About 15 years ago, I bought a house with a yard and made friends with my neighbors, and it took just under a week to realize they all had dogs and bonded on Friday nights in our cul-de-sac having drinks and watching their dogs run and play together while I […]
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a weekend in Montgomery and Selma
We pulled into Montgomery, Alabama at the Rosa Parks Library and Museum at 11am on Saturday; a few minutes later, the five of us plus my mother-in-law were inside a city bus simulator traveling through history. We walked through the attached museum and then drove over to the Alabama Department […]
the Golden Isles of Georgia and Savannah
This year, my annual workers’ compensation law conference was held at the Jekyll Island Convention Center instead of its usual location on Saint Simons Island, but since we’re more familiar with the latter location, we opted to stay there and just let me drive a bit farther to my conference […]
days 13 and 14 in Japan: an earthquake and the Park Hyatt Hotel
I awoke the Monday after Fathers Day to this Facebook message from one of our Tokyo karate instructors: Did you feel the earthquake? Are you okay? My nightmare from our first night in Japan had come true. Luckily, we’d missed it by a day, as it occurred near Osaka, and […]
Fathers Day in Hiroshima and the sacred island of Miyajima
We boarded our Kyoto Shinkansen train at 7 Sunday morning and arrived in Hiroshima just after 9. My bride had told me a few days prior that we’d be spending Fathers Day at Hiroshima, somewhat apologetically, but that’s how the itinerary had fit together, and was that okay? Who was […]
Girding Our Loins for Colorado’s National Parks
*Thanks to Hanes for sponsoring this post* Colorado has 4 distinctly awesome national parks. I saw 3/4 of them in 1987 when my folks drove my brother and me from Nashville in a two-toned ’83 Suburban, and I’ve wanted to go back with my own family and explore the diverse […]
day 11 in Japan: Matsusaka beef, Bunraku, and the Himeji Castle
We were on the Shinkansen bullet train before 8am on Saturday and walked up to Himeji Castle at 9:30am. I checked in on Swarm and saw that there are free guided tours in English that are excellent, and I’d no sooner declared that we should find out how to get […]
day 4 in Kyoto: Nara park, Kyoto Railway Museum, and karaoke
Friday morning about 9:45am, we set off from our AirBnB and discovered a place called Cafe Green Door in a residential area, just a couple blocks from our home, which was a nice change from the previous days’ meats on a stick for breakfast. We had eggs and coffee […]
day 3 in Kyoto: Hozu river boating, Rilakkuma Cafe, Nijo-jo Castle, and Bar Cordon Noir
Thursday, June 14, we rode a series of trains until we met Eric, a quad-lingual KKday tour guide originally from China who lives in Japan and was our guide for the “romantic” train taking us to a horse-drawn carriage taking us to a wooden boat taking us down the Hozu […]
day 2 in Kyoto, Japan: the Golden Pavilion, the Silver Pavilion, and hiking Mt. Inari
Wednesday, June 13 began with hot coffee at McDonald’s in Kyoto, because that was the only place I could quickly find hot coffee in our new ‘hood (we also had fried meat on a stick from a nearby street vendor). By 9:45, we were at the “Golden Pavilion” — Kinkau-ji […]