As 2024 starts to come to a close, and plans for December have largely solidified, I thought it might be fun to revisit a Journal entry from January where I discussed travel for this year. At the time, I had some big plans, and in looking back, it shook out a little bit differently than I had anticipated. But I enjoyed it all the same.
Right off the bat, a January trip to New York was already booked when the entry was written, and so that went off as scheduled. That ended up being one of my more memorable trips to New York for a few reasons. First, the route that Aaron and I took going up to New York was different than usual, due to the roadgeek-like desire to complete I-78 in its entirety. I had been on most of it already, but was missing a segment in New Jersey. Aaron had never been on any of it, so this was entirely new territory for me. It was enjoyable, and we got to visit Allentown, Pennsylvania, which was new for both of us. However, due to time concerns, we spent very little time in Allentown other than to fly the drone around and check out the fire alarms and elevators at a random office building. However, the most memorable thing that came out of that trip was that I developed a nasty case of COVID-19 while in New York. I suspect that it was the let-down effect in play, where I had likely caught it somewhere a while before, but my body held off on getting sick until the stress was off and I was ready to go have fun. That led to a first day where I had some very mild symptoms that I was able to ignore and keep hidden, but then by the middle of the second day, I wasn’t able to hide it anymore, as it was clear that I wasn’t feeling well, and that running on all eight cylinders was doing me no favors. I also got a different perspective on COVID masks on this trip, since I was sick with COVID for part of it. I tried to do the right thing and cover my infection (because trust me, you did not want to get what I had), however, I soon ran into a significant problem: that mask was like a little greenhouse, and my nose was running like a faucet with thin mucus. Plus with my breath coming out into that mask, it created a very warm, moist environment in there. That was the most disgusting thing that I dealt with the entire trip, as the snot from my nose was running down my upper lip, into my mouth, past my mouth, around my mouth, and down my chin. Let’s also not forget that the mask blocked my ability to mop it up as I needed, plus became something of a snot bucket in and of itself, as it was quickly covered in snot from top to bottom. I think that I made it about 30 minutes in the mask before I said the hell with it because it was just too gross and caused more inconvenience than it was worth. I preferred to leave it open in order to be better able to blow and wipe, plus with exposure to cooler, drier air, it had a better chance of thickening and/or drying up some rather than just sitting in that warm, moist environment that kept it thin and runny. I really don’t understand these people that can mask all the time, especially when sick, because when I was sick with the Ronies, I couldn’t stand masking because it was just so nasty inside there. My getting COVID on the first trip of the year also made me start to wonder if this was going to be a thing for travel this year, i.e. I was going to get sick whenever it was time to go somewhere.
That New York trip was also very memorable because I experienced a very surprising loss while I was there. I was in my hotel room on the first night of the trip, and I got a message from a friend of mine who lives in Sault Ste. Marie expressing condolences for my loss. I was confused, because I hadn’t lost anyone recently that I knew of. When I expressed my confusion, that’s when he explained that Nerene Virgin, i.e. the person who played Jodie on Today’s Special, had recently passed away. That left me feeling a bit numb for a while, because we had chatted on Facebook on a number of occasions, and I was planning to send her a message about potentially meeting up for a potential upcoming Canada trip later in the year (she had expressed interest when I brought it up ahead of the 2019 trip, even though the logistics never worked out). And then all of a sudden, she was gone. I never wrote about it at the time simply because it got overshadowed by other things, especially as I was more or less out of commission for a week on account of my getting COVID. But it still feels weird watching Today’s Special now and knowing that Nerene is gone, but I have to remind myself that she will forever live on in our memories, and that she left a very large legacy behind.
Then the March trip to Virginia was pretty straightforward and a lot of fun, as we chased wildfires and explored out in the mountains. The mountains were planned, but the wildfires were very unexpected. Everything was normal from home all the way down I-66, and then as soon as we got on I-81, boom, everything was smoky. Chasing wildfires ended up being most of our day that day, as I put the drone up in the air and photographed the flames from above. That also put the brakes on a minor photography goal, though, as smoke made for poor air conditions, which made me reconsider photographing the vintage neon “Jesus Saves” sign at night outside of the Valley Mission in Staunton. I suspect that’s not going anywhere, though, so I can do that another time.
The April trip, meanwhile, was one that had gone through a few iterations. I mentioned that it would likely be a flying trip somewhere in the eastern US, and I had thrown out Charleston, Atlanta, and Cleveland as possibilities. The initial planning for that was for an Atlanta trip, since we had both expressed interest in going to Atlanta. That would have been a flying trip. Elyse wanted to stay at the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta because she wanted to be able to ride the elevators there, but unfortunately, that hotel was sold out on the weekend that we wanted. Since Elyse didn’t want to stay anywhere else in Atlanta, and that neither Atlanta nor the hotel were expected to go anywhere any time soon, we scrapped those plans. Cleveland was never seriously in the running, and ultimately, we settled on another trip to Charleston, since we both really liked what we saw in Charleston, and wanted to give it its due. However, we didn’t fly there like I had originally intended, because traveling to the airport, dealing with the airport, and everything else related to flying for a short haul flight like that eats up most of your time savings, and then when you factor in the cost of the tickets and a rental car and everything, it’s more expensive than driving. Plus you can’t do little side adventures or go to Buc-ee’s when you’re flying, and I can bring as much stuff as I want with no baggage fees or security screenings.
As far as the trip itself went, I wrote about it already, so you already know what happened. However, I was not to have a trip without a potential illness, apparently, as I developed a cough on the way down to Charleston. I had some mucus in my throat that would require a cough to clear, but I was unable to properly expectorate said mucus. I had never had that happen before. Usually, whenever I would have a productive cough, I would be able to expel something, but not this time. I suspect that the reason I couldn’t get anything out was because there wasn’t a whole lot of it to begin with (but goodness knows that I tried). Considering the time of year, there were two options, depending on the color of the mucus when I eventually got some out. If it was clear, it was allergies. If it was yellow, I had caught something again. On the day that we left Charleston for home, I finally managed to get some of it out, and much to my disappointment, it was yellow, i.e. I was sick again. Well, crap. The let-down effect got me again. Fortunately, though, this was just a mild upper respiratory infection, and wasn’t anywhere near as bad as when I had the Ronies in January. That said, I didn’t miss any work over it, and just plowed through it without any issue.
That Charleston trip also demonstrated how far we can go for a weekend road trip and still have a lot of useful site time. The April trip to Charleston had about a day and a half of useful site time, which was about the same as the July 2023 trip to Toronto. And it was executed quite well, too, as we got to do just about everything that we wanted, and had a great time. My only complaint was the poor pacing going home. My original statement in the Journal entry from January talked about flying, but all the same, that weekend road trip was proof of concept for longer distances. Now we know that we can go further with that kind of time, which expands our horizons some more without having to deal the expense and hassle of flying. Suddenly, a lot more stuff is road trippable for a weekend outing.
I also got to do some solo traveling this year. Elyse had a number of weekends where she was in Roanoke for bus museum stuff, leaving me unsupervised. I took advantage of some of that time to do things that I knew that Elyse wouldn’t want to do. The April overnight trip to New Jersey was one such thing. For that, I packed in a ton of stuff that I knew would bore Elyse, or that she had previously expressed disinterest in. The first day of that trip largely consisted of subjects of personal or familial significance, and then the second day was spent largely in the Cape May area. Elyse was not salty about missing that trip, including the ferry, because she had previously ridden the ferry, and didn’t like it that much. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, especially on the ferry, and would absolutely do that again. The same went for that overnight trip that I did to Pennsylvania in August. That was mostly drone work that Elyse wouldn’t like, so it was a solo while she was away, and no one was upset about that. However, Elyse was upset about my solo trip to Hampton Roads, since I went a more northerly route to get there, going across the Bay Bridge in Maryland, and then the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in Virginia. Elyse had never been on the latter, and was salty that I did it first. I said that the bridge isn’t going anywhere, so we can do it again on a future trip, but I’m still hearing about that one. That was a fun trip, though.
One thing that dominated much of my travel planning in the latter part of the year was Biscuit 2.0, i.e. former CARTA bus 3426. That bus is still in South Carolina as of this writing, and one of these days, we’re going to get her home to Maryland. We did a weekend trip down to Charleston in September to retrieve her in September, which ended in a tow back to the shop because of a bad oil pump (it’s always something with an old vehicle). The bus also ultimately determined what we did for our weeklong trip, which we had scheduled for the first week in October. Back in January, I had envisioned this as a road trip to Toronto, however, as the date approached, things started to change. First off, I just wasn’t feeling it. I had been to Canada three times in 2023, and was lacking inspiration to go. If those three visits in 2023 had not happened, this probably would have been a Canada trip, but I was feeling a bit “Canada’d out” (pronounce that “out” so as to rhyme with “boat”) after that, and wanted to do something else. I had sort of mentally penned in a trip to New England for a few years down the road, and so my thoughts evolved towards moving that up and doing it in 2024. However, while that made enough sense on paper, neither one of us was feeling that one too much, and so we let that idea go. The September trip to Charleston, which failed to bring the bus home, was the final nail in the coffin for New England, because after that, we felt the need to keep that week open in case we needed to make another run down to Charleston for bus retrieval purposes. We also made sure that the folks at General Diesel knew that I had a vacation week then, i.e. I have lots of availability that week in order to get the bus. So the thought was that we might do a small trip somewhere, possibly to Charleston depending on things, and otherwise do some fun activities locally, but no big, overarching trip this year.
Oh, how wrong I was. As it turned out, we did do a full vacation, and it was to Charleston. That was not the case from the outset, but it just kind of worked out like that in the end. As it turned out, General Diesel was able to have the bus ready in time for my vacation week. That block of vacation time started on Thursday, October 3 and ended Friday, October 11. I treated Thursday as a rest day between work and travel, and then headed down to Charleston in a rental car on Friday. Because of the somewhat quick nature of this, and due to Elyse’s having some previous commitments, I went down and was unsupervised for the first two days of the trip, and then Elyse would fly down and join me in Charleston on Sunday. The plan was to go down to Charleston, have two days to photograph stuff in Charleston, scoop Elyse at the end of that second day, and then head home with the bus on Monday. Our friend Tristan would fly down on Monday to help us with the bus, as he is much more mechanically inclined than I am when it comes to these things. Our retrieval mission unfortunately ended up being unsuccessful again, as a cable for the transmission went bad on us, and we also got a stuck brake chamber. Lovely. So back to the shop for Biscuit 2.0 once again, but fortunately, the transmission issue was under warranty. Tristan had another commitment the next day back home in Maryland, so he ended up flying back that same day, while Elyse and I stuck around for two more days, as General Diesel expressed a possibility that it might be ready sooner rather than later. I had the time, so we stuck around a little while longer, which I didn’t mind, especially since we were both having a great time exploring more of Charleston. Seriously, we just love Charleston, and I can’t explain exactly why we love this city so much. The bus ended up not being ready by the time we had to go home, so we ended up driving home in another rental car on the Wednesday of my vacation week. We both had a good time, and we also felt fulfilled, having what turned out to be a full vacation in Charleston. It wasn’t what I intended, as we had made some loose plans for the back half of the vacation week after our originally intended return date, which would have included some local fun with the bus, possibly with friends, but this was good, too.
It’s funny – after the weekend trip that we made to Charleston in April, we had discussed doing a proper vacation to Charleston in the future. Who knew that this future would come so soon.
I’m doing a Life and Times photo set about our time in Charleston that I’m calling “Unintentional Vacation”, but it’s going to be a while before that’s done (as of this writing, I’m working on the text portion of the fifth day, so it’s still at an early stage). In the meantime, here are some photos, one from each day:
Woomy and David relax on the bed at the hotel after the eight-hour drive to Charleston. Woomy did not like the rental car that we had going down, but then again, I didn’t like it that much, either.
A child draws in the sand with his finger at Folly Beach.
A palmetto tree in downtown Charleston. I had wanted to get a clear shot of a palmetto like this on the April trip, but this was the best that I was able to do at that time.
Former CARTA bus 3426, aka Biscuit 2.0, posing for some glamour shots in front of CARTA’s facility on Leeds Avenue in North Charleston.
The Watertoy travels down the Cooper River. When I was looking at these photos afterward, I noticed that several people on the boat had spotted my drone, and were photographing it with their phones.
Overhead view of the Buc-ee’s location in Florence, South Carolina. I was surprised to see their beaver logo in large size on the roof, but apparently, that’s a standard thing that they do, as it appears on every single Buc-ee’s location that I checked on Google Maps.
Overall, a good time was had by all. And then the next time we go down to get the bus will probably be in January, and if all goes well, Biscuit 2.0 will at last arrive at her new home.
There was also one abortive attempt at an overnight trip, but that one wasn’t our fault. The SS United States was set to leave Philadelphia on November 15 in order to be sunk as an artificial reef off of the gulf coast of Florida, and Elyse and I were planning to go up to Pennsville, New Jersey in order to see her off as she passed under the Delaware Memorial Bridge, photographing from the Church Landing Fishing Spot (this is the same place where we photographed the bridge back in 2022). Recall that I photographed the ship on my September trip to New Jersey in order to get one last round of photos of her before she leaves. We had a hotel and everything booked, but when the departure was cancelled due to storm activity further along the route, and I cancelled our hotel reservation, and the ship remained at her usual berth pending announcement of a new departure date. We’re waiting to find out the new date for her departure, and once we find out, Elyse and I plan on being there when it happens.
Otherwise, Elyse and I have one more trip planned for this year in the week before Christmas, when we go down to Virginia for a weekend trip to visit Staunton and the like, seeing my parents in the process. That should be fun.
As far as next year goes, once I get some vacation time scheduled, we’re planning to do that trip to Rogers, Arkansas some time during the back half of the year. That’s going to be a two-week road trip, and it’s going to be a lot of fun, as I revisit places that I haven’t been to in over three decades, and likely discover many times over that you can’t go home again. Street View has shown me on a number of occasions that things have changed a lot there since I’ve been gone, but a lot of stuff has remained remarkably similar. That trip is going to depend heavily on whether I can get two weeks back to back. If not, we’ll have to postpone, but hopefully that’s not the case, and I also plan to pick a division that traditionally has low seniority in order to ensure that my ten years with the company get me a good amount of vacation selection with fewer old-timers above me. We’ve also got a trip to San Francisco penciled in for May, which will be my first time out west since 1991, and first time ever in northern California. I’m looking forward to that, as I try to balance time and expense in order to make a good trip out of it that doesn’t break the bank. I wasn’t able to book my other vacation week when we did the vacation selection in June, but my next opportunity to schedule vacation time will come in December, so all is not lost. Hopefully I’ll be able to augment some existing vacation blocks that I’ve already scheduled in the front half of 2025 to lengthen the trip just a little. Otherwise, Atlanta is kind of on the back burner for now, but we’ll do that eventually. We’ll see when that happens. I just hope I don’t get sick on my trips next year like happened to me twice this year. That was no fun, especially not when one of them was COVID, which put a damper on my trip, plus made me miss four days of work afterward. I also feel like I got sick a lot more this year in general, and I certainly hope that’s not going to become a trend.
So I give myself a mixed rating on what I announced in January vs. what actually happened. All in all, though, I’m content with what I did, and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next year.