Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #28
Back Home · Wed, 22 Apr 2026. 7:30pm

We are finally back home from Ohio. Our flight actually landed early so we got home-home, as in walking through our front door, at 6:15pm. It's 7:30 now as I settle down to write this after figuring out what to do about dinner (I opted to make a simple dinner at home instead of going out), sorting through a week's worth of mail (mostly junk but a few things from Amazon arrived early), and unpacking about 2/3rds of my stuff.

Things still to do are: finish unpacking the other 1/3rd of my stuff, spend time time unpacking mentally, and shower to clean off the odors and... for lack of a better word, glaze... of travel. Oh, and catch up on seemingly a dozen blogs from this trip I've left in my backlog. 😟 The blog backlog will probably take me at least until Sunday to clear out. The other stuff I'll do this evening, as there's still ample time left in the day. I'm glad I planned this travel both to avoid getting up at stupid o'clock in the morning and arriving home late, late at night. It feels good to be home in time to enjoy it. We may even sneak in a soak in the hot tub this evening!

Update: I skipped on the hot tub as I started running out of steam shortly after writing this entry. By 8:30 I was ready for bed. That seems early— there was still the last bit of light in the sky when I laid down— though not so much when you consider I got up at 5:30am Pacific time.

Ohio Waterfalls Travelog #16
Circleville, OH · Sun, 19 Apr 2026. 10am

It's Sunday morning and we're doing our usual morning routine so far on this Ohio trip: sleeping in a bit then lingering over a simple breakfast before heading out for a few hikes.

"Hey, what happened to all of last night?" you may wonder. "Like, after you visited that amazing pencil sharpener museum?"

Nothing. The answer is nothing happened since approximately 4pm yesterday. 🤣

All we did was drive home to Circleville, enter our hotel room, lock the door behind us, and veg the whole evening. We didn't even go out for dinner. Partly that's because we weren't too hungry, having eaten a late lunch at The Feed. And partly it's because we were tired and lazy and still had some food left over from our grocery run Friday evening. We nibbled on what we still had and called it dinner-enough.

Blog Backlog; Change of Tempo

It seems surprising that for how all our evenings thus far have been "And then nothing happened" I'm still running behind by what looks like 3 days already in blogging about this trip. We're vegging in the evenings after having busy days, I remind myself. This blogging backlog happens because we're doing a lot of stuff I enjoy writing about. And because I rate-limit myself at 3 posts/day so as not to overwhelm people's feeds.

Still, I hate get backlogged. It makes it hard for readers to follow the tempo of the trip. Like, if blogs about hikes and traveling curiosities are spread over 3 days, are you really going to think, "Wow, that was one busy day"?

So what I'm going to do with the next few days worth of blogs is switch to posting daily summaries first. I'll come back around later in the week with details (and pictures!) from individual hikes. I expect it'll take me until Sunday to catch up on all those. But hopefully, at least, I'll catch up on the daily summaries to the point that I'll post my "It's Wednesday night and we're home from Ohio!" blog no later than Thursday morning. 🤣 Maybe I'll even squeeze it out Wednesday night.

We had crummy weather all this past weekend. High temperatures barely peeked above 60, several degrees below normal for this time of year, and it was mostly gloomy with rain on-and-off. In the past I would've groused about how shitty weather ruined the weekend— and of course it's sunny and warmer on this back-to-work Monday morning— except for me it's not a back-to-work Monday morning. I'm retired! And that's why I don't care the weekend weather was shitty. In my retirement every day is a Saturday.

Spring Family Visit Travelog #12
Back home · Sun 5 Apr 2026. 10pm.

We're back home from our week of visiting Hawk's parents in Pennsylvania. No, it didn't take us until 10pm (the time shown above) to travel. We walked through our front door just before 6:30pm. And then we promptly turned around and went out to dinner.

After the affront of being handed a packet of Heinz salsa at an airport eatery Hawk declared, "I want good Mexican food tonight!" So we went to dinner at one of our local favorites, La Fiesta.



(This is actually a picture from months ago, but we ordered the same things... minus the margarita.)

After dinner Hawk was wrecked from sitting in the airline (and airport) seats for several hours. We came home, and she sacked out on the sofa while I puttered around sorting through the mail and unpacking my suitcase. I thought about going for a soak in the hot tub tonight— yes, the hot tub is fixed after months of being out of service!— but lazed out and stayed in.

Spring Family Visit Travelog #10
Getting ready to leave · Sun 5 Apr 2026. 9am.

Today we fly home from visiting my inlaws in Pennsylvania. And this trip has been almost nothing like I planned. Not that I had strong plans; I left things flexible knowing we'd need to play it by ear. But still I came in with a range of expectations... and it's been unlike any of those.

First, and simplest, we didn't go anywhere other than Hawk's parents' place. We'd thought maybe we'd spend a day seeing my mom and youngest sister, or a day visiting our nieces, but none of that worked out. The three nieces I reached out to about meeting up with never responded. Sadly that's what happens most of the time.

Spending the whole week with Hawk's parents wasn't bad. It's just more... limited... than what I hoped for.

So then there's what we planned— or expected— with Hawk's parents. Those plans were largely dashed. I mean, we spent the week with them. In a way that was the most important element of the plan... but it was also merely the baseline.

There were no fancy meals. Hawk's mother is too weak to cook. She can barely even walk to the kitchen, with the help of a walker. I didn't expect her to cook up a storm... but after 30 years of visits where she's practically lived in the kitchen seeing that all her guests are well cared for, it's a different experience being in her house with meals being completely DIY.

Like I said, though, we knew she wouldn't be cooking for us. At least not more than a minimum. We figured we'd take her out to dinner a few times instead. Except even that was a bridge too far. She didn't have energy to leave the house. She gladly stayed home by herself while the rest of us joined family friends for holiday dinner.

Beyond issues of enjoying meals together— again, always a defining aspect of visits to my inlaws— Hawk and I expected that we'd help her parents with preparing to move. Yes, we're already past the first step on the line of "You really need to move out of this house." They've accepted that they need to move out. So we figured we could help them 1) look at retirement homes in the area and 2) clean out the house, especially the basement, in preparation for moving sometime in the near future.

Alas they didn't have energy even to participate in such tasks. Cleaning out the basement requires their active participation, at least to act as deciders. "Keep this, toss that, hold the other thing for now." Triage. But even that was a bridge too far. We tried doing a few cleanup tasks without their supervision, like throwing out expired food from the fridge... but even that resulted in hard feelings! Well, at least Hawk's brother did get her dad to look at one retirement home option. But it seems they did only a cursory look and left with lots of major questions still unanswered. All these will remain tasks for another time.

Speaking of "another time", we're already planning out next trip! MIL's birthday is in late May. We'll sit down with her today and try to map out her treatment schedule to determine which dates would be best for the next visit.

I've been retired now for 4 weeks. Not 4 weeks officially but effectively. The difference is that I submitted notice of resignation with a proposed final work day of Friday, March 6. The company then dismissed me on on Monday, Feb. 23. So, effectively, I haven't been working for 4 weeks. Anyway, enough about official vs. effective; the thing I want to write about here is what I've done and how I've felt in the past 4 weeks.

"What have I done in 4 weeks?" is an easy question to answer. The answer is Not much. 😓 I've long planned that in retirement I'd travel a lot more. Well, in the past 4 weeks I've only taken one trip, and it was a short, weekend-sized trip. Though we took that trip during the week, avoiding the weekend-sized crowds, so there's that. We also did a short scenic drive followed by a hike in the mountains last Thursday. Again, it was the sort of trip we could have done on a Saturday or Sunday— except by doing it on Thursday we avoided weekend crowds.

The fact that my retired life is off to a slow start is disappointing, but I remind myself it's just that— a slow start. It reminds me of summer vacations as a kid.... Knowing there were only 10 weeks of freedom until the next school year started, feeling like I ought to maximize every one of those precious few days, and often just sleeping in and lazing around most of the day until the summer was half over. And you know what? While I felt guilty about that, it was also satisfying. Now, like then, decades ago, it's both satisfying and guilt-making. And I'm confident I'll shift into higher gear eventually.

Today was my official last day of work / start of retirement. Yeah, it seems like I've been retired for almost two weeks now. That's because after I submitted my notice of resignation exactly two weeks ago, my company walked me the following Monday.

I've been doing a whole lot of... nothing much... to soft-launch my retirement. Yes, I had/have great plans for what to do in retirement, but I'm caught in a slow period right now. Hawk has been working through medical issues that have made her unable to travel and do outdoors adventures. Recently I decided that since she's on the DL (disabled list) I might as well go on the DL, too. Thus my choice to see a dermatologist about removing a lump on the back of my head. No cardio exercise or even going to a pool for me for a few weeks.

One thing I've reflected on at this two-week anniversary is this meme I've shared a few times when discussing retirement:



I'm happy to report that I am no longer feeling like the sad person in this illustration. I'm not yet the happy person recording cell phone video of sunny long-range vistas— though I know that will come eventually. Once we get off the DL together.

What's changed? I figured before a combination of two things were making me feel down. One was unsorted feelings about quitting my job, for good. The other was misgivings about "What if the money in retirement doesn't last?"

Well, the latter's already getting a bit of a test with how markets have been slumping the past two weeks. And it's not bothering me. I built our financial plan to handle bumps like this. Nearly every day I revisit the numbers to remind myself it's working.

That leaves unsettled feelings about quitting as the culprit for my feelings of sadness and anxiety. Two weeks later isn't a hugely different vantage point to revisit this question, but in terms of how I'm feeling about it, it's close to night and day different already. I have no question about whether I was right to leave that job. I am so over it now. Zero regrets.

It's been warm here the past few days. On Friday the weather app said it reached 78° in Sunnyvale, though I measured 81° (27 C) when I was out just after 2pm. Today it's warm again with a reading of 79°.

I wish I could say I've done something special with the warm weather but... I haven't. Other than enjoy it. Today I even dressed in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt for the first time in over 4 months.

Along with being warm it has also been dry. We haven't seen rain in several days. And the 10 day forecast shows no rain in the near future... though the warm weather will subside as temperatures return closer to normal— normal being a still not-sucky 62° high at this time of year.

The possibility that this could be "it" for the rainy season this winter is a bit concerning. (Why is it concerning? It's concerning because the threat of DROUGHT looms over California and its 40 million residents nearly every year.) A recent report from the California Department of Water Resources says the Sierra snowpack is at just 66% of normal water equivalent for this time of the season. It's a mixed report, though, as some major reservoirs are over 100% right now. It seems like we'll be fine this year, drought-wise, even if there's no more rain/snow until next winter, but we'll have little buffer going into next year.

Flying for Fun & Profit #3
Back home. Sun, 28 Dec 2026, 9pm.

Well that was easy. The mileage run I thought would chew up part of the day and all evening got done in just a few hours— thanks to finding a quick turnaround flight back from Los Angeles. I could've been home over an hour ago but I decided, since it was before 7:30 when I landed in San Jose, that I'd like to enjoy dinner out with Hawk. Now it's 9pm and we're back home, unpacked (for very small values of unpacking; basically I just took my computer out of my shoulder bag!) and relaxing.

For dinner we went to California Pizza Kitchen a few miles away. That was my pick because I was planning to eat at the CPK in Terminal 1 at LAX. The CPK there is actually more attractive now than it was a few years ago thanks to renovations, but oh! the prices. I took a peek at their menu while I was dancing the hokey pokey. They want $26 for a pizza! I figured with that and two airport-priced beers I'd be out $60 just for a basic dinner for one. Instead Hawk and I enjoyed a dinner for two near home, including two beers and an appetizer in addition to two meals, and the total was only $80.

Oh, and I just checked— the miles are already posted to my account! I now have A-List Preferred status through 2026. 😎

Thanksgiving triplog #18
Camp Hill, PA · Sat, 29 Nov 2025. 9pm.

Today was Second Thanksgiving with my inlaws. It's kind of like being with Hobbits. ...I mean, in the sense of them having Second Breakfast, not in the sense of being around short people with hairy feet.

Second Thanksgiving happens because MIL and her longtime family friend, Lynne, both loving cooking. Each wants to cook a delicious Thanksgiving meal. So they agreed they'd take turns. One hosts Thanksgiving, the other hosts Second Thanksgiving a day or two later. 😅

Second Thanksgiving was at my inlaws' house. It was also a smaller party than Thursday. Beyond the 5 of us in the house (MIL, FIL, BIL, Hawk, and me) the only guests were Lynne and Dean.

What's on the menu for Second Thanksgiving? Well, since it's not really a traditional thing there's no expectation of it being about turkey. Which is okay with us, as I don't particularly enjoy turkey (though I'm okay with it) and Hawk really hates it. So MIL made a roast of beef that was deliciously tender. 😋

Right now it's a bit after 9pm, and I'm fading, hard. The company left a few minutes ago. It was none too soon for me as I was struggling to stay awake. Though now that I'm laying down for a bit I'm waking back up. I  might go back downstairs soon to hang with family as they unwind for the night.