As an example of how slow it got towards the end of this summer, I actually did a taste test of frozen chicken pot pies last week, which I’ll write about in exhaustive length later. So there’s that to look forward to. Advance tip – avoid the Banquet pies, unless cost is the first, and only consideration, in which case, bon appétit!
Anyway, as of today the tourists have largely gone home, which is a seriously good idea. That’s because in Colorado if you’re out in public with out-of-state license plates between September 1st and start of snow season, on September 15th, you’re legally fair game to anyone who has a tourist hunting license. Just a friendly warning. We Coloradans have lots of guns, and hiking around in the backcountry looking for game is just exhausting. And we have too many tourists. The creation of Tourist Hunting Season has been a real boon to gun owners, gun manufacturers, local residents tired of tourists, and the deer, who are now free to gambol about, at least for the first two weeks of September.
Mary has been a busy little bee this summer, because besides running Mousesavers, she’s been engaged in a single minded effort to plan travel to every part of the world there is, no matter how remote and isolated, as inexpensively as possible. Inexpensive being a relative term, because whereas the Lonely Planet type people might be quite happy with a yurt to sleep in, Mary does have certain minimum standards, and will pay to maintain them. Standards like functioning heating, for example. Which is what makes this year’s trips all the more remarkable.
Sure, we start off the travel intensive portion of the year with a Disney cruise, but that’s business. And so is the Disney cruise immediately following the first Disney cruise – it’s also business. So much business. We should take a break and go and check out the Florida Keys.
Then we tour Southeast Asia, because it’s there, and Mary wants to see it. I tried to tell her that by using a Viewmaster it would be just like you were there, in glorious 3D, but without the heat, humidity, or insects the size of small dogs. But she wants to see some temples, so we’re going to go and see some temples.
In return for dragging my portly carcass through the hellish sauna that is Southeast Asia, I get to go to an Ice Hotel in Sweden, in December. Sometimes, I wonder how the two of us ever managed to hook up in the first place, never mind get married, when we both have diametrically opposed ideas of what makes a perfect environment. I believe that everything south of Atlanta and north of Sydney is uninhabitable, and should be marked as such on the maps. On the other hand, Mary feels that anything north of the Mason-Dixon line and east of the California state border should be regarded as accursed winter wastelands fit only for mastodons and the primitive proto-humans that hunt them. So, it’s pretty awesome that she’s agreed to come along to Sweden with me.
And who knows where the New Year will find us? Timbuktu? Novia Scotia? Branson, Missouri? We shall see.