Archive of posts with category 'Travel'

Jan 3, 2016 So far, so good

We’re three days into the new year and it’s so far, so good. Tomorrow, I have to go back to work. I’m a little bummed that I can’t wear sweatpants all day anymore, but that’s ok. It’ll be good to get back in the swing of things. I’ve taken short bike rides every day so far and am up to 11 miles. So only 2242 to go to hit my goal. 🙂 I’ve cooked some good meals (homemade pizza, eggs with pepper, onion and avocado) and some ok ones (roasted vegetables with noodles). I’ve also used up my blackened bananas by making banana muffins, which turned out pretty good. I went with Paul today to his bar and helped him clean up some wood. So while I didn’t technically do a workout, I worked there for a couple of hours and got my heart rate up. My car has only been out of the garage one day. And since the weather looks pretty good, I’m hoping that the bike will get me to work for most of this week.

Oct 31, 2015 Bike Travel

The bulk of my vacation time the past few years, has been spent with me driving to a city with my bike and then biking around the city. Sometimes this has been to go on official bike rides with thousands of other people on closed streets and others it’s just me riding around town on bike paths or in the street. I absolutely love doing this. The big rides are fun because the towns usually route the ride through interesting neighborhoods and past important landmarks. And the individual rides are fun because it’s neat to learn your way around a new town. It’s also easy. I can put a destination in google maps and have it tell me directions best for biking.

Oct 29, 2015 Could I Live without My Car?

A couple of days ago, I hit 2000 miles of biking for the year. It wasn’t a goal to do this at the start of the year, but I’m rather pleased with myself. I actually thought it was a bit of an accomplishment until I read a blog post somewhere about a woman with MS who rode like 6000 miles for the year. I have a long way to go to reach that. But this got me thinking, do I really need to own my own car?

Jul 29, 2015 Not Casa Loma

My friend Ellen came to town for a vacation. Before coming, she had mentioned that she had a friend in Toronto that she wanted to see and I proposed a road trip to Toronto. I also suggested (strongly) that we take bikes and ride around while there, since this was my favorite activity when I was in New York.

May 11, 2015 Vacation!

It’s rare, but every so often I take a real vacation. By this I mean, I take off at least a week from work, go someplace and just relax. In my case, that means riding my bike around and reading. This time, I spent just over a week in New York City. I went for the Five Boro Bike Tour and stayed to go to a friend’s reading of his play. During my trip, I ended up biking over 130 miles and read six books. I could have done more of both. It was one of the best vacations I’ve ever taken.

Oct 18, 2014 Latest Events

Even though my cousin Annie’s birthday is in July, we celebrated in September with a hike at Starved Rock. It was a lovely day and I got some great pictures here.

May 11, 2014 Good Month!

I started this month with my trip to New York City for the Five Boro Bike Tour. I posted the pictures that I took here:

Apr 15, 2014 Road Trip!

Took another mini vacation over the weekend and drove to Washington DC. Why? First reason was the State of the Map US conference. They had an “Intro to Using OpenStreetMap” tutorial that I wanted to attend. Then I found out that it was going to be peak cherry blossoms during the same weekend. I’ve always wanted to see that, so I made the crazy drive. I drove to Perrysburg Ohio (close to Toledo) after work on Thursday and spent the night in a hotel. Then did the rest of the drive on Friday. Since it rained from the time I started until about an hour outside of DC, it wasn’t the best ride. However, once I got to DC, the weather was fantastic, around 80 degrees. I checked in to my hotel and jumped on my bike to find the cherry blossoms. They did not disappoint. My pictures are here.

Apr 6, 2014 Vacation!

Drove out to Cape Cod and Boston with my sister this past week. She attended the National Science Teachers Association conference and I just went to hang out. We drove so we could take our bikes and do a little biking while we were out there. We both also signed up for 30 Days of Biking, so we had to ride each day. The drive out was very long, but we had really great weather, which was nice. We were also in Cape Cod in the off season, so there weren’t very many people around. The disadvantages were that most things were still closed, but that was ok.

Feb 18, 2014 Quebec and Montréal Trip

Went to Quebec City and Montréal with my sister Julie and Mom. Pictures are here:

Aug 18, 2013 Pittsburgh Trip

I just got back from a long weekend spent in Pittsburgh. I went there to attend Steel City Ruby Conf, which was pretty good. The first day had a lot of self-described “touchy-feely” talks, which I wasn’t crazy about, but understood why they were being given. Though Julie Pagano’s talk on Front-End Development was pretty good and Jim Weinrich’s “Friendly Flying Robots” was a lot of fun. The talks on Day 2 were much more what I was looking forward to. The talk on git by the Steven Ball was really informative and I’m hoping I can start using some of his tips right away. Avdi Grimm’s talk on Pair Programming has pretty much convinced me that I should give it a try as soon as I get some time. And Leon Gersing’s inspiring talk was the perfect finish. So, based on the strength of those talks, I feel it was a pretty good conference.

Aug 6, 2013 Family Trip to Michigan

Finally got around to posting all the pictures I took on our trip to Michigan. They’re here.

May 12, 2013 A Fun Vacation

I signed up to the Five Boro Bike Tour in NYC over last weekend. I took my folding bike on Amtrak and it was a pretty good trip. It would have been great, but Amtrak is definitely not the way to travel. (Next time I want to go somewhere on a train, I first need to go to Europe.) As this was my first vacation in a while, I was very much looking forward to it.

Jan 21, 2013 FUN!

My brother convinced me to buy a mountain bike on Friday and we went up to Kettle Moraine on Saturday for a ride. I was a bit nervous, hoping that I wouldn’t hurt myself, since I’d never done anything like this. I love riding my bike, but I usually stay on pavement, which makes the riding pretty easy, even in traffic. Since there were a few of us who had never done it before, we went on an intermediate trail of about 4 miles. It was about 41 degrees, which wasn’t bad, but it was totally muddy. And I have to be honest, I haven’t gotten that filthy in a long time and it was fun. Since it was so muddy and a bit chilly, I couldn’t take too many pictures because it was a pain to take off my gloves and get the camera out. But here are a few shots from the day.

Oct 3, 2012 Days Off

I took the rest of this week off. Today, I decided to drive to Glacial Park Nature Preserve in Ringwood IL, which took me about two hours to get to. I read they had a nice hiking trail and while I hadn’t ever hiked before, I thought it was something that I might enjoy. My goal on the hike was to take one picture that I could print out and hang on the wall of my newly finished house. All of my pictures are here. Most aren’t very good, but there are two that I think I’d be happy with on my wall. So, when I move back home, one of the first things I’m going to do is have a print made of one or two of them.

Apr 6, 2008 My Sister is Going to Europe and I’m Not

My sister is going to Europe this summer for three weeks. She is now in my house, planning her trip with the help of my brother John. I’ll see about giving her an account here, so she can blog her trip while she’s gone.

Aug 28, 2007 Last Day in NYC

Today is our last full day in New York. It’s been a good trip. I saw two good plays, “Curtains” and “The Year of Magical Thinking”, went jogging in Central Park, visited the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum and saw some great tennis yesterday. The jogging was cool, though my knee started to hurt A LOT after about three miles, so I didn’t really run all that much in Central Park. Plus, it then hurt for the rest of Sunday, which wasn’t cool for all the walking around that I wanted to do. But, with downing copious amounts of ibuprofen and icing it when possible, I made it through the day.

Aug 25, 2007 A Year of Magical Thinking

I’ve just returned from the play “A Year of Magical Thinking” and wanted to put the ideas floating through my mind down before they left me. This will sound jumbled, but I want to get them all down.

Aug 25, 2007 Best $3 Spent in NYC

I’m writing from my hotel room in Times Square. Resting up before going to see the closing performance of Vanessa Redgrave in The Year of Magical Thinking. It should be a good show. Last night, we saw Curtains, which was excellent. A big, brash musical. Tonight should be a bit more subdued, which should make a nice contrast.

Jul 8, 2007 Catching Up

As soon as I get some time, I’ll post the pictures from Bloomington. I didn’t take too many because the battery on my camera died on the first day and I forgot to bring my charger. But I’ll have Jack’s and Em’s pictures to put up as well.

Jun 28, 2007 My Bloomington-Normal Trip with Emily and Jack

We are sitting in our hotel room in Bloomington, waiting for a pizza for dinner. Here is Em and Jack’s narrative of the trip so far:

Jun 11, 2007 Another Route

Rode the #74 Fullerton bus today, en route to my cousin Janet’s house to pick up her car. I picked it up in Lincoln Park, by DePaul and rode it to California.

Jun 6, 2007 Add a Route

After returning my cousin Janet’s car to her house, I took the bus home. Pleasantly, this involved taking a new bus route. So, I can now cross off the #52 California/Kedzie bus off my list of routes. I took it from Logan Blvd to 36th. Then transferred from to the #35 which brought me home. Total travel time: 1 hour

May 2, 2007 My Strange Goal

I’ve had this thing that I’ve wanted to do for a while. I don’t know why I want to do it, but I do. I’d like to say that I’ve ridden every bus or el line in Chicago. And not just taking a ride so that I could say that I’ve ridden it. I want to actually go places which require me to ride every route. I know it’s nuts and I don’t know why I want to do it, but I just do. I’ve ridden a number already and I’m going to create a single page listing all the routes I’ve ridden. Then, as I ride a new bus route or el line, I’ll add them to my list. Today, I rode the #12 Roosevelt and the #9 Ashland (though I’ve ridden that one in the past).

Feb 26, 2007 Ski Trip

I have recently returned from a nice vacation where I went skiing for the first time in my life. I went to Park City, Utah to Deer Valley Ski Resort with my sister Julie, my brother John and John’s Dutch friend Mark. We stayed at the condo of my sister Nancy’s friend Sharon. (Thanks Sharon!) I forgot to take my camera, so I don’t have any pictures to post. But if I get pictures from those who did bring cameras, I’ll put them up.

Aug 30, 2006 My Vacation

I just got back from a vacation to New York City. I went with my sister Julie and her friend Kate. We left on Saturday and returned today, on Wednesday. It was a great trip. Mainly, we went to go to the US Open Tennis Championship which started on Monday.

Jun 2, 2006 Mini-Vacation

There will be no work done on the house this weekend, as I’m taking my mother and a friend of hers to Springfield to see the new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library.

Apr 4, 2006 Pure Genius

This morning, I thought the weather was going to be nice, so I decided to ride my bike to work. It was a nice ride going in to work, but it was fantastic, coming home. Why? The White Sox had a home game this afternoon. When I reached Sox Park, traffic on 35th was pretty much backed up all the way to Ashland. It was awesome to be able to ride between the cars and get home quickly. I’ll have to ride again tomorrow because I think there’s another game.