A refresh of a slightly shopworn model Howdy! If you are reading this, most likely you are familiar with my former blog as The 614ortyNiner. And even if you aren’t, the introduction applies equally in this case. I moved to Ohio from California early in the 2010s. As you may have figured out from my previous blog name, there was an underlying theme of my … Continue reading A Little Introduction
(Featured Photo: The San Antonio River Walk, San Antonio, TX) While we weren’t officially a thing yet, my spouse and I dove in hard on whether we’d make a good couple: we decided on a several-day-long road trip to Yosemite National Park, the California Gold Country, and the San Francisco Bay Area together. The experience must’ve went well, because we scheduled an even longer road … Continue reading A Pen At Ten (Pt. 2) – Road Tripping
People love round numbers, and as I glance at the calendar, I realize that one such number (10) is approaching for my blog. A lot has changed since that very first post in May 2014, where I related why I didn’t start the blog right after my move to Ohio. As I wrote then: At that time, I had played with the idea of a … Continue reading A Pen on Ten (Part 1 – The Ten We Miss)
As alluded to in Part 1 of this post, we traveled to California this year without much of a hard-set schedule, and it ended up thwarting our plans to seek out some the Bay Area specific culinary treasures, especially Burmese food. The San Francisco Bay Area is rich with this cuisine, with eateries from Corte Madera to Benicia in the north, to Livermore and San … Continue reading The Neal & Del Award (Pt. 2)
A few days before Christmas, my wife and I boarded an airplane for travel for the first time since 2019. Not counting the first year of the COVID-19 Pandemic (2020, when we did not travel anywhere significant), we achieved something equivalent to the (unofficial) Neal & Del award, as we ended up taking a plane, a train and an automobile to go to/travel back from … Continue reading The Neal & Del Award (Pt. 1)
Well, as Dr. Rumack in the movie “Airplane!” would respond, “I am serious. But don’t call me Shirley.” I had thought I would venture into more serious topics when I switched blog platforms into WordPress, but I found the tone shift to be too jarring to really do it. I had flirted with the idea of starting a Substack for these deeper dives back in … Continue reading Surely You Can’t Be Serious…
Delaware is more than a Presidential birthplace turned gas station My wife and I have grown to love trips up US 23 into Delaware the past several years. One of the fastest growing small towns in Ohio (with population jumping nearly 20% during the 2010 decade), downtown Delaware still has a very small town feel, something we’ve come to appreciate with other Central Ohio cities … Continue reading Crossing The Delaware (Ohio, that is…)
In a way, Madison, the capital city of Wisconsin, was going to suffer a bit in comparison to Chicago and Milwaukee for this jaunt. We have been to Madison a few times in the past decade or so of marriage, so we’ve knocked off a few things that would’ve been natural destinations (The National Mustard Museum and New Glarus Brewing come to mind.) Also, our … Continue reading A Fine Example of Capitolism (Midwest Travels 2023, Pt. 4)
Whether I visit a new city, I always try to keep a neutral perspective beforehand, even if it’s a place where I’ve heard good things about (Toronto and Asheville, NC were two such cases.) I admit I was secretly hoping Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city at roughly 570,000 residents, wouldn’t be a disappointment. Not that I want any city or town we visit to be disappointing … Continue reading Pabst, Present, and Future (Midwest Travels 2023, Pt. 3)
To hear some politically-motivated people of a certain ilk talk, you’d think Chicago, the nation’s third largest city at three million people and a metro area of nearly 9.5 million, is a consistently raging hellhole of uncontrolled gun violence in the heart of this country. Others look at the city’s history of machine politics and generally left-leaning views with disgust. Of course, these are the … Continue reading The Second City Doesn’t Care What You Think (Midwest Travels 2023, Pt. 2)
Maybe it was a forgone conclusion that I would grow into a baseball fan – my mother’s family emigrated to California the very same year that the then New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers of Major League Baseball (MLB) decided that the 31st state of this nation held the key to future fandom and success for their storied franchises. Ending up in San Francisco, … Continue reading Because It’s One, Two, Three Strikes You’re Out (Midwest Travels 2023)
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