Travel

We are just back from a two week trip to Portland. I haven’t had a long vacation in quite a few years, having changed jobs (most companies don’t give you vacation in the first year working) and moved up here. B has been making periodic trips to Portland to see E and daughter, and wanted me to go up as well. We ended up with too much stuff to take as checked baggage on a plane, so we decided to drive up. We took a route that we’ve never been on before, due north from Vegas on highway 93 to Idaho and then turned left due west to Portland. It was 1,100 miles one way, necessitating an overnight stay in Twin Falls, making us very happy that we could plug the Ipod into the car music system. But it did result in many photographs to use in future posts.

In coming back to work it seems that nothing has changed. I noticed something new before I even got into the building – a line of police cars parked on the sidewalk at the corner of Koval. Then I realized that we are setting up for the big jewelry show, which is proceeded by an advanced segment of really expensive stuff up in the tower suites of the big hotel next door. The big halls will open on Friday; with over 70,000 people expected, it seems a little larger this year than last. The show isn’t open to the public, those are just jewelry store owners and salesmen. Imagine taking one of those jewelry stores from the big mall you go to, putting everything into a 10x10 foot booth, and then having over three thousand of those booths. This is just for the small stuff, the really expensive items are up in the convention rooms next door, and the really really fancy stuff in the hotel tower suites.

Which leads us to today’s travel oriented videos. I heard on the news this morning that Nepal had voted on eliminating the monarchy and converting to a democracy, which led me to start singing a song that was big a long time ago (well, for me anyway). Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band:


It made me want to travel to Katmandu, or at least sing about it. Another city that seemed magical at the same time was also exotic to me, growing up in New Jersey. Crosby, Stills and Nash (without Young):


Makes me really regret not hitting Woodstock (yes, I am that old). One of the small towns we drove through was McGill, which brought another song to mind. The Beatles had recorded Rocky Racoon which has a line about McGill, so I was looking on YouTube for a clip of a Flip Wilson sketch I remember that had Flip acting out the song. Sorry, couldn’t find it, but a search brought up a lot of segments from his tv show, including this one. Mr. J is in the news here this morning, meeting over at Trump’s, with further rumors of an upcoming show. He is living in Vegas now, and periodically seen around town.