Tracy's Travels

A knock at the front door...

...of my blog...

...please just go with it.


What's that noise? Who's there? Oh, it's you! Hello again, loyal blog reader. What's that you say? You're a little miffed at me because I haven't updated this since that fantastic event in October, and, seeing how you've already gone through every magazine in circulation, the 30,011,749 books in the Library of Congress, and Matthew Lesko's book about free money from the government in 3 different languages, I'm the only thing left to read?

EDITORIAL NOTE: This post was originally drafted in January '09 but never published. Because I'm too damn lazy to start from scratch, I'm leaving the original post as is and adding edits in green. Deal with it.


Well, I'm truly sorry to leave you hanging for so long. But luckily, my excuse is also the inspiration for this post, as I've had the busiest 6 (now up to 12) months of travel of my life. Let's look at the final tally (from July 08 through the end of January 09) and review some of the highlights:

Baltimore
Chapel Hill/Durham, NC
Flagstaff
Harrisburg
Idaho
Lake Tahoe
Las Vegas (2 trips)
Los Angeles - Thanksviging trip, otherwise known as "Dad meets the West Coast. Sorry, I kept him away as long as I could."
NEPA (3)
Notre Dame (3)
Prescott (3)
Salt Lake City (6)
Sedona...twice. In 2 days. Don't leave a credit card at a golf course 2 hours from home.
Tucson (5)
The wilderness of AZ (camping)
US-Mexico Border (2)
Virginia/DC/Annapolis

New additions, through the end of June:
Salt Lake City (A lot)
Grand Canyon/Flagstaff/Sedona (2)
Payson
Chicago (A few)
San Francisco
South Bend
AUGUSTA (This really deserves its own post...which it won't get)
Omaha (2)
Vegas (See Augusta note. Best hotel deal ever.)
Minnesota
NEPA




That's the short list, anyway - also got to do plenty of fun stuff without traveling and even hosted some very special visitors. It's hard to pick a favorite from the list so I won't. But hey, I already did a writeup on one trip and there's no sense in deleting that:




Tahoe - A wedding between 2 of the greatest people I met at ND. Lake Tahoe in wintertime. Waking up to a fresh coating of snow on wedding day, and having the snow start again on cue as the wedding ends (hey, when you marry a pastor, you can pull some strings). By the time the reception the reception started - at an Irish Pub - I thought the wedding couldn't get any cooler ... until we all went out to the patio bar and danced to a Backer mix tape. Saw some old friends and made some new ones, played a kickass game of Egyptian Rat Screw, hit up the casinos, and got a LOT of experience in putting on snow chains the next morning. Oh, and introduced the greatness of In and Out Burger to 2 people. Just letting everyone out there know, if you plan to have the most awesome wedding ever, this is where the bar is set. There's also the part about meeting some girl, which seems to continue to be working out well for all parties involved.




2008 (and now 09 as well) was certainly a frequent flyer-y year -I actually flew enough to make Southwest Airline's A-list (and have now have already flown enough to renew my membership in under 6 months), which gives me a sweet boarding pass every time I fly for the next year, and also lets jump to the front of the line for security in Phoenix and a few other airports. That will come in handy, as 2009 may actually make a run at 08's record (no, it blew it away).

Add in all of the travel I'll be doing for work (60+ job visits) and hopefully a few visits to Vegas and maybe I should think about an airplane pillow. In fact, I think I'll go get a jump start on catching up on all of the sleep I'm going to miss. Wake me up in a week or so, will you? And don't forget to lock the door on your way out... of my... castle, judging from the picture at the top of the post.



And just because it was so much damn fun to research, here are even more awesome magazines for you.