Paul Goldberg Blog, UK our 60th

London Days 1 and 2

Our flight was uneventful and all the transfers worked as planned. 

The traffic coming in from Heathrow was as expected, hideous. I’ll take LA rush hour – At least you are not driving on the left although what we were doing could hardly be called driving. 

Our check in time was noon and we arrived at the hotel at 9. In a totally zombie state we set off to reconnoiter the area around our hotel – Lime Tree Hotel. Our first objective was to walk to Sloan Square Underground Station as that would be our most likely jumping off place for our tours. Along the way, we passed Victoria Coach Station and found a stand with a young man selling SIM cards so I have a new temporary phone number 07445719345 while in England (and Scotland) or you could send email.

Eventually we got our room and had a chance to clean up and rest a bit before taking a cab to the Shard View. This may be the tallest building in the UK or maybe even Europe at 72 stories. There is an excellent 360 degree view of London, weather permitting. If I show you the pictures you will be none the wiser, its a large city with a large river winding through it. Having had a large breakfast and a reasonable lunch we elected to skip dinner and get some sleep.

Day 2 we had breakfast at the Buttery in our hotel and caught a cab to the Royal Globe Theater for a “Behind the Scenes” Tour. It was more like sitting in the theater while a very talented tour guide tells us the history and stories about the theater and Shakespear. Carol and I got a bit of actual behind the scenes as she elected to get a wheelchair and part of where we went was not accessible and a manager took us very much behind the scenes to access a large elevator intended to move props.

We left the theater (or should that be theatre) for a short walk to the Tate Modern. We spent a couple of hours in the galleries and had lunch in their lovely cafe. From there we set out to take the Underground back to the hotel, but we were both so tired I caught a cab for the return.

Cabs are PRICEY! They seem to be running from 25 to 40 pounds depending on traffic. Meals are pricey. However there are no tips. Restaurants add in from 10% to 15% for service and cabs do not have a means to tip on their epay system. 

The hotel is small. Our room is compact. It is comfortable and if we were not used to our RV I think we might be unhappy. It is clear that at some point they took a nice sized room and built a bathroom into a part of it. It is on the first floor and is the first room one comes to after leaving the lobby, two steps! The staff are very pleasant and helpful. The Buttery is an attached restaurant serving breakfast and lunch. It is not included in the room rate. We are in Belgravia which is adjacent to West End which is a high end part of London the theaters are all nearby.

Today we came back from the gallery and fell asleep for a couple of hours. When we woke it was too late to book a restaurant so we took a walk down Ebury Street to Chucs where had immediate seating and a delightful meal. Carol had a bowl of vegan pea soup and I had a chicken dish. Also some Irish Whisky – West Cork. 

We walked back to the room and are making preparations for tomorrow witha tour of the behind the scenes of the Royal Opera and seeing Hamilton in the Victoria Palace Theatre. We will fill the afternoon with a gallery or museum and maybe a nap.

Paul Goldberg Blog, UK our 60th

Honeymoon Reprise

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60 years ago a very young couple left Rochester for the first of what has turned out to be many trips away from home. One of the the most memorable stays on that five week trip to UK, the Scandavian countries, Netherlands, Belgium, and France was the small town of Broadway in the Cotswalds, not far from Stratford-upon-Avon.  We stayed in a very old Inn, Lygon Arms in the oldest part, built in the mid 1500’s. We have dreamed of returning ever since.  Our travels have taken us many places, but never back to England for more than an overnight in London.

Our anniversary has fallen during Rochester International Jazz Fest for many years and we have celebrated on Jazz Street every year. We decided that out 60th needed to be something different and it had to include a return to Lygon Arms in Broadway. 

Tomorrow, Wednesday June 12, we will drive toToronto to catch a flight to London to begin the repeat of the UK  ortion of that first trip. We will not be able to repeat the return trip since the Queen Mary has been out of service, tied up in Long Beach for many years.

We are very much still in travel mode.

Paul Goldberg Blog

A Day in the Life

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 Today was supposed to be a simple day. Get in the car and drive to Tonawanda to pick up the coach from its most recent repairs. Connect the car to the coach with the new towbar (another story) drive back home and store the coach. Oh, we had made a plan to have a tintype made of us by our neighbor at 2:30 and then to go to the Rochester Philharmonic Concert with the Perlmans. 

Our departure from Rochester was a bit later than planned, this set us back 30 minutes. There seemed to be enough slack to make it up. Any hope of that was broken by a 20 minute traffic delay on 62 approaching Tonawanda. Still hoping to recover enough time to be back for a late lunch.

We arrived at Colton RV and there was GeeWhiz on the front line washed and ready to go, or was it. I went to setup the new towbar from BlueOx and it seemed to be installed upside down on the coach. This seemed to be an easy fix which, after complaining to the shop, I set out to correct. Afterall I have done this many times for myself over the years. However this turned into a Escher puzzel. I could get the bars rightside up (lettering and bolts as appropriate) but the portion that afixes to the coach was now upside down.   A tech appeared and said oh no its upside down, then he looked again and realized it had come from the factory assembled wrong. He went back into stock and pulled another new one which he mounted and the lettering was rightside up the bolts were in the right direction too. 

I lay this screwup to the BlueOx factory. I have to assume Colton put their most junior tech on the towbar install and no one would expect it to be misassembled from the factory.

Our drive home on the NYThruway – I90 – was delayed for a vehicle fire on the road which had us crawling at 2 mph for 10 miles or more. We parked the coach, refilled the tank of the car, and had it washed arriving home about 3:30. Cancelling the tintype shoot opened up enough time to eat something and write this before preparing for the concert.

Paul Goldberg Blog

Brown ’64

We have been celebrating 60 years since graduating from college. Carol and I were not able to share our graduations 60 years ago since they were concurrent, mine in Providence and hers in Buffalo. That was the last time we were separated before beginning our 60 years of marriage. 

This weekend has been a mix of lots of food and drink and lots of trying to remember long lost relationships with classmates and freshman dorm mates. It is truly amazing how many freshman residents of Littlefield, a smallish animal house, are gathered here. Out of 41 registered attendees I am sure of at least 6. Today Carol and I attended a Literary Salon at which four alumni who have recently published books talked about their path to publishing and about their books.: Elise Hart Kipness a former sports reporter; Dominique Shelton Leipzig, a lawyer practicing in the arena of AI: Mark Cecil, a journalist now story teller and Jaime Green, an editor venturing into a work that crosses the line between fact and science fiction. I will be reading their books over the next couple of months as I find them in electronic format. 

In the afternoon our class had its own seminar with speakers on covid, living with Parkinsons and being the first woman executive producer at CBS working with Cronkite, Rather and Kuralt. It was a fascinating 90 minutes. The challenges these people faced were severe.

All of the speakers we heard attributed their success in their striving to the learnig they received here at Brown. The authors all graduated under the Open Curriculum which was implemented in 1967 which enabled them to freely wander out of their supposed areas of specialization and venture into other fields without risk to their GPA since there is no GPA when most courses are taken Pass/Fail. I have not even scratched the surface of the depth of Open Curriculm as practiced at Brown. 

So much of the Brown campus is vertically challenging for these older legs. I did not remember all the lesser hills being as significant as they are now. Just walking across any of the quads results in a noticeable change of elevation. Of course it being a college campus with thousands of “extra” people there is lots of walking just to get from place to place. We haven’t brought the car to campus yet depending on Lyft to save the hunt for a parking place and the time spent negotiating unexpected road closures. This morning acces to the dining hall (the Ratty) was blocked from all directions. Our Lyft driver spotted a golfcart with a driver and asked him to bring us the rest of the way, which he did. She got an extra tip. Tonight Jonathan Kagan gave us a lift back to the hotel. He had his car near our dinner and there was very little traffic. 

Tomorrow is the commencement walk though the Van Wickle Gates which will be open outward for the only time in the year. The classes walk though the gate in the order they graduated so we will be among the first through the gate. Then we get to stand and greet the later graduates until the class of 2024 takes their first walk out through the gate. 

In Rochester, Paul Goldberg Blog

The WHOLE Trip

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In the past I have been asked for a map of the trip. I always figured that most people could enter our locations into Google Maps or Earth and see where we were. However I thought today I would show you the entire trip directly from the planning software I have been using for several years. Here is a link to the WHOLE Trip. I could also give you Google’s version of where we have been Timeline. It is almost as good as the actual map. 

Facts: Miles driven 3,225. Diesel Fuel Purchased 416.59 Gallons – we started with about 3/4 of a tank (100 gallon tank capacity) and topped off in Pembroke NY. That came to $1,324. The inevitable question is how many miles per gallon – 7.74 but we burned probably 11 gallons in the generator. Cost per mile is $.41 not bad for moving almost 40,000 pounds across the country.  Maybe the most shocking number is what we paid for campgrounds – $1,075 and we stayed for free for 7 nights. We averaged $51 per night in campgrounds. That includes 4 nights in an Elks Lodge for $35/night. This is where inflation is the most visible. It is about double what we might have seen 10 years ago. 

I was tempted to compare it to traveling by car, but I don’t have real facts and travel by plane is a very different category of travel. 

In Rochester, On the Road, Paul Goldberg Blog

Later Post – Wrapping up – Two

I am sitting in the apartment living room. This was another uneventful drive, one fuel stop and into our storage lot. The spaces are tight. Eleven feet in width is a whole lot less than 12 feet or even eleven feet six inches. The coach is eight feet six inches wide. I’ll let you calculate the excess space, it is tight. I can barely open a bay door to turn off the chassis batteries. We rented here in the past but I forgot – well enough about that.

Unloading the coach and moving the unloaded stuff into the apartment was time consuming and frustrating. We are prone to loosing things from time to time, but a pound of ground beef? Yup someplace in the coach, the car or the apartment there is a one pound package of ground beef slowly decomposing – gross! We returned to the coach after a period of unpacking and storing to pick up some items forgotten in the rush, jewelry, shoes, spices, this aging thing is really getting annoying. Dinner at Panera solved the food problem and gave us a moment to slow down and not have to work in the kitchen, which is buried in stuff needing to find a home. 

Oh yes, the batteries in our remotes have all failed over the lengthy absence.

On the Road, Paul Goldberg Blog

Wrapping Up – one

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I know, I haven’t even written it and I know it won’t be the last, I think.

Today, Thursday April 25, had one planned activity. That was to finally see Fallingwater, the country house designed for the Kaufman family by FLWright.  It is a mere 3 miles from where we are staying. It is 90 years from where we are today. The Kaufman’s were a couple who founded and owned Kaufman Department Store. Those of us from Rochester may remember when they bought Sibley, Lindsey and Curr, know to most of us as “Sibley’s” They had one son who never married and had they had no descendants. 

As older people ourselves we wonder what will become of our “stuff” and how to downsize to relieve the burden from our children. The Kaufman’s had a great idea. They had built a marvelous house and a great art collection and they left the entire estate to a not-for profit to manage as a museum, they also left $5 million in the 40’s to maintain it and its 5000 acres. We get the benefit of that largesse. A house built in the 30’s that looks in many regards like it was built yesterday (without conforming to current code). Railings on a deck too low for any standard, so Mrs Kaufman could see over them without getting out of bed. Stairways with no hand rails. Passage ways too narrow for easy passage and so many more. 

The sound of the creek wherever you are on the property permeates everywhere. As soon as you open one of the many windows it fills the space. Here is Carol leaning over one of the many patio walls above Bear Run.  This is just 8 seconds.

We concluded by walking to a viewpoint to get this classic picture: Well maybe it will upload by the time I post.  Try this link for excellent pictures

A cup of fancy coffee drink set us up for the brief ride back to the coach to begin prepartions for a less than 4 hour travel day and another day arriving in Rochester and moving out of the coach for the summer. We need our luggage, already in the car and the perishables and the electronics for the first trip. 

I’ll fill in the details in a later post.

On the Road, Paul Goldberg Blog

Some Sight Seeing

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We left Lee in Columbus and were only two easy days to Rochester, but we had no desire to arrive before the end of April. There were a couple of places on our bucket list that had always been out of the way, out of reach because of lack of time. We have had an affinity for Frank Lloyd Wright homes and I mentioned earlier we decided to tour Falling Water and Kentuck Knob. The easiest place to camp for these turns out to be a Yogi Bear Jellystone Park. We have often stayed at one called Shangri La by the Creek between Rochester and Charlottesville and know how busy they can be in season. Late April in PA is not in season. 

This place is huge, with half mile between entrance and exit on the main road. We are located next to the Ranger Station (!). When I was exploring I found the golf cart rental center, there must be 100 golf carts waiting to be rented. There are 3 swimming pools. The closest large city is Pittsburgh which is an hour and a quarter away. 

The one sight we hadn’t planned on is Flight 93 National Memorial, about an hour away over mountain roads. We went there this morning. The field in Shanksville is just that an open field. If Flight 93 had not crashed there, it would still be just another open field. 

The Visitor Center was crowded with 3 school buses of children for whom this is ancient history and older people remembering what they were doing when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. There are memorabilia, and there are voices, the recordings of the phone calls made from the plane in the 34 minutes after it was taken left me in tears, again. We did not walk out to the memorial itself we did make a final stop at the Tower of Voices. It is 93 feet tall and has 40 large wind chimes, all different voices.

In the afternoon we went to Kentuck Knob a wonderful Unsonian home by FLW. The original owner lived in it for over 30 years and the current owner converted it into a museum with many of his own collected items in the house and. It was delightful visit with ice cream made by the dairy the orginal owner owned in the gift shop. The road is not suitable for any RV. The house is built into the top of the Knob.  For better pictures than I could take go here.

More tomorrow,

On the Road, Paul Goldberg Blog

Along the Way

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The Kansas City Gangster Tour was a lot of fun. Lots of mostly factual history of the period from 1920 to the mid 30’s. The bus ride never pauses between the dialogue from the lead gangster and the driver who is party to the action along with the interactive video. The only time anyone left the bus was when the “guide” got off to reenact a murder scene with multiple participants all by himself. We were all hysterical by the time he got back on the bus. It was 90 minutes of fun and history mixed together. 

We took a day to clean the coach and for me to attend a hybrid Board Meeting at Jojoba Hills. We took off down the road this morning in the face of storm warning, wind and under 5 hours later with fuel and lunch we settled in to a lovely Boondockers Welcome site with a lovely gravel pad and electricity. They are friendly people, as we would expect, The pad is alongside a barn. Since there is a threat of rain we disconnected the car and backed it into the site and then backed the coach up to it so I could reconnect it to be ready in the morning to roll without going out in the rain to set it up.

This travel style is limiting our time to follow the news. While we are rolling we mostly are listening to audio books or other favorite shows. Of course once we stop we do catchup and morning is usually NPR and NYTimes with breakfast. 

Several days have passed. We moved on to Lake Haven Retreat, outside Indianapolis where we met Terry Lovenheim and went out to dinner. We had a long pleasant talk over dinner and and returned to the coach to prepare for another travel day.

This day found us at Alton RV outside Columbus OH. We have stayed at this park in the past to visit with Lee Cherney. Just a reminder, Lee was at TBK Sunday School with Carol and me going back to 1st or 2nd grade. Later we ended up at Brown together where we were roomates for 2 years, one year in the dorms and senior year in an apartment with Jon Kerner of blessed Memory. We have stayed in touch all these years. 

Although we were within 8 hours of Rochester we decided not to rush back yet. We are spending two nights in Erie PA KOA before completing our exporations with the aforementioned trip to tour Fallingwater and Kentucky Knob, two Frank Lloyd Wright homes. After those tours we expect to take two days to get back to Rochester. This should land us in the apartment on Saturday April 27. 

That will terminate our immediate travels in the motorhome and leave us two trips in the car to Boston and to Providence two weeks apart with a graduation in Rochester in the middle of the sandwich. 

The coach has been running fine so far and Carol has been taking her two hour shifts with aplomb. The audio books and other entertainments help the miles fly by.

Watch for posts from family travels coming soon.

On the Road, Paul Goldberg Blog

Things Forgotten

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After the obvious notion that our age has slowed us down just a bit and we don’t have to be “doing” every minute of the day comes the rest of the stuff.

As I was making plans with a friend for a get together in Cleveland, he reminded me that Pesach (Passover) was that night – oops. I guess we will be enjoying that in a campground someplace. Someplace then became a question.  I had forgotten that we were entering the Northeast a land where camping is very seasonal and the season starts either April 15 or May 1. Most of the places near Cleveland that I tried do not open until May 1. The one that is opening April 15 has only 7 sites and is fully booked. 

There is no reason to stop in Cleveland if our friends are not available so we will move on to Erie PA. I don’t think we have ever stopped there. It is a KOA, not our preferred venue, but mid week while schools are open it seems safe. This puts us within a short day to Rochester if we choose to do that. 

After some more working with my trip planing software and the phone I have gotten way ahead of myself and have booked almost all the stops we need for the rest of the trip. I just added a side trip to Fallingwater, the FLWright house. Its only 176 miles out of the way. We have promised ourselves a stop there many times but never had the time. We just made the time.

Another thing I forgot. This planning takes time, especially booking reservations, something we seldom have done. Also I needed to debug the windshield and front of the coach after 2,000 of driving. 

Tomorrow We will join a bunch of Kansas City Cornellians for a Gangsta Tour of Kansas City. Our friends, the Lustigs, are both Cornellians and they invited us. Another thing I forgot, Look up Brown Clubs as we travel.

Seeing the World/Seeing North America