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Articles Tagged ‘Pre-Trip’

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Heard of schmap.com??

Friday, March 3rd, 2006

Earlier this week I received an email letting me know that two of my photos on my Flickr site have been short-listed for inclusion in the Schmap New York Guide, to be published in late March.  I wouldn’t receive royalties or anything like that, but my photos, if selected, would be credited to me.  Kind of cool, huh?

 The Schmap guides appear to be really cool.  One can download the various city guides at no charge, and they’re very interactive with tons of information.

Here are the two photos of mine that they selected.  The first is a shot of the Ed Sullivan Theater, current home of the Late Show with David Letterman, and the second is a shot taken while we were waiting to take the Staten Island Ferry over to — guess where — Staten Island!  Critiquing my own photos based on framing, lighting, interest, etc., these are not photos that I would have picked, but if they work for Schmap.com’s purposes, that would be fine with me!  (Although, I do kind of like how I caught the scrolling “welcome” message board at the terminal even if you can’t see all of the word, welcome.)

Ed Sullivan Theater -- current home of the Late Show with David LettermanManhattan terminal for the Staten Island Ferry
 

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A Clear, Cool Day in Minneapolis

Saturday, February 25th, 2006

Generally, I’ll avoid a play-by-play of my day, but the things I’m doing today lend themselves to thoughts about other preparations we’ve made or are making for our upcoming traveling.

I woke up before Dan (I almost always do) and took Jake for a quick walk down the block in front of our place.  It’s a clear, cool day out – about 15 degrees F, but it doesn’t seem nearly as windy as it did last night as Dan and I walked home from the bus stop after seeing a movie (Transamerica) at the Lagoon Theater.  I’m not a big movie person – and definitely not a movie reviewer – so I’ll just say that we both thought it was a very good movie and would recommend it to others.  It’s good to see a movie that addresses transgender issues, which many people know so little about.  However, in addition to being educational for me, the movie was also both funny and touching.  OK, that’s enough; I promised I wouldn’t try to review it!

So, after the walk, I made pancakes using a recent favorite multigrain pancake recipe of mine.  Making the pancakes reminded me that I needed to email my pancake recipes to Shawn, a friend of ours.  So, I did that right after breakfast.  With just over a month before we leave, if something needs to get done, I figure I better do it right away, or it might not get done.

After Dan got up, had some breakfast and got ready for work, I drove him to work.  Over a year ago, Dan’s car got hit while it was parked on the street in front of our place overnight.  The insurance company deemed it a total loss, and we decided not to replace it.  We had talked about eventually getting rid of one of our vehicles before we begin our longer-term travels anyway.  I really only used my truck on the weekends to travel out to Shakopee (about 35 minutes southwest of Minneapolis) to play guitar and sing for mass with the St. Mary’s, 5:15 Saturday evening choir.  I ride my bike to work in downtown Minneapolis, which is about a 15 minute ride each way, and run as many other errands as I can using my bike.  We’re also close to several bus lines that we both use frequently.  So, we decided that we could get by with one vehicle, and – I must say – it has worked out just fine.

On my way home from dropping Dan off at work, I stopped at Cub to do some grocery shopping.  About a month ago, I took stock of what I had in my kitchen for food, and made a list of the items that I should use before we leave.  Then, based on this list, I came up with a list of food dishes that used these ingredients.  Pretty much everything in the freezer would need to be used up, as well as things like dried beans, which I won’t want to cook while on the road.  I think I’ll miss coming home from work (not necessarily the work part) to that smell of pinto or black beans cooking in the crock pot.  Also, any ingredient that is used primarily for baking would need to be used up, as well.  We’ll be making many of our own meals while camping, so any ingredient that can be used in a skillet dish or one-pot dish is fair game for being packed to go with us.

On my way home from the store, I dropped some percussion instruments off at Inez’ house (another percussionist in the band I’m in, the Minnesota Freedom Band).  Our band will be performing before the glitzy Oscar party at the State Theatre in Minneapolis on March 5th.  Inez will be playing mostly the various percussion accessories and wanted to get them organized for the upcoming concert.  This performance will be my last (for awhile – I’ll be on leave from the band) before we leave.  I will be playing primarily tympani for the performance.

Oh, yea – when I got home from the store, I took a couple pictures of the “Jake Platform” that I wrote about in a previous post.  Here they are, along with a picture I took of Jake last Sunday:

Jake PlatformJake PlatformJake Platform - with passenger seat laid back.Jake

 

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Preparing to Leave

Monday, February 20th, 2006

What are we doing to get ready for the first leg of our travels?  Lots of little things.  Two weekends ago, I built something I've come to call "The Jake Platform."  It's a wooden, elevated platform that fits in the ... [Continue reading this entry]

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Who are we?

Friday, February 17th, 2006
For those of you who we don't know us, but stumble across this site, we are Tim and Dan, from Minneapolis, MN, United States of America.  For some portions of our trip, we will also be joined by our dog, ... [Continue reading this entry]

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What ARE we doing?

Friday, February 17th, 2006
I still occasionally ask myself that question -- most recently, when I wrote the letter to our landlord to end our lease.  Here I was, writing a letter that told our landlord that we were moving out, but we have ... [Continue reading this entry]

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Intro

Friday, February 17th, 2006
As we begin our various travels in mid-April, this site will allow family and friends to keep up with where we are and what we're up to.  We hope to post here often, but the frequency of updates will depend ... [Continue reading this entry]

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