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[amyjody]

Hadrian’s Wall at Birtoswald

[amyjody]

NorwegianAir experience

This was our first flight on Norwegian. We flew Providence, RI to Edinburgh. Some good and bad Good: the flight was cheap, the attendants friendly, the plane new, food was not bad for airline food. Bad: No WiFi, no in seat entertainment and no headphone jacks for the above head screens. No coffee service before arrival. If you’re flying Norwegian, stock some movies or tv shows into your iTunes. Seats 1 on port and 2 on starboard are from bulkheads with extra legroom.

[amyjody]

Off to the UK

Today we fly over to the UK. It’s our first time flying in budget airline Norwegian. The waiting at the airport sucks, and the airport is small so they have a duty free “kiosk” instead of a shop. This is what we get for booking through Providence instead of Boston.

Anyway... see you tomorrow AM in Edinburgh. Our first trip to the Uk with no bagpipes as carry on.

[amyjody]

Day 5 Sea Day 2

So after a day at the beach in the shade we decided to stay out of the sun as much as possible. Luckily the cruise had many things happening to keep everyone occupied.

We took a walk on the top deck and then went to brunch. I had an omelet and joe had... well I don’t remember. Maybe it was because of the Bloody Mary I started the brunch with.

After brunch we found a shady spot on the deck and read our books for awhile before deciding a pitcher of margaritas would be a good way to spend our time.

We then made our way to 80s trivia where we both did quite well, but Joe won. So here we are with a plastic trophy of the ship. Margaritas are still in full effect so it was nap time. We woke up in time to grab some lunch and then go to guitar riff trivia ...

This trivia game is run by the cruise director who played 17 famous rock guitar riffs and you have to name the artist and the tune.

Guess what. Mr “where’s my keys and school ID” got a perfect score. The only perfect score of the contest so not only did he win a second plastic ship trophy but the cruise director also bought us drinks on his tab. I guess no one has won with a perfect score before....

[amyjody]

[amyjody]

Day 4

Joe here this time.

We woke up to see the shores of Cozumel out our windows as we sailed toward Puerta Maya. We got ourselves ready for the day, got some breakfast, and then got off the boat and into a taxi for Nochi Cocom Beach Club, a very nice quiet all inclusive day of sun, food, drink, and fun. We were careful about keeping mostly in the shade, not having been entirely successful avoiding the burn on our day at sea. The water was gorgeous and the beach was quiet and relaxing. The staff did a nice job seeing to it that we were never deprived of anything!

After a few hours, we headed back to town, did a little souvenir shopping, and headed back to the boat for a nap and our late dinner, followed by a hilarious ‘newlywed game’ style show, were two couples were completely upstaged by a third who were celebrsting 50 years of wedded bliss.

[amyjody]

Day 3

A bit of catching up to do as we’ve not had any internet access for most of the cruise.

Day three was a sea day. We got room service coffee at 6:30am then got dressed and went up to the walking track to get things moving. After a snack of bacon and sausage from the breakfast buffet. . . It was a nice sunny day and the wind was strong. The walking track goes around a small mini golf course where a young player was watching his ball get blown off the green by the wind repeatededly.

At 8:30 we went to the sea day brunch in the dining room. We both had steak and eggs and joe had a tomato soup as well.

We then liberally applied sunblock and made for the deck. We found two chairs between the stage and the burger and burrito bar, and planted ourselves for the day.

It was a nice day of reading and reapplying sunblock which didn’t help our poor sun deprived New England bodies bodies that much.

We discovered that a pitcher of margaritas was only $25 so we settled into that while the hairy chest contest happened on the stage in front of us.

It became quite clear to the s that we had spent enough time in the sun upon returning to our cabin. At some point Joe fell sleep with his hands on his chest and has two white bars across now.

[amyjody]

End of day 2

We got ta the boat early and boarded right away. We went straight to the hot tubs having worn our swimsuits onto the boat. It was very quiet. Not many people on board at that time. We had burgers for lunch and shortly after our cabin was available. We dropped off our backpack and put luggage had also arrived so we unpacked.

After unpacking we decided to explore the ship a little and figured out where our dining room was. We had late dining at 8:15 so there was plenty of time. Our muster drill was at 3pm and afterwards we went to the deli had grabbed a small sandwich each to tide us over until later.

4pm was the sailaway and we made our way to the top of the ship for a good view all around. It took about an hour and a half for the pilot to sail us out to the last buoys and oil rigs.

After getting cleaned up, we headed to the theatre for the Hasbro Game Show which is basically like oversized versions of Yahtzee and Operation. We couldn’t stay for the whole show as it was dinner time and we didn’t want to be late.

Dinner was enjoyable. We sat at a table with three other couples. It appears the fourth couple that was supposed to sit with us has opted for other dining options.

After dinner we sat for a few tunes with Juice Caboose, the house band. They were very good. Alas, we were tired and headed to bed shortly thereafter.

[amyjody]

Breakfast in Mobile Day 2

[amyjody]

Vacation... finally

After a really crazy school year for both of us: Amy interviewed and received an offer for a full time tenure track position at Fitchburg; Joe wrapped up His school year horrifyingly late on Jun 29th, we are finally off on a well deserved vacation.

I (Amy), booked this vacation 100 days ago while winter still had us in its grasp. When I asked Joe I f he wanted to go on a cruise the answer was yes before I even finished the question. Neither of us cared where it was going, just that it was AWAY.

The day to travel has arrived. It is July 4th. We marched a parade in the blistering heat, zipped home and grabbed quick showers, and had our wonderful friends drive us to the airport.

Lunch at Legal Seafoods in terminal B, because there’s nothing else in terminal B, and then off on our first leg to Charlotte Airport. We had an uneventful flight and are now enjoying margaritas at the Tequileria in ....Terminal B of the Charlotte airport.

Next flight to Mobile at 9:40

[amyjody]

Ouch

So, our next landmark was a 5 mile descent into the town of Cheshire. The first couple of miles were fairly level and it wasn't too bad, Boston t then we started a fairly steep descent with switchbacks and joes knee went from just hurting on downhills to hitting all the time. Mine wasn't far behind in all reality and by the time we got to the last 100 yards, I was actually getting sharp twinges. Apparently we are getting old. It was 11am when we got to town and I pulled out the phone and called Jen to pick us up on her lunch break. The rest of this journey would have to happen another day.

[amyjody]

Descending into chaos or "Bill Callahan you're a liar!"

Once past the Greylock summit we basically had a three mile downhill hike. It was a steep descent and about halfway down, Joe announced that his knee was hurting. We slowed the pace and we eventually got to our destination for the evening, Mark Noepel shelter. The trail down to the shelter featured a composting privy and a bear box. Great, bear box usually means bear problems. We were never so happy to make a destination though. T The shelter sleeps 12-16. 4 bunks with a large loft and floor space. There were already 5 individuals there. Two had decided to tent which meant there was plenty of space. We claimed two bunks and I set off for water. Water was down the hill .2 of a mile. I was not pleased. My knee was aching now also and my quads were burning from the relentless all day ascent. But, the source was a clear, cold, fast running brook. I hauled back the water and filtered enough for dinner and then filled our water bladders. We chatted a bit with the other hikers. Mostly all northbound thru hikers who had started their journey in Georgia in February or March. On other hiker was doing pretty much the same section we had planned but northbound instead of our southbound direction. By the time we finished eating, everyone else had gone to bed. It was about 8:15pm and it was still light out. We were exhausted and fell right asleep. About an hour or two later, one of the hikers screamed out. It was pouring rain and the sound of someone screaming in the silence was heart stopping. It took me about 10 seconds to realize that everyone was ok and one of our shelter mates suffers from night terrors. This continued throughout the night. Not screaming, but one side of arguments this guy was having in his dreams. "Don't you come at ME with an illegal weapon..." followed about 20 minutes later by "Fuck you Bill Callahan, you're a god damned liar!" Etc etc etc The next morning around 6am everyone was starting to stir. One of the hikers from the tents came down and asked if everything was ok since he heard screaming and arguing. The hiker in question said "oh I'm sure that was me. I usually warn people and I usually sleep in a tent so I don't subject others to that, but I forgot last night" He claimed to not know anyone named Bill Callahan. I'm not sure that's true.

[amyjody]

1st Day

We got up and filled our water bladders before setting out for the Misty Moonlight Diner in Pittsfield for breakfast with our friend Jen. Joe had corned beef hash with eggs and I had biscuits and gravy with a side of very lovely kielbasa. Nice and smoky. From there we went to the trailhead in North Adams. Not well marked it's down a street and then up into the woods. We were on the trail by 9:30am. We knew this day would be tough as we were starting at 500ft of elevation and making our way constantly up to the summit of Mt Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts. Along the way we would cross several summits. The first peak to conquer was the very steep Mt Prospect. The trail is composed primarily of switchbacks and it did not take long to start feeling the strain of the climbing both in muscles and in our heart rates. We took lots of breaks but made it up in a couple of hours. The summit view was quite remarkable and we took a 15 minute break to admire the view and rest. The next summit was Mt Williams. A little more elevation and also a nice view. Mt Fitch was next highlighted by large boulders of gleaming white quartz. We didn't even realize we had gotten to the summit there as there were no real markers. Next up was the impressive Mt Greylock where we had to climb up part of the thunderbolt ski trail. We got to a little picnic area near the summit and decided to rest and have a snack. By now it was 4:30pm and we still had three miles to go. The views from Greylock were impressive but we had no time to really stop and take in the view as we had decided to go ahead and push on to our planned final destination: Mark Noepel shelter 3.3 miles on the other side of Greylock.

[amyjody]

[amyjody]

The night before 3000 feet of elevation

We are hiking a section of the Appalachian Trail. Well, not yet, tomorrow we are hiking. Tonight we are staying with a friend and attending the Boston Pops concert featuring Chris Botti. Picnic has been packed along with beer and a vodka raspberry lemonade spritzer. Looking forward to a nice relaxing evening before hitting the trail in North Adams tomorrow. Our first day will feature a steep climb right out of the gate to the top of Mt Greylock.

[amyjody]

ASP - Day 7

It's Friday, our last day of work. There is really only about three hours of work left for us to do without better elevation (ladders/scaffolding), so we took the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to Tudor's Biscuit World on the way to work. Most of the crew got to work on getting siding up as high as we could reach, while Ian MacPhee and I rebuilt the section of deck railing we had to take down in order to get to the area that needed siding. I also made my way next door to help remove a third radiator. With only a little bit of touch up work and site clean up left, we let our water break and lunch hour grow into an extended time to get to know Felicia, our host. She is a kind, prayerful woman who was free and genuine with her gratitude. We were so happy that we were finally able to get to know her. We wrapped up our work, and after an emotional farewell, we headed back to camp, reorganized our vans, ate dinner, had our last evening gathering to reflect on the week and eat s'mores, and got ourselves ready for a good night's sleep to be followed by an early departure.

[amyjody]