Keith and Amanda - Post Covid 2021

 INTERESTING CONVERSATIONS   Along the road in France we met a number of people - fellow travelers, waiters, service people, friends we made 2 years ago on train platforms, etc.  Here are a couple of them. These 2 Dutch father/son cyclists were riding through France to Spain together.  The son is 16 and they have taken several of these 1,000 to 2,000km rides together each year for the last couple of years.  The mother is American - no longer rides but waits patiently back at home.  She met her Dutch husband backpacking through India and China and they have explored the world on foot and bicycle. I met them at breakfast and spoke with the father from across the room.  The son was glued to his tablet playing an American football video game.  His father expressed zero knowledge about American football and his son retorted "You don't know ANYTHING!"  He was not too thrilled at the prospect of a full day on the bike, but his father said he was act...

 Driving in Europe   After nearly a month of driving in Europe, I'm ready to return to the USA.  Our villages are not cute, pretty, historic, or quaint.  Our roads are wide, boring, efficient (except in some big cities, but BIG compared to European streets).  Our road systems were designed for the most part in the last century with lots of space.  The European cities, towns and villages are at least hundreds of years old.  Many towns were built close to the only path through them sometimes established by the Romans and only be as wide as a cart or 4 Roman soldiers (average height only 5'6"). So that's why driving OFF the Autostradas, Autobahn, or Autoroutes is a step back in time.  Where you need to have a VERY good knowledge of the width of your car down to the millimeter.  Sharp corners through small villages, and sometimes roads narrowed to allow one car to wait till the oncoming car has past demand one pays attention.  Of course, if ...

  European Bathrooms   It is always an interesting experience traveling in Europe - each country with its own plumbing and bathroom design philosophy - often their own manufacturers of fixtures, showers and tubs. It can be pleasant, surprising, terrifying, or downright amusing.   In our 1st Amersterdam BnB, in the attic of one of those skinny old stone houses, at the top of a staircase like the Burj Khalifa, was a very lovely, beautifully designed studio with a equally beautiful and well designed bathroom - nice fixtures, easy to understand and functional.   Our 2nd BnB, - OK similar staircase to the top floor, but a studio with no character whatsoever - but functional. Bathroom was small, with a 3cm foot grabber across the door jamb and another getting into the shower in case you managed not to hurt yourself on the first one. Shower was reasonably functional once over the hurdles.   3rd - French home of our sister-in-law. Very large bathroom, comfortable, a...

 Fourth of July - Virginia Style Gettysburg Battlefield What's more appropriate on the 4th of July than a visit to a Civil war battlefield... With over 1400 memorials, statues, cannons, field guns, and state brigade and division battle marker stones it is one of the most conserved battle sites in the world.  Driving up from Leesburg in only an hour we cover the distance it took Lee's Confederate army several days to traverse.  Meanwhile the Union army who had discovered the troop movements of the CSA had started moving major Corps up on a parallel road to the east - keeping themselves between Lee and a possible swing east to Washington DC. Lee's plan was destroy a bridge over the Susqhuehanna and a railway to the West, split the Union army forces and destroy them.   His goal was to defeat the army while threatening the northern cities and states and hoping that the threat would have them sue for peace. As it turned out, he had lost touch with his recon Stuart cavalr...

 Northern Virginia The Virginia countryside is glistening multiple shades of green after several days of rain which broke the back of the heat wave to nearly spring temperatures.  Today the high is 77, the air is fresh with a slight breeze in the wine country and everything is growing.  You can almost hear EVERYTHING growing. The farmer's markets are numerous along the country roads around Leesburg and brimming with corn, cucumbers, peaches, tomatoes, apricots, cherries, strawberries, fresh eggs, local honeys, and just about anything to suit one's culinary expectations On the narrow country roads with hedges and wild growth threatening to cover and hide the manmade paths, rabbits, deer and wild turkeys (and any other crawling furry beast may pop out at any moment in the early morning or late afternoon and make evening driving a true hazard unless you drive with extreme caution.  (Much like English hedgerows where pheasant explode out of nowhere, sometimes sacrificing...

 First Day   We left Phoenix in the morning for Denver to change planes for DC Dulles.  Beautiful thunderstorms over much of Colorado - plane weaved its way around the giant mountains of clouds, sometimes skirting them and sometimes forced through them.  Huge updrafts made for exciting ride for some, terrifying for others (Amanda).  Typical of the Denver airport in summer, it was packed with a lot of weather delayed flights. Clear skies   Once we left Denver an hour late, the skies were clear over Nebraska and Kansas and Iowa.  The symmetry of the perfect squares of farmland for as far as the eye could see is always amazing.  One has to make note of the thousands of wind turbines strung across the states.  To the north maybe 20 to 50 miles away was a string of thunderstorms - like some catastrophe movie looking down from space  - cylones of clouds stacked in dense columns often rising higher - much higher than the 36,000 ft of our p...