Well, here I am in my first week of retirement. I've spent this week running around doing errands and tying up loose ends for our upcoming trip to the UK. Yesterday I thought I'd lost the passports somehow, but after fifteen very tense minutes of racking my brain on their whereabouts, I finally remembered where I'd put them. At this point I'm all packed, at least tentatively. My plan is to take roughly ten days of clothes and I have arranged in advance to do laundry at a couple of the B&Bs. The goal is to keep the checked bags at 50 pounds or less. I know world-traveler, Rick Steves goes to Europe for a month with two changes of clothes and a camera. He just re-washes everything every two days in the hotel sink. Somehow, I can't get enthusiastic about that scenario. For the first laundry day I found a B&B in southern Wales that has a contact who picks up laundry and delivers when finished. Can't beat that. I think the B&B in Lincolnshire, about 2/3 of the way into the trip, has laundry facilities in house, which will be even better.
The bags we are using are the rolling duffel style, which I really like. They have lots of zippered compartments on the outside and a big zippered lower compartment underneath the main duffel for things you want to keep flat. With the telescoping handle and wheels they're really easy to transport and their pliable sides make them easy to "stuff" places, like the diminutive hatch back on the Mini Cooper we're renting.
Anyway, along with the note for today I thought I'd include a nice pix of my buddy and co-worker, Jim Hansen and me, photographed on my last day in the office. Some folks might say Jim doesn't smile enough, but here's proof he's actually darn good at it.
Cheers, Jim!
