My Travels

Experiences. Those are what life is about.  Not things.  Not possessions.  Not even money (although, yes, money pays for experiences and the ability to survive after one can no longer work).  

If there is anything I wanted to pass along to my children, it was desire to LIVE.  To GO.  To DO. I think, in that sense, that has happened.  Ethan travels all the time, everywhere, as often as he can.  Sam has traversed much of the US in his desire to be a Marine earlier in his adulthood, not to mention overseas with his wife, Cemre, in Turkey. Unlike some of my older (and gone) family members, they have not let fear stop them from living.  For that, I'm very grateful.

My parents did everything possible to expose us to more than life in Louisiana and Texas. In the summer of 1978, we drove from Dallas to Los Angeles.  All night long.  Sandwiches and Shastas in the cooler. The two boys in the "way back" of our Pontiac Grand Safari. Wood grain and all. We passed through west Texas, even seeing a bullfighting arena in either El Paso or right over the border (I was too young to know).  Carlsbad, where we toured the famous caverns the first time. Even Newman, New Mexico.  I was young, so I cannot remember if this was the same trip to Las Vegas where we were left in the hotel with a babysitter while my parents went to see Glen Campbell.  I realize I was a youngster, but that was a show I would have loved to have seen.  We got to Los Angeles, went to Disneyland, and returned home.  That's as much as my memory will allow.  

Over the years, we moved to Newellton, LA in 1979 and, while living there, did plantation tours through St. Francisville and Natchez.  My father bought a metal detector, and we went to the ruins at Windsor in Port Gibson, MS to explore the grounds.  I think we found a fork.  I remember going through the Vicksburg National Military Park, which seemed so big to me at the time, with some state monuments, specifically an obelisk, seeming so tall to me that I developed a nervousness (not necessarily a fear) of very large structures, something that can still make me nervous a bit today.  Luckily, that nervousness doesn't prevent me from enjoying the structures or being afraid of heights. 

Once we moved to Broken Arrow/Tulsa, OK, we explored the local area, with my dad taking us fishing to various beautiful Oklahoma lakes.  We were not in Oklahoma for a long time, though, so we didn't do much traveling during that time, except locally.  

We then moved to Sunrise/Ft. Lauderdale, FL. There was a lot more space to explore there.  My dad traveled a lot, so my mom took us to many places, plus my grade in school (5th) afforded me the ability to go on two big school trips. My mom took us on a very interesting trip up to Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral to see the NASA space center.  We then drove up to St. Augustine to see the "Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park," Castillo de San Marco - An amazing Spanish fort, the first of its kind I'd ever seen, the oldest wooden schoolhouse, the "Old Jail" and much more.  I have spotty memories, but all of them good, along with some interesting pictures.  Traveling to places like that became part of my DNA.  I couldn't do it enough.  

For my 5th grade class (the last class in Florida's elementary school), we had two large class trips as "graduation" perks.  One was to travel to Epcot Center during its first year of its opening, as well as a trip to Washington DC/Colonial Williamsburg.  The beauty of these trips is that I was able to go on them alone!  Epcot, in particular, was about 80% open.  There were still sections that had not been completed, the "Horizons" building in particular.  I remember eating with a fellow student of mine in the restaurant that slowly spun around while you sat in it, which I found FASCINATING.  I rode Spaceship Earth, which I was nervous as hell to do, but my dad had eased by riding Space Mountain with me at an earlier trip to Disney World.  I thought they'd be the same, but they were not.  Space Mountain was a fast roller coaster done in the dark, while Spaceship Earth was a slow roller coaster that rode around to showcase different points in time on Earth.  I remember not having much money on this trip (at least not as much as I thought I should have had).  I bought little-to-nothing for myself or my family.  I remember getting a really big map of the park, which I would look at all the time with fondness of the memory.

The second trip I made in 5th grade while living in Florida, was to Washington DC/Colonial Williamsburg.  It would be my second time on an airplane, my first being a weekend trip to the Bahamas with my family a few months earlier.  We kids only stayed in the hotel room while my parents gambled, but the highlight was flying that first airplane.  In any case, riding to DC with my fellow classmates, teachers and chaperones, was interesting.  The weather was rough and I experienced flying through a storm for the first time, which made me extremely nervous.  

It was an interesting, and week-long, trip through the nation's capital.  I took so many pictures and still have them all.  My memories are mixed, as I experienced a lot of peer pressure that was unique and strange to me.  Everything was budgeted and planned.  The food was bland, cheap, and mostly cafeteria food.  Some of the meals were bologna sandwiches, especially while touring Arlington National Cemetery.  These weren't things I was used to, so I found myself missing a few meals.  I remember a particularly disgusting lunch with navy bean soup. 

The trip itself was amazing, though.  I felt like a "grown up" being alone with my classmates, seeing all of these amazing places I'd only seen on television. My eyes were enormous.  Having gone back to these places several times now, it's still an amazing part of the country that has changed in many ways. I remember the bloody pillow at the room across from Ford's Theater, which is now in a glass display AT Ford's Theater.  Mount Vernon was a white home when I went in 1982.  Returning in 2022, it is now a pale, almost pastel, yellow.  I remember talking to my mom about JFK's "Eternal Flame" at Arlington prior to going, so seeing it in person was powerful.  The National Cathedral was one of those "large structures" that made me nervous to see it.  Seeing Woodrow Wilson's burial place there after just having seen Arlington National Cemetery is really where my interest in visiting all the presidential gravesites began.  At this writing, I'm down to only 3 remaining former presidents.  I toured the Capitol building pretty thoroughly, something none of my trips since I've been able to do.  In spite of my multiple trips, though, I've never toured the White House.

After only a year in Florida, we moved to Thousand Oaks/Los Angeles for a year.  During this time, we had a lot of people in the family come and see us, so we spent a lot of our traveling around to local highlights in Hollywood, Santa Monica, San Juan Capistrano, San Diego, etc. Even Las Vegas a few times.  My mom's parents came for a visit, which led to Yosemite and Sequoia National Park visits.  However, the biggest traveling experience happened when my parents decided to divorce and my mother decided to move us back to Louisiana.  She knew she likely wouldn't be in the western part of the US again, so as part of our travel back to Louisiana, our friend Janice and my grandmother both came out to help us travel back.  The trip back would be an enormous adventure from Thousand Oaks, to San Simeon, to Monterrey/Carmel-by-the-Sea, to San Francisco, the Sacramento, to Las Vegas, to the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion Canyon, Tombstone, Tucson, eventually to Dallas, then to Louisiana.  I have so many detailed memories of this time in my head, but it was a bittersweet time.  My brother and I LOVED Thousand Oaks (and talk about it even today).  The last place on Earth we wanted to go to was Monroe, LA, where we would live from 1984 until I graduated college in 1996.  It's a town (and state) I grew to despise and rarely go to anymore, mainly if I have to.  I met some wonderful people there, but the vast majority of those with whom I am still in contact, have all left and also rarely return.  

The good thing about moving to Monroe is that the years prior to moving, and the experiences my parents had instilled in me, led me to only want to get away as often as possible.  This was in direct contrast with many of the people with whom I'd known.  Many had rarely, if ever, left the city of Monroe/West Monroe, or the state of Louisiana, which blew my mind.  Shortly after having moved there, my mom and our friend Janice took a lengthy trip through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington DC.  It was a long drive, but very rich in historical visits to civil war cemeteries looking for family members, all in a world prior to Ancestry.com.  My grandmother had done some significant genealogical research, so we were able to find many of our family members.  None of my family members had been to Colonial Williamsburg, Mount Vernon or Washington DC like I had, but this was definitely a different perspective trip.  This trip also included Monticello, which had not been a part of my 5th grade trip.  Again, I have so many memories and pictures from this time, which is good because, financially, we wouldn't be able to do but just a couple of other trips until I was an adult.

The older I got, the more I was able to retain details about things we did.  And by 1986, we were very broke as a family and not able to do much.  My mom was resilient, though, and did everything she could to give us the experiences she knew were important to us.  In 1986, she took us to Hot Springs, AR.  I have never had a more miserable trip in my life, and the reason was it was in the dead of August, hot as ever, and we rode in a small car, four people, and NO air conditioning.  We went to Magic Springs, but it was a very short trip because, weather-wise, we just couldn't take it.  On the return home, we spent time looking for diamonds at the Crater of Diamonds.  We left there hot, drenched in sweat, stinking and miserable all the way home.  I openly said I would never go on a trip again in those conditions.  At this writing, I cannot remember us going on any other trips together as children.  If I think of any later, I'll add to this.

My next memory of an actual trip was when I traveled with my friends Scott G, Scott R. and Michael M. to New Orleans, LA for a end-of-Freshman year of college trip.  I was going to interview the band Too Much Joy at Tipitina's for KNLU, but we were all staying a few days longer to enjoy the city.  We went to independent record stores, different clubs and bars up and down the French Quarter and partook of many a beignet.  It was a lot of fun, and gave me that "grown up" feeling I had when I traveled alone in 5th grade.  That trip was followed up a year later with my friend Don D. and I, as we drove from Monroe, LA to Cleveland, OH to see Tangerine Dream in concert, then up to Niagara Falls and Toronto, Ontario.  Don's parents had a company (this is 1992, mind you) where you could map out an entire trip on a computer and print out the map.  I was dumbfounded!  That trip is a highlight of my life as it expanded my exposure to new places more than had been in at least a decade.  Peppered throughout this period of my early college life are trips I took frequently to Dallas for concerts with my Program Director at KEDM, Jill S. We saw David Lanz on SMU's campus at McFarland Auditorium. I'd travel to Dallas with previous girlfriends/former fiance as well.  However, it wasn't until I got married in 1993 that focus on travel, especially once my children were born, really moved to the forefront.

While dating, my wife Jeani and I took what little money we had and took trips all the time.  Usually, it was to Natchez, or Vicksburg, or Shreveport, or Dallas, or Jackson, MS. Short trips.  However, we did travel with my In-Laws, nephew and niece, with all of us meeting my Brother-in-Law/Sister-in-Law and niece from Jacksonville, FL, in Pensacola for a vacation.  Actually, we had taken my Father-in-Law's Step-father with us too.  It was an enjoyable trip as the beach and condos we stayed in were very comfortable.  It was a joy to finally meet my Brother-in-Law and Sister-in-Law, as well as my niece.  It's funny to think about the things we discussed and did.  Politics in the early days of Bill Clinton, Dan Quayle, etc.  Seemed a tad tense at the time, but now seems SO tame compared to the nonsensical circus of stupid in office today.  It was a nice memory, though.  

Once our children were born, I had quickly graduated college, moved to Dallas and began my career in IT.  I was making money, had vacation time, etc.  I was determined to give my kids the type of experiences my parents had with me.

 We had to wait until the kids had some age to them, but in 2002, when Ethan was nearly 7 and Sam was nearly 3, we got an opportunity to spend the summer in Louisville, KY.  I was working for Yum Brands and we were in the middle of acquiring Yorkshire Brands, the company that owned Long John Silver's and A&W restaurants.  Yum moved my entire family up to Louisville for the summer to work with my fellow PMO colleagues in managing the planning for all the merger/acquisition activities for the event.  We took advantage of being in that part of the country.  Unlike Texas, which takes more than a day just to get out of the state, Louisville was a hub in a wheel with a ton of weekend spokes.  Every weekend, we went somewhere different.

During this time in Louisville, we spent a weekend in St. Louis, a weekend in Indianapolis, a weekend in Cincinnati, a weekend in Cleveland, a weekend in Chicago and a weekend in Tennessee.  We took so many rolls of film (no digital cameras yet) that we literally couldn't afford to process them all until years later.  In fact, digital cameras had been released, and we owned one, before I ever got that film processed.  Ethan, I think, remembers some of it, but unfortunately, Sam doesn't.  Ironically, we moved to Columbus, OH from 2003-2004 and never traveled anywhere while up there.  Vacation time was spent coming home to see family during the holidays, or our 10th wedding anniversary trip to Las Vegas.

We moved back to Dallas in 2004 after an internal transfer at work.  The boys were getting older, so the focus on traveling got more of a front seat.  In 2007, we went to San Antonio for a trip to Sea World.  In 2008, we drove all through Oklahoma and Arkansas.  In 2007, I also did some work in New York City, my first trip ever there, on the merger with Chase and Bank of New York.  I stayed at the Waldorf Astoria and did so much walking around Manhattan, I was in awe. 

That experience led me to then take the family, in 2008 and 2009, on our first big family trip, the first time just us, and the second time as part of a job, to New York City.  That was such an incredible couple of trips, my kids were actually upset coming home.  I loved that going to such a big city didn't overwhelm them.  In fact, the opposite.  They wanted to stay much longer.  We toured 30 Rock.  the kids pretended to do the news at NBC.  We toured SNL's studios. We went to FAO Schwarz, the enormous toy store. Central Park. Staten Island Ferry.  Wall Street.  Trinity Church.  9/11 Memorial. Broadway/Times Square. Yankee games.  Mets games. Endless subway riding.  The Museum of Natural History.  Strawberry Fields.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Grant's tomb.  We did it all.  And we all loved every minute of it. 

In the spring of 2009, we took a family trip as part of a job I was doing for Lufthansa Airlines, in Seattle, WA.  We went to indie record stores, coffee shops, Pike Street Market Place, a Seattle Mariner's game and whale watching in Puget Sound.

In 2011, we did another family trip to Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and Zion Canyon.  This was especially interesting to me because we did so much of what I'd done as a kid.  So much was different, but still an amazing trip.  I could tell this was settling in Ethan, and he has continued to do this kind of travel throughout the western part of America on his own.  His love of photography has only enhanced it.  

In 2012, we did another family trip to San Francisco, Oakland, Monterrey/Carmel-by-the-Sea, Big Sur and Napa Valley.  This was the first trip where the boys recommended places to go, such as the ice cream place in Oakland that Man v Food had gone to where they had a dish called "The Kitchen Sink."  Sam was fascinated (a man after my own heart) by this enormous ice cream dish that was a challenge to complete.  We didn't get anywhere near finishing it.  

In 2013, I was working on a consulting gig with Verizon, who was trying to launch their own version of cloud to compete with AWS.  Verizon had purchased a small cloud start up in Boston filled with MIT grads and former IT professionals on the forefront of the earlier creation of the SUN Solaris operating system in San Francisco.  I was going to manage this (eventual) debacle and Verizon paid for me to move up to Boston from May to October.  I would fly up temporarily off an on, but after school was over, I brought the family up, we all drove actually, and lived at a Homewood Suites for a few months.  I would then travel back and forth after school re-started, until October.  

Like the time we spent in 2002 in Louisville, we took advantage of this time and traveled nearly every weekend.  I'd get off work on Fridays, I'd pick the family up fully packed, and we would hit the road.  New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, all over New England, Salem, Cape Cod (for our 20th anniversary vow renewals), Martha's Vineyard, upstate New York, and Vermont.  The number of pictures, videos and memories from this 2-3 month period is enormous!  In Boston, we did every single thing you could think of.  So much history and culture there.  The North Side, full of Italian culture.  The Freedom Trail. whale watching in Boston harbor and outside the harbor, Boston Common, Revolutionary War sites in Lexington and Concord, MA, many important cemetery sites in Boston, Quincy and Plymouth Rock, MA. Just an incredible time as a family.  My kids remember a lot of this time, which is great. 

We went to minor league games, Salem Witch tours, the House of Seven Gables, Kennebunkport, Augusta, Portland, lighthouse visits, different beaches, Brown University, Harvard University, MIT, Manchester, NH, Concord, NH, Robert Frost's farm in Derry, NH, Ben & Jerry's HQ in Vermont, Lake Champlain,  Montpelier, VT., Calvin Coolidge's burial site, Franklin Pierce's burial site, John Adams and John Quincy Adams' burial sites, Martin Van Buren's burial site, Chester Arthur's burial site, FDR library and burial site in Hyde Park, NY, Myles Standish's burial site, John Hancock's burial site, the oldest. cemetery in the country, "Author's Ridge" cemetery where Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson are buried in Concord, MA and Walden Pond.  Talk about experiences! This was true living.  

Traveling to and from Boston also resulted in some extensive experiences.  On the way there, we drove through Arkansas, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut then to Massachusetts.  We visited Valley Forge, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell, the home of Betsy Ross, including her burial site, Benjamin Franklin's burial site, the capital of Harrisburg, and Red Bank, NJ. 

From 2008 - 2013, traveling was pretty extensive.  Many experiences were had.  However, things slowed down after that, mainly because Ethan was graduating high school in 2014 and turning 18.  His freshman year was spent at a private college in Santa Fe, NM. He and I would travel there together to tour the campus, then again to move him there, not to mention a couple of visits.  The travel bug had been firmly instilled in him, so he would travel as often as he could from then on.

In regard to my own experiences, from 2007 - 2019, I traveled quite a bit for work.  When I wasn't moving to areas for extensive periods, I had a period between 2008 - 2010 where I managed a large US-wide project for Lufthansa Airlines/LSG SkyChefs.  During this year and a half time, I began my almost weekly travel to nearly all US airports, with a trip to Frankfurt, Germany.  My first European trip.  I had to have a passport rushed through the process, then got to fly first class all the way to Germany.  THAT was a great experience.  Once I began managing the weekly work on the project, I was able to build my own schedule and locations, which I conveniently tied to baseball stadiums I wanted to visit.  I'd spend the next year going to Los Angeles, Houston, San Francisco, Phoenix, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, New York, Miami, Washington DC, Baltimore, Denver, Austin, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York City and Boston.  Various other jobs would have me going to Warsaw, Poland, Tampa, Orlando, Salt Lake City, etc. 

Since returning to Chase in 2019, I've been more focused on personal vacations, especially since having health problems and the passing of my mom. COVID killed things for a couple of years, but by 2021, I was back on track.

In 2021, we finally went to states and areas I'd never been.  Finally some new turf.  While we flew into Salt Lake City, we drove up through Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, spending a couple of days at Yellowstone.  Such amazing scenery and experiences.  I even scattered part of my mom's ashes at Old Faithful.  

In 2022, we did a deeper dive to Washington DC, Colonial Williamsburg, Charlottesville, VA, etc.  This time seeing James Madison's house and burial site and the new location of Jamestown that had been determined since I'd been to the original location thought to have been Jamestown during my 5th grade trip.  We drove through Annapolis to see the capital building, harbor, eat some Maryland seafood, then visit Edgar Allen Poe's burial site.

In 2023, we went back to Vegas to see Ethan in a pool tournament, while also driving to California to see Joshua Tree National Park, Palm Springs, my old town of Thousand Oaks, San Simeon, Santa Barbara, Hearst Castle and Bakersfield.

In 2024, we took a couple of trips, including baseball stadiums, jazz museum and presidential burial site visits in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. I'd been down to 5 baseball stadiums for over a decade and hadn't made any progress.  This road trip was up through my old haunt in Tulsa, then up through Harry Truman's burial site in Kansas City, MO, the Kansas City Royals Kauffman Field, and Dwight D Eisenhower's burial site in Kansas.  Then later in the year, we went to Chicago and Springfield, IL to the Abraham Lincoln burial site.

So far, at this writing in 2025, we've gone back to New York City to accomplish a couple of other Bucket List things by going to two Broadway shows, Glengarry Glen Ross (a play) and Book of Mormon (a musical).  This was followed up with a New York Mets/Chicago Cubs game at Citi Field (my last Mets game had been at Shea Stadium before it was torn down), then an extensive drive through Long Island and Oyster Bay, culminating in a visit to Teddy Roosevelt's burial site.  

I keep putting off going back to Europe, specifically France and Italy.  I know I'll need some extensive time off, and in fact, may take a sabbatical.  It would be nice to do France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland over like 6 weeks.  With Trump in office, though, that may be a challenge in the near future.  If that's the case, I think 2026 will be either an Alaskan cruise and/or Mackinac Island to stay at the Grand Hotel.  The latter would also entail a visit to Gerald Ford's burial site in Grand Rapids, MI and a baseball game at two stadiums on my list in Minneapolis and Milwaukee.  If I get to Minneapolis, I have to visit Paisley Park too.  

It is all about experiencing this world as much as I possibly can before I die, or even before I'm able to actually enjoy such trips.  I was happy that walking around New York and Chicago the past year has been easier than I thought.  Sure, I get tired, but NYC wore me out 15 years ago.  So...all things considered, not bad.  

Life is short though...live it.