, not much to report. The wife and I are tentatively planning a trip for March/April to Arizona and Nevada. It could be a week, could be two weeks but most likely won't be any weeks. We've got quite a few things which may come together to prevent it. But we've started the planning regardless. For those who remember last years aborted plans, the Canyon and another crazy jump would be included. The only reason we're going ahead with the tentative planning, is because we won't get another opportunity to schedule for quite a while. And we really want to explore that area. I'm already using Google Earth to search for potential drone flights. That's a pretty long paragraph for "not much to report".

GB, you constantly amaze me with all you accomplish. The dedication and drive you show for this hobby is simply astounding. And I for one thank you for all you do.

Thinking of Tom and his wife, and hoping all in Cobaltia are doing well,
Space

Monday, Friday posting everyone. Busy week I was wiped on Friday forgot to post.

Great post GB, always interesting.

Space, always happy to here you are always secretly plotting mayhem and shenanigans. Keep up the good work. I got some more equipment for the home lab and I am seriously up to nonsense all good but it includes robots, 3D made parts my Laser cutter and enough servos and circuits to push the bounds of good taste.

Stay safe my friends. Tons of love to Tom and Carolyn .....

Friday again!

Watched Netflix Inventing Anna which dragged now and then but always redeemed itself. How so many people could get so close to the official bamboozled line and how others can fall over the cliffs of bamboozled in such a short time was stunning. I'm going to start buying things I can't afford and start blaming stupid banks and my father's irrational behavior about my trust fund and start kiting checks for fun.... I'll let you know how it goes...

I start posting YTJD upgrades over the weekend

The big Suspense news is that we got access to 250+ script covers that we had never seen before or knew existed -- with LOTS from the closing years in New York -- and they reveal a different episode director who was never announced in the credits!! Stunning stuff, lots of cast corrections, changes, spelling fixes... it's all WOW stuff for us Suspense geeks. So looking forward to diving in...

Spring is here in NC and I can start my long powerwalks again without 3 layers of clothing... and next month for my 3rd degree black belt I have to teach all the classes... YIKES!!! April can't come soon enough for those kids, especially

GB, always floored by how much OTR stuff you dig up.

We are in the middle of huge storm here. Crazy winds and rain. You go out you are getting blown away.

As per usual its busy here but the work is super interesting, plus have my own projects rolling in my home lab. Space would love the amount of mayhem making equipment I have in here. If I can think I can make it. Gotta an insane project running now. Nuff said... wink..

Guitar, vinyl and books are my per usual pastimes.

Stay safe and stay dangerous my friends....

Loads of love winging its way to Tom and Carolyn

A day late once again. I spent three hours on the road yesterday. Had to pick up my sister in law from the airport. She'll be with us for a couple of weeks. Today and tomorrow, she and my wife are visiting their brother in Chattanooga, Tn. And I get a bachelor weekend sort of experience. The weather is cool but gorgeous. I'm feelin' the need to throw somethin' on the grill.

I hope everyone is doing well and of Course continued prayers for Tom and Carolyn.

It's Friday and we went into the real world for real today after being essentially holed-up since mid-December. That was to be sure none of us became ill prior to Christmas... and then of course while visiting potential in-laws he caught the Covidian Contagian from the Klingon pods dropped from their stealth satellites. We spent a week leaving a tray outside the door and texting that dinner was ready and then eating together over Zoom though he was 50 ft away. Then weeks of doctors appointments and such and we ourselves meeting the perhaps in-laws kept us out of the marketplaces and venues. Then I got a flu that I was convinced was the Covidian Contagian (this one from the Romulans) but it was never such luck and it was plain ol' flu. I guess I just wasn't like the cool kids. And then Mrs GB's medical and eye routine checkups were all fine and today was our special day start getting back into the real world and do normal stuff.

Oh boy... has breakfast out become more expensive...

If MLB stays locked out and they don't settle until near the end of March, we may do the drive to see spring training for the Metsies...

I tell people "I'm on a fixed income".... but I never come close to saying what it is... but I make it a point to look like they should pick up the tab. Hasn't worked yet. Have to keep practicing.

Did you see the latest YouTube hit?

We've been doing a lot of log clean-up. Excluding the 4 episodes that are missing or we have poor information about, here are the top 10 T5 actors and their appearances...
69 George Petrie
39 Evie Juster
38 Robert Dryden
30 Jack Grimes
25 Bryna Raeburn
23 Peter Fernandez
22 Ralph Camargo
22 Ian Martin
21 Stan Watt
20 Guy Sorel

Look familiar? Most of them were on NY Suspense, YTJD, and CBSRMT!

Having problems figuring out where I left off the last time I posted YTJD upgrades. All kinds of issues... still sorting, but I think it's fixed.

Monday is my last karate class with the younger students as I assist my teacher. Wednesday... my 3rd degree test is essentially to run all the kids classes for the entire month of March as he sits with the parents or goes out for errands. Unfortunately there are no holidays to pre-empt classes. Grrrr......

Wednesday was 27th anniversary of my shoulder surgery. There I was in Rhode Island Hospital admitting office, handed a clipboard and a release that started with something like "patient agrees that surgery is an art..." WHAT???? Despite all the physical therapy the only thing that got me near to full range of motion was martial arts. For about three years I heard adhesions and scar tissues "ping" as they hurt, broke, and then felt marvelous. But I even have on my Google Calendar the day in 2007.... yes, 12 years later... a day after a grueling class... when the near-full-range returned. I was in pain for days before... so strange how we heal.

And then March 11 is 36 years since my ear surgery when they gradually removed my mastoid bone in 4 hrs of tedium. I remember one thing, vividly, in the week-long hospital stay. My brother-in-law brought me a pint of Carvel vanilla soft-serve. I still talk about that to this day. Ice cream never tasted so good as it did that moment... the whole pint...

Marvelous OTR things about to happen... the first big box of reels are supposed to arrive on Tuesday... yay!

How can a person with nothing much to do be a day late? Oh well, at least I'm here now. As usual, nothing much to report. I did manage to get in some range time this week. I poked holes in paper out to a hundred yards. My sources say that a new long range paper poker, that I've been thinking of adding to the collection, will be on sale this coming week. And the temptation is very strong to buy it. We'll see.

Still working on the potential trip plans. Mostly just looking at prices for the time frame. But since those prices are very subject to change, it's just ball park budget planning.

GB, dining out almost always gives me sticker shock. I know most of it is just getting older and dealing with inflation. But that inflation has been ridiculous this past year. My wife and sister in law were out yesterday and decided to pick up a fast food lunch. $25 for a couple of burgers, fries and soft drinks at a fast food chain, seems totally insane to me. Fairly decent Chinese at a chain shop would cost at least twice that much. And prices tend to be well below the national average in our area.

I've also been looking at adding a new toy to the musical arsenal. Trying to figure out how to get a multi-effect pedal to run through a cabinet without an amp head in the mix. I wanna add some sound toys to play with, to keep from becoming too bored during practice. I'll probably give up on the flight of fancy and add a modeling practice amp instead. But I really love the pedal and don't wanna do both.

I'm still sifting, sorting and thinning my collection of stuff. This week I finally found the box with the rest of my sci-fi first editions. Heinlein, Burroughs, Howard and E.E. Smith. No real big buck books. Just personal treasures.

Be safe, be well and be happy,

Space

Folks I am way,way late. Got caught up in busy work life. Which is bogus I promised myself to slow down. But some interesting stuff so I will put up with the interruption to my down time life.

GB great update as per usual. That was way too much surgery for me LOL.

Space, you know my answer and it's pedals amps, tube amps, modelling amps you need everything to mess around with sound.

I have just added some new equipment as I am finally doing what I always wanted and building a home studio. Only got one rule I cannot buy anything new. Has to be all used kit. Found an amazing Rupert Neve Digital interface so I can connect my guitars straight into my Logic Pro console I built using a Mac Mini M1. You need to look at this Space you have access to unlimited modeling and plugins and cheaper than amp you can also record your guitar straight in. I have some keyboards and a DAW controller keyboard I can run the studio on. So far I have been getting amazing deals second hand. It's all fun and no animals were hurt during the filming of my studio.

Stay safe spring is here

Hey Boss, here's an interesting new doodad, if you have a good set of headphones.
https://www.fender.com/en-US/guitar-amplifiers/headphone-amplifiers/mustang-micro/2311300000.html

Space it's a gadget so I obviously need this.

Friday -- March -- Springtime in Eastern NC. We didn't get this weather with any consistency until early May in RI. Trees are budding, some are opening, and flowers are starting their soon-to-be surge of color... so it's time to cover the porch furniture and keep the cars in the garage because the pollen is on its way! Those grey-green skies that we get for a few days will be here in a few weeks -- I always lose track of when that happens.

The reels arrived and so far so good. Four upgrades of stubborn late-series Lux, 4 big upgrades of USAFE Whistlers, better sounding than were in the Hehn reels. But wait... there's more! All to be revealed later as more reels roll through here...

Today begins the first real powerwalk in weeks and weeks... with what seems to be my suspected arthritic knee. Lunges and wall-sits are in my future and more warming up before anything and all that time of neglecting to ice no matter how good the knee felt has caught up with me. Rats. Hate when that happens.

We now have others in adult karate class and the sessions are far more intense now for weapons and it feels great. We're swinging the bo (6' stick) in kata and the workout feels so much more invigorating and full-body.

For my 3rd degree promotion I have to teach the classes this month... but I didn't know the adult class, too! Yikes! I found out at... the adult class when Sensei changed out of his gi and into his civvies before the class. When in doubt... review the basics... that never hurt anybody...

GB you take me back to the days of belt promotions and I too taught the kids class on a Wednesday evening and the adult advanced class on a Thursday evening. Then took our senior black belt classes on a Saturday and that was a five hour class. I loved it. I went to teaching during my Uni years. Twice a week. I do miss those days the fun the sweat the pain.

Spring is in full swing over here in Ireland. Longer warmer days and also more rain showers. A great time to enjoy walks down on the beach.

Many books and vinyl records arrived this week. And I promised myself no more. Got a swack of Jazz records and some Talk Talk and Roxy Music. And more devices. I mean what can you do about this stuff it keeps arriving.

Stay safe and tons of love to Tom and Carolyn.

I finally managed to get here on FRIDAY.GO ME!!! The weather here has also started to move to the better. A few more weeks and it'll be time to start mowing 3 1/2 acres every week. Yes, I'm actually looking forward to it.

I finally got the unpacking done and most everything is now in it's place. I have a LOT of duplicate paperbacks to thin out. Completing that will of course free up additional space in the bookcases for more paperbacks. I describe that as a win win situation.

I've also finished sorting, testing and thinning the vintage video game collection. I took a huge load of video game hardware, software and peripherals to a local vintage video game shop looking for either cash or store credit. The shop owner was excited when she saw what I'd brought in. Then she was absolutely astounded, when I showed her a couple of things that she never knew even existed. One being a pair of Atari 2600 wireless controllers. The other was an Atari touch tablet and stylus. When I told her that I'd kept the REALLY rare items, she asked if she could come by some time just to see what I'd kept for myself. I'll arrange for her to come by in the near future. And I can hardly wait to see the look on her face, as she gets to see what an old nerd has squirreled away. By the time I left the shop, they were completely out of cash and had to give me a pile of store credit. I plan to donate the store credit to a local needy children Christmas group.

Be well, be safe and be happy. And of course thoughts and prayers for Tom and Carolyn.

Space

Friday once more... it's the early NC spring with the attention span of a gnat... it's cold... it's warm... it's hot... we should have the last frost of the season over the weekend. Flowers and trees are starting to open. Signs of newness are taking over.

Another box of reels arrived and this one full of Suspense. But there was one reel in the box that yielded nothing. It was a mixed reel with a horribly sounding Burns and Allen that was at least 15% fast, and sounded like it was recorded from transcription using a stereo needle sitting at the bottom of the groove. Other programs like Rocky Fortune and The Whistler were on it, too, with crosstalk so loud you could listen to the background program almost as well as you could listen to the intended program. And, as a bonus, the recordings were overmodulated. What those early collectors put up with... so grateful for almost anything OTR they could get. Luckily all those shows are out now in excellent or very good sound. What passes for bad today would have been an improvement on that reel.

The improvement of the 1960s Suspense episodes with these tapes and those of past couple of years has been notable. These reels add to the improvement. The only real problem they have is that background buzz that AM radio always seemed to have back then.

Theater Five is coming along well. nickp57 only has 95ish plot outlines to do. Over 160 have been done. A stalwart Cobaltian worthy of accolades. Follow along at https://theaterfive.blogspot.com/  I've been listening episode by episode to do last checks of sound and edits. The series continues to surprise to the upside. Upgrades to some episodes have been stubborn and may never be found. It has been interesting to look into some careers of the actors as we go through the episodes. Yaphet Kotto, 24-year-old aspiring actor, was on the series twice before he became known as a stage actor, one of the crewmen in Alien, and of course his most popular role on Homicide: Life in the Street one of TV's finer achievements in the 1990s.

We've had great fun watching Murder in Provence on BritBox. Just three hour-long standalone episodes, so finely done, so enjoyable, highly recommended. The latest Lucy & Desi documentary on Amazon by Amy Poehler is superbly done. Fits in well with the movie dramatization of a few months ago.

The millionaires finally decided they had their hands more satisfactorily in each others pockets in major league baseball and their free hands into the fans pockets. We're disappointed. We were hoping to go to some spring training games in May Our goal is to visit all of the minor league teams in North Carolina. Last year, we went to a game of the Winston-Salem Dash, the only team I know of that is named after punctuation. It's been a long time since we've visited the Carolina Mudcats. And then there's places we've never been, like the Fayetteville Woodpeckers down near Fort Bragg, the Greensboro Grasshoppers, named after an insect, and the independent High Point Rockers, named after a kind of furniture. We're so looking forward to the Durham Bulls, much closer to us. It's a great AAA franchise, and the between-inning gimmicks are great for the kids. One stunt is to have a little kid run the bases in normal fashion against mascot Wool E. Bull (boy that get-up must be really hot inside) who runs the bases in the opposite direction. The goal is for the kid to beat Wool E. Bull back to home plate and Wool E. Bull does everything possible to make it look close but have the kid win. This 6 year old girl doesn't know what to do, so one of the promotions staff just tells her to run down the line to first base. She does. And keeps running down the right field line. Three promotions staffers end up running after her and catch her half way into right field. In the meantime, Wool E. Bull keeps falling around second base, gets up dazed, runs in the wrong direction, trips over the base a few times, doing the best to kill time until the staff gets things under control. She's on proper track now, and he makes his run to first, I think he tripped again, and the girl wins the race to home plate. I think she won a hot dog and a shirt. I think the intern in the Wool E. Bull costume lost 10 pounds of sweat in the process. Fun at the ballpark... have missed it so greatly.

That's it from here for now. Another week passes with light at the end of the tunnel and no engine noise can be detected. A good sign...

GB, great update I live vicariously through your baseball updates remembering going to games when I was young. Now I go to hurling games which is organised violence.

It's sunny and windy today. Spring is in full bloom. So sunny days then rainy days then windy, sunny, rainy days. Mixed bag but its warm and the ocean is gorgeous right now.

Sigh, more vinyl and books arrived and couple games for my PS4 so what I need to do is stop answering the door to the post.

Lots of love sent to Tom and Carolyn.....

Stay safe my friends....

HAPPY FRIDAY!!!

I've decided that local weather suffers from Tourette's Syndrome. 70 degrees today and 2 to 4 inches of snow tonight. Well, at least it should be mostly gone by tomorrow afternoon. And this "Should" be the last cold bast of the winter.

We've finally decided to pull the plug on the Western trip for now. But we'll reschedule for later. It's a trip we really want to take. Boss, there's a long shot trip that I hope to be able to make in the next few years. One of my dream trips is Scotland, Ireland and Northern England. There may be a quick trip to London as well. But it won't break my heart if we miss it. While I'd like to experience the history of Southern England, I now detest visiting the toilets that most major world cities have turned into. Of course we have to wait for more normalization in the world before we can even start planning. In the last 2 1/2 years we've visited Washington, Oregon, Northern California, Hawaii and Texas. Future definite but unscheduled trips are the Nevada/Arizona trip, a rail trip through the Rocky Mountains aboard the Rocky Mountaineer and a Route 66 exploration trip with my son on bikes. And one of these days I'll make it to Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Let's hope we can stay healthy long enough, for those to make it onto our itinerary.

Be safe, be well and be happy.
And of course thoughts and prayers to Tom an Carolyn.

Space