Plinky asked, “What famous mon­u­ment do you hope to see one day?”

mont st michel.JPG

I’d like to go back to Mont St. Michel some day and spend more time there. I vis­it­ed the place briefly dur­ing a trip while I was in high school, and a small part of one day sim­ply was­n’t near­ly enough time to spend in the clois­ters, much less the rest of the place. There’s so much his­to­ry there!

I would have been hap­py to wan­der up the wind­ing road lined with shops at a leisure­ly pace had we not been on such a strict sched­ule, but as it was I was rac­ing to make it to the top.

Of course, all vis­i­tors are on some­thing of a sched­ule, because the tide cov­ers the road to the island every day, and I’m not cer­tain vis­i­tors are even allowed to stay past a cer­tain time. It might be nec­es­sary to stay near­by and spend sev­er­al days explor­ing, con­cen­trat­ing on a dif­fer­ent bit of the island each time — the clois­ters one day, dif­fer­ent stages of the cathe­dral con­struc­tion on dif­fer­ent days, the shops anoth­er — to tru­ly do the place jus­tice.

Plinky said, “List your must-haves for a suc­cess­ful road trip.”

road trip

Assum­ing you’ve already got a reli­able vehi­cle, the most impor­tant thing is good com­pa­ny — some­one who under­stands that the jour­ney is at least as impor­tant as the des­ti­na­tion, some­one who can hap­pi­ly fol­low the sur­pris­es that come up on a real road trip.

Next is good music. With­out that, you are sunk. One of the great things about good com­pa­ny is that you can make your own good music in a pinch, and that’s how we used to do it before we had CDs and MP3 play­ers with which to car­ry many GBs of tunes around.

Next, a cool­er filled with drinks. You get thirsty in the car, and its cheap­er and more con­ve­nient to just take your own water bot­tles and sodas along. Tak­ing healthy snacks with you is advis­able, too. You can skip this step in a pinch, but it’s more expen­sive to trav­el with­out them.

Final­ly, a cou­ple of changes of clothes and your tooth­brush. Pack light­ly, because you don’t go on road trips to look glam­orous. You go on them to have fun, peri­od.

Plinky asks, “Would you ever take a cruise? Why or Why not? Where would you go?”

And Anoth­er Cruise Ship

Sure. I’d love to take a cruise. In fact, that seems like a love­ly way to trav­el to/through the Caribbean or the coast of Alas­ka. I know peo­ple who have done both who rec­om­mend both trips high­ly.

I think I’d enjoy a theme cruise more, though, like gam­ing (RPG gam­ing, not gam­bling gam­ing) or filk­ing or maybe even an entire SF Con on board a ship. I’m not par­tic­u­lar to any one fan­dom enough to get into any­thing like a Trek cruise, but a more gen­er­al fan cruise could be fun. Com­bine love­ly sur­round­ings and pam­per­ing with fun? Sure!

Accord­ing to http://ergoweb.com/Ergoweb, the mod­els, which are used in the design of the pas­sen­ger area of Ford’s vehi­cles, are “chunki­er” than pre­vi­ous mod­els, to allow for “a big­ger bel­ly and wider hips.”

The com­pa­ny rec­og­nized it is hard­er to sit in a car if the steer­ing wheel feels too tight, the seat seems a lit­tle too nar­row and there is not enough room for the legs.

Thank you, Ford! Dare we hope that oth­er car man­u­fac­tur­ers, maybe even (gasp!), air­lines might fol­low suit?

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