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travel

Charleston Spring

Monday 17 March 2025

We spent yesterday and today in Charleston — a favorite destination when we have a bit of time, a bit of money, and an itch to travel. Only three hours away, it’s a perfect weekend destination.

And even when it’s too cold to go into the water, we have to spend some time on the beach.

We gave the new camera a bit of a workout. It’s a steep learning curve: there are a lot more possibilities than our older cameras (focus modes, for instance), and it’s taking us a while to get used to everything.

Still, the size, the image quality — I think it was a good choice for us as are kids grow up. I won’t be needing to take any more volleyball pictures, and for soccer, I’ll still likely reach for the Nikon given the lens options we have.

Still, for our trip to Greece and Poland this summer, only one camera and one lens.

We took a couple of walks,

I took some pictures of the waves,

and then we headed downtown. The kids wanted to do a little shopping; K and I just split up with them and helped out. Afterward, there was only one place to go before heading back:

Hyman’s — probably the most famous seafood place in Charleston. I almost always order the same thing: there’s only one variant. I’ll always have mussels; I always take the deviled crab; after that, the third is the only variant. Today, I had the salmon croquette. All delicious.

K ate light — too mush sushi the night before.

The Boy, being the Boy, decided to try something new: crawfish. He wasn’t thrilled. He ate them, but decided it was too much work for too little return.

Polish Wedding in Chicago

Monday 7 October 2024

“Are you going for the bride or the groom?” I was standing at the car rental counter making small talk with the young lady completing the paperwork for us to rent our car, and I answered without giving any thought to the oddness of my response.

“Neither. I’ve never met either of them.”

She smiled. “How did you get the invite if…”

I started pointing over my shoulder. “She knows the bride,” I explained, indicting behind me with my thumb my absent wife. I turned around to discover K wasn’t standing behind me.

“Wherever she is…” I continued.

I have, in fact, only been to one other wedding where I didn’t know the bride or the groom, and it was the evening I proposed to K in 2003.

There was little difference between that evening and Saturday’s wedding. During the 2003 wedding, K and I sat with a group of her college friends (it was a college friend’s wedding), but I really knew none of them.

Saturday, we sat with a group of folks who were from the same village as K (the father of the bride was from Jablonka) but otherwise strangers to us.

No matter: we were soon talking with them as if we’d known them for ages.

That’s part of the magic of a Polish wedding: you can go knowing no one and be fairly certain you’ll still have a great time. The copious amounts of alcohol certainly helps lessens everyone’s inhabitions, but there’s something more to it than that.

Chicago Walk

Saturday 5 October 2024

A 6:30 flight that necessitates a 4:15 wake-up time might get you to Chicago with a lot of time left before the 5:00 wedding that’s the reason for the whole trip, but it also drains you just a bit before anything even starts. Still, this morning’s trip was completely painless: easy parking at our local Greenville airport, quick check-in, smooth security check, on-time boarding and takeoff started the trip off stress free if not a little tired. Things went just as smoothly in Chicago when we arrived, so that put us downtown with a lot of time, a little cafe nearby, and no real commitment other than to explore the city.

We made it to the hotel without much problem (Chicago seems to be the city of Saturday traffic jams), took showers, and headed out for the wedding. Pictures from that coming only tomorrow…

Real Estate

Tuesday 3 September 2024

While we were in Charleston this weekend, we saw a lot of houses that would come with seven- or eight-figure price tags were they to go on the market. It’s fairly common in the Battery area. In fact, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find something under $800,000.

And then we noticed this condemned building. Likely well over a hundred years old, it has certainly had better days.

The siding has completely deteriorated on one side of the structure.

to the point that the wall insulation and in-wall plumbing is visible.

Continuing around the back, I saw the back steps are completely wrecked,

and the entire back corner of the building is completely open to the elements, missing part of the roof and part of the wall.

Had the house been moderately maintained, it would be worth at least a six-figure sum even if it needed extensive renovation. Had it been meticulously maintained, it would likely fetch close to or even a little over a million dollars. But to do that requires resources, requires money — as the truism goes, one must have money to make money. One falls on had times but is still determined to keep a property in the family (only imagining a previous owner’s situation) until is no longer a possibility.

Whatever the story, all that’s left to do is demolish the building.

Labor Day Weekend 2024 Day 1

Sunday 1 September 2024

Labor Day weekend for many years meant one thing for our family: a weekend with dear friends at their lake house outside of Charlotte. This is the first time in probably six years that we haven’t gone.

Instead, we decided to spend the weekend in Charleston. It’s a favorite destination. There’s the beach at Isle of Palms.

It has lovely streets and historic buildings.

There’s Hyman’s Seafood, which has the most amazing deviled crab on the planet.

Returning Home

Friday 5 July 2024

We drove over the Lions Bridge one last time today heading home. That’s the only picture from the day.

That and K’s cute obsession with taking pictures of backflow preventers that are so different from what she’s used to working with Greenville Water. “Why are they all out out of the ground?” was a common question. No one in the car could answer.

St. Augustine 2024 Day 1

Wednesday 3 July 2024

Morning

The shells on the beach just at the edge of the surf were visible for only a few moments before the white bubbles and turbulence hid them again.

In the brief time I could clearly see them in the shallow water, it was obvious most of the shells were only fragments, often smaller than the smallest coins, slivers well on their way to becoming grains of sand. Every now and then, a shard would catch my eye, and I would think, “I might try to grab that one” just before incoming wave hid them once again.

By then it was too late: once the water cleared up, the tide would have tkane the shard so far away from its original position that finding it was all but impossible. Another might catch my eye, but then the process would simply repeat itself.

To get a shell required calm and patience followed by a paradoxical ability to move quickly when needed. Hesitation meant the loss of the moment. In some ways, that’s a metaphor for live in general for many people. Everything is about getting the right moment, and when that fails, increased stress is the outcome.

Yet the older I get, the more I realize the error in living like that and the unnecessary stress it causes. Yes, I might not get that exact shell that I wanted, but there were plenty of other shells that were just as lovely, often more so.

Evening

In the evening, after we’d spent a few hours back at the Airbnb, after we’d spent some time downtown and had dinner, we headed back to the beach.

I took a few pictures:

and the Boy took a few pictures:

A short walk to end a lovely day.

And we got home, and I saw the fantastic news from the Tour de France: Mark Cavendish got his record-breaking 35th stage win, assuring him the historic title “The Greatest Sprinter of All Time!”

Almost as enjoyable as watching the win itself was seeing the other riders’ reaction to the amazing win.

Previous First Day

St. Augustine, Day 1

Tampa to St. Augustine via Gainesville

Tuesday 2 July 2024

We left our lovely hotel room with an incredible view to head to St. Augustine for the second half of our Florida vacation. It’s the second time we’ve been to St. Augustine as a family, the third time for the kids and me. That is to say, we really like St. Augustine.

Along the way, we made perhaps the most important stop of the whole week: a few hours in Gainesville. What’s so special about Gainesville? Well, it has a fantastic Korean restaurant, as we discovered for lunch. And rocker Tom Petty is a Gainesville native. But neither of those was the real reason we went to Gainesville. Our primary motivation has to do with our daughter, who is going to college in about a year. Going to college in about a year. Her number one choice of colleges: University of Florida, which is located in — guess — Gainesville. She wants to study bio-engineering, and Florida University has one of the best programs in the nation for that.

So we stopped by for a tour of the university. I tried not to talk too much or take too many pictures. The Girl remained relatively quiet during the tour. But we came away with a positive impression: the parents are happy with some of the safety programs the university implements; the Girl is happy with the college as a whole, especially one of the enormous chemistry labs we got to take a peek at.

Afterward, we headed to St. Augustine and our lovely Airbnb spot: a bungalow in an absolutely beautiful part of town. Walk to the end of the street, and this is the street we see:

Yes, that’s a peacock taking a stroll down a Live-Oak-lined street. It’s positively bajkowy.

Lovely houses as well. And the peacock? They’re from Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park, an ethnographic museum literally at the end of our street.

We weren’t planning on visiting any real attractions while in St. Augustine, but since it’s just down the road, we’re thinking we might. We’ll definitely visit the Cuban coffee cafe down the street.

A games night rounded out our evening: our Airbnb has several entertainment options, including a ping pong table. Poor K gets knocked around in board games, card games, and our front-yard badminton games, but she really knows how to play ping pong.

“Don’t worry,” she assured us, “I’ll take it easy on you.” And proceeded to trounce us all one after another, beer in hand.

Is this crazy

Friday 12 April 2024

There is no way I am posting tonight — I prepared this last night because at the normal time I’d be getting something ready for this silly site, I’ll be somewhere in the midst of this insanity…

Hel

Tuesday 9 January 2024

January 2, 2005, 3:46 pm || 1/470 second f 6.8

Hilton Head Day 2

Sunday 31 December 2023

We’ve had that model plane for — I don’t even know how long. Over a year. Maybe more.

“At some point, we’ll put it together,” I assured E, and myself.

And so as we were packing for this end-of-the-year trip, we had the idea that we could take the model and put it together here, in Hilton Head. Most of it, though, the Boy did himself. I wanted to be involved, but I also wanted him to have the experience of assembling it alone. I helped when he requested it.

This morning, he finished it.

In the afternoon, a stop at Piggly Wiggly — they still exist!

And in the evening, a walk on the beach,

some time in the hot tub,

and games in the condo.

Hilton Head Day 1

Saturday 30 December 2023

We started the day with a long sleep — not a single alarm clock set in the entire condominium. None. Not a FitBit set to gently jingle one awake; not a phone set to start chirping, screaming, or whatever alarms various family members use to drag themselves out of bed. Nothing.

First up, a walk on the beach just beside our complex. It’s technically not on the ocean but rather on the sound that separates Hilton Head from St. Helena Island and Parris Island just to the northeast of us.

The plan was to have an afternoon walk on Hilton Head’s main beach in the afternoon after exploring the downtown area, but K so fell in love with the marshy beach that she wanted to return after a short walk on the main tourist beach.

But we’ll get to that later.

One of the things Hilton Head is famous for is its wealth, and there’s no lack of that around us. The house just to the south of our complex is a 10,000 square foot beast that is valued, according to Zillow, at $4.5 million. Probably someone’s second home at that.

This kind of conspicuous wealth — I just don’t understand it. It screams lack of confidence in one’s own being. The only way I can feel great about myself is by showing off how much wealth I have. That’s how I’ve already seen it.

But that was neither here nor there as the Boy explored the shoreline (with the Girl still asleep in the condo), discovering at least a dozen horseshoe crab shells.

The place we’re renting is in a somewhat-dated but still lovely complex that, according to one resident we spoke with, is 50% owned and 50% rented. There are tennis courts (used, as far as we can tell, primarily for pickleball), an outdoor pool, an indoor pool, a jacuzzi, a sauna — a regular spa.

There’s even an odd, enclosed but unheated porch area. Not sure how comfortable that might be in the heat of the summer, but in the winter, all one needs is a blanket or jacket and it’s fine out there.

After our post-walk coffee and cake, we went downtown to do a little shopping. Not what I love doing, but I made it through the whole afternoon without even a peep of protest at the suggestion, “Let’s go into this store!”

The Girl was shopping for a birthday present for one of her friends; K was shopping for a dress for the Girl.

In the end, they both walked away happy, and I even got something: a bottle of Ghost Pepper and garlic hot sauce, locally made.

“Is it hot?” the Boy asked after I sampled a bit in the store.

“It’s definitely warm.”

After shopping, it was time for lunch: Babcia’s first time having sushi. The meal came with miso soup — another first — which Babcia liked but suggested: “it could use some potatoes.”

After lunch, we headed to the main beach. At first, K was in love with it: “The changing rooms, the showers — so charming!” But the beach itself — nothing much, she proclaimed.

So in the end, we just headed back to our little beach to see the sunset colors.

Cracker Stop

Friday 29 December 2023

On the way to Hilton Head this evening, we stopped for dinner at Cracker Barrel. It’s not a place we ever go to on our own, but when someone from Poland is here—well, they have to try good old fashioned greens.