Many Travel-Tidbits were written years ago with no thought of the Internet -- just for their personal pleasure and for their grandchildren. (For fun, Jim established a budget of one page per Tidbit, about 400 words per story, and although it may take several pages to tell the whole story, each page stands on its own.) What you'll read and see here is a selection of stories and photos, vignettes from Jim and Emmy's years of travel. Enjoy!
Comments, complaints, questions, arguments, corrections are all welcome at jimhum@sbcglobal.net.
| Latest Travel Tidbit | Latest Photo Tidbit |
|
Campsites,Norway
When we crossed the border from Sweden into Norway, both the roads and the view changed. The roads are now narrower and the stripes are yellow (Sweden’s roads are wider, and stripes are white), but the scenery is much more beautiful with higher mountains, more snow, more water falls, and better looking farms. We spent the night in a campsite about 20 miles east of Trondheim. We had decided to stay at a B&B tonight, we saw several signs, but each was closed for the season (late September). Emmy was afraid she would get her hair wet in the high showers at the Andalsnes campsite, so I brought a bucket of hot water for her bath in the camper. There was fresh snow on the mountainside, so we drove on roads near the shore, rather than over the mountains. Would have stayed at a sod-roofed hotel we looked at, but it seemed too expensive for what it offered. Drove on to Brekhe and found a campground with a light in the restroom. I could find no one anywhere in the campsite, so went across the road to ask at a lighted farm house, and found the farmer owned the campground.... Continue reading "Campsites,Norway" Comment on "Campsites,Norway" |
About Jim & Emmy
November 15, 2007. Sweetie just spent her second birthday in Heaven. I miss her so much, and I wish I was with her. This has been the fastest and the most miserable two years of my life. We met on a blind date on November 3, 1950, and I had to report to the Army in two weeks (Recalled for the Korean War). Seven months later — minus one day — on June 2, 1951, after we had seen each other maybe 10 to 15 times, we were married. We knew each other for a total of 55 years and 13 days. One year we celebrated Sweeties 70th birthday at exactly 12345670. That occurred on Jan 2, 2003 at 4:56 both AM and PM — well we slept through the AM version, but we did celebrate the PM version. Each year this century, people make a big deal out of dates like 3-3-03, 4-4-04, 5-5-05, 6-6-06, and especially they call 777 or 7-7-07 their lucky day. But who else do you know who celebrated 12345670! For every one of the 54 Wedding Anniversaries, we have eaten at a restaurant we have never patronized before. For our 38th, from our table in the Marriott Hotel in Athens we could see the Parthenon at the top of the Acropolis. It was partially covered with scaffolding, and looked as if it could be under construction, under renovation, or perhaps under demolition. We asked our waiter when he last visited the Parthenon. He laughed and said as a school child he was bussed to the Acropolis one day, the one and only time he's been there! Anniversaries have been celebrated in Athens; Cruise Ships 3; Dallas (2); Ft. Worth; Greimerath, Germany; Las Vegas (4); Los Angeles area (18); Mauna Kea Beach Hotel in Hawaii (the best!!); Lowes Hotel Monte Carlo (the worst!!); Palm Springs area (16); Park Ridge, Ill (Wedding day); Phoenix; San Diego (2); San Francisco; Santa Barbara; Strasbourg. The photographs on Travel-Tidbits.com are all tourist snapshots, taken from 10 to 35 years ago. The age of the photo, the process of the scan and transfer to the Internet, often caused a slight shift in colors, but the main idea is the composition and the contents of the photo, as amplified by the Photo-Tidbit, the story below. Of course being stored for many years in our garage, in the California Desert, sure didn't help. It is important to note that while the Travel-Tidbits and Photo-Tidbits include thousands of capitalized nouns — town and city names, buildings, tourist sites, etc. — Emmy and I have visited each and every one mentioned here. I have searched the Internet, via Google, for hundreds and hundreds of those nouns, and have yet to find one that is not listed on the internet somewhere. About the only thing of interest to us that has changed since our first visit to Europe in 1970, was the removal of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, and the beginning of the restoration of Dresden, Germany. Jim and Emmy's Tidbits are just that - vignettes, samples, suggestions, incidents, "Why Not Visit" stories — without a hint of the "How To" that is the major topic found in many travel publications. Comments, complaints, questions, arguments, corrections are all welcome at jimhum@sbcglobal.net PS. I first got involved in the computer industry in the late 1940s, almost before there were computers. To brag a moment, fifty years ago I worked at least a little with three of the original, huge, hand-built computers, the Whirlwind at MIT, the SWAC at UCLA, and the Johnniac at the RAND Corp. And forty-five years ago, I wrote the computer manuals, created the training course, went to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and trained NASA on the RCA 110A (Saturn Ground Control Computer). I also conducted several training classes on the RCA 4102 (Atlantic Missile Range Computer). These were two of the computers that helped put the men on the moon. Since they all got there and back OK, I figure I did my job just right. Just in case you care (and even my mother might not want to read all of this), in this Web Site there are about 75 pages of stories of those early computer days, with a hundred links to old computer web sites. A short version of that story can also be found at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). One day an official of that organization was on CSPAN, and asked for stories about early computer days. I submitted a couple of my stories, they liked them and asked for more. Then they published an extensive portion of my story, and I thank them for that attention to my early days. Comment on "About Jim & Emmy" |
| Last 5 Travel Tidbits | Last 5 Photo Tidbits |