Lean on Travel

This past year was very lean on travel outside of the DC area.  If you include going to southern Virginia as travel, which seems like going to another state since it and Northern Virginia are so dramatically different (sorry Virginia, you never should have taken the area ceded originally to the District of Columbia back through retrocession in the nineteenth century, because Arlington County along with Fairfax County usually provide statewide Democrats with the margin they need to win), I ventured forth a little bit more since I went to Hampton Roads twice.  (The room at Fort Monroe where Jeff Davis was imprisoned after the Civil War.)

The first time was for pleasure, as I visited my cousin at Buckroe Beach in late August as I recovered from surgery earlier in the month.  The warm, briny water of the Chesapeake Bay where it meets the Atlantic Ocean was good for my surgical cuts and, I believe, hastened my healing.  (My cousin Liz.)

The second time was when I went down in November to be an inside poll monitor in Newport News on election day.  To say that I was surprised when I got back to my motel and turned on the TV late that night after an exhausting 15-hour workday would be an understatement, but the next day I visited the Mariners' Museum where I observed restoration efforts underway on the gun turret of the famous Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, which sunk in a storm off Cape Hatteras and was raised a century later.  (A full size wooden replica of the USS Monitor which you clamber aboard is alongside the museum in the park.)

I went to Buffalo twice for work, once in March and once in May, and then I promptly retired.  No, the two trips didn't have anything to do with my retirement, except as they figured in how I prioritized my work (active litigation) and how a manager (since departed from the agency) who had 1/3 as much experience as I did thought I should be spending my time (dead-end investigations).  (Beef on Weck in Buffalo.)

I went to North Carolina to visit my college roommate in October.  That was a fun trip where I did a little sight-seeing, sailing, electioneering and fish-eating.  (Jimmy's front yard.)

And last month I went to Colorado to inspect some property.  That's it!  (The splendor of the Rocky Mountains.)