Judy #2

 Ok, here it comes. It's a bit out of order so we'll turn the clock back to last Fall, 2022.  There.  Fall was in the air which meant square dancing was about to get going again for another season. Judy and I had pretty much quit square dancing during the pandemic so I was a bit rusty but I have had so much fun with it over the years that I thought I'd give it a try and see if I remembered anything. I pulled out the definitions and glanced through them thinking "this stuff is a foreign language". Although we had been dancing C2 for a couple of years, I never did really feel comfortable at that level. There wasn't any Advanced dancing to speak of so that left C1 and all the way back to Plus. I decided to try both.

I let my C2 friends know that I was looking for a new partner and got a call a few days later from Mary Ann. A new single lady was looking. I showed up at the next C2 dance a bit late, just in time to see the last car pull out of the lot. There weren't enough to make a square so Ross had cancelled the dance. I hurried over to Bronc's C1 dance just in time to catch the "single lady" who also had just left Ross's C2 hall. To make a long story short, I finished the season with Karen and we did just fine. It's sort of like riding a bicycle. 

But what about Plus? Earlier in the week I had gone to Bronc's plus dance intending to either take pot luck or dance with Fia, Bronc's wife. As I was signing in, this tiny little lady came running across the hall squealing "this one is MINE"! When I stood up and glanced at her name tag, I said "you're not going to believe this". Her name was Judy. She had been dancing as a single for the past 10 years after her husband had died and was known far and wide as "Jude the dude". We also finished out the season and didn't miss many plus dances in the valley. We've since become "an item" (Karen's words, not mine) and my kids call her Judy Toody. 

Here she is with me and the gang in Mexico a few days ago...she's the teetotaler.

Lots of Water Under the Bridge

 It has been awhile.  Last night I thought to check out my buddy Otto's blog to see what he had been doing. Like most things I do of late, that led me to jump into several other rabbit holes and I ended up here in our travel blog.  2014?  That's a bit of a long dry spell.  We've been all over the place since that time. Oh well.  Now is as good a time as any to start catching up.   Watch this space for some old news, as well as maybe some new news from time to time.  

First off, in case you haven't heard, the love of my life, dance partner, geocaching partner, travel mate, etc etc went "silent key" a bit over a year ago.  That's ham-speak for died.  Here's the short version.  Judy decided that the pandemic was over and we needed to go somewhere. That somewhere was a cruise to the Bahamas. She forgot to pack her appetite and while on the ship she kept getting chilled - really shaking and shivering chilled.  But she was a trooper and we managed to get off ship and even do some hiking and geocaching on shore. By the time we got home after the cruise, she was sick.  Could it be COVID?  I grabbed a couple of test kits and mine blared out "positive" but she was the sick one.  As a few days passed she got weaker and we decided to take the doc's advice and go to the emergency room. After a couple of weeks in the hospital while the docs fiddled around and ran tests, the lead-doctor-in-charge, with all the bedside manner of a prosecuting attorney, barged into the room and said "you have stage 4 liver cancer". Back home for hospice care and a few days later she was gone.

As I'm fond of saying about my time in service with the US Army "that was the adventure of a life time". But let me tell you about my latest adventure. Judy #2 and I decided we had enough of the heat and took off for a few days up north to see the kids.  She has kids in Jefferson City MO and Keokuck IA and I also have kids in mid MO so we packed up the Tahoe and headed out on July 12 after her doctor's appointment. We made it to Corsicana and stayed at a Best Western. We were off at 7:30 the next day after a pretty good breakfast and making good time but the transmission started acting up. We got to Canton and it decided that was as far as it wanted to go.  I pulled off into a parking lot and checked the transmission fluid (ok) and temperature (not ok). The closest Chevy dealer was in Sulpher Springs and after the tranny cooled down, we were able to limp the 15 miles to their parking lot. They got me in, found a rebuilt unit, and 24 hours later (plus about $8k) we were back on the road again.

Sulpher Springs is a nice little town and the folks at Jay Hodge Chevy were great but I have to say being without a car stinks.  We were trying to maintain a 28 day streak of geocache finds to snag the "hard" souvenir for July. Fortunately we had already found our cache of the day earlier in the morning because there weren't any within walking distance of the hotel, at least not the distance I was willing to walk in that 100+ degree Texas heat we've been having. Eating was another challenge. All the close restaurants were on the other side of a divided highway and might have well been on the moon.  We solved that problem by using a trick I haven't used in decades:  we ordered a delivery pizza. That process has become more complicated over the years.  Back in the 80s, one picked up the phone, called in the order to the store that would be making the delivery, and that was it.  In 2023 we had to wade through a couple of layers of automated order taking services before we found someone who actually knew where the motel was located. 

Suffice to say we survived, got to see the kids, maintained our 28 day geocaching streak, and even managed to snag a couple of square dances on the trip: one to my old club (Duck N Dive in Rolla) and Judy's old club in Wever IA. Most of the geocaches were of the "park and grab" type but a few were memorable like the Mystery cache in Jeff City that required me to tromp through some woods in the rain, a Lewis and Clark memorial in Jeff City, and a replica of Iowa Territory's oldest school house.             

We left Missouri on 7-24, spent the night in Paducah with sister Dorothy, then off to see a friend in Searcy Arkansas where we spent the night.  One more night on 7-26 at the Franklin Inn in Franklin TX (both named of course after brother Franklin Peters) and we made it back home after about 3500 miles. Judy #2 was introduced to "leisurely travel" and reintroduced to Missouri chiggers. 

Oops, Judy #2?  Who is that? She is yet another story but that will have to wait. This thing needs to go live.

Lewis and Clark Memorial

Iowa Territory's oldest schoolhouse

Helsinki

EagleIZ at Uspenski Cathedral

We left the ship about 9:00 and started on a 1.3 mile hike into town and the City Museum. Along the way we looked for GC3P0C6 geocache but had to log a DNF. We arrived at the museum but found it was closed until noon so we proceeded on to GC9898 at Uspenski Cathedral. We could easily spot the onion domes of the Eastern Orthodox church, a huge affair on an island hilltop near the East Port. The cache, our first in Finland, was in the wall, behind a rock, in a tree covered corner, nicely hid. On the way we saw an interesting display of 100s of padlocks of all sorts attached to a small bridge to the church's island. We weren't sure of the significance at the time but have since seen others like it and even a few geocaches placed on these lock collections. Turns out it is a favorite custom of couples to seal their love for each other. 

A word about Judy's yellow jacket.  We bought these on a trip to Washington DC when the weather turned a bit nasty on us. Since that time we've worn them all over the world and I still have them packed away somewhere. One of the best buys I've ever made! We had them on in Amsterdam when a fellow approached us and wanted to take our picture. His "thing" was taking photos of couples dressed alike and we had caught his eye. He has a website loaded with interesting photos but we didn't make the bigtime.

The Bad Boy

On our way to the next cache (GC238FX Central Market Square) we ran into the Bad Boy sculpture and took a photo for our friend Roy. The cache was under a bridge and hard to get to without attracting the attention of 100s of nearby nubbles but I think we did ok. This area was known as Cholera Basin and was apparently infamous as a city sewer. The Bad Boy was an appropriate sculpture.

We eventually did make it back to the Central Market where I had lunch of some delicious fried fish, rice, and a local beer. I've heard stories that our beloved "french fries" actually originated as something like this during WWI. The fish vendor ran out of fish and fried up some potato strips instead. The Belgians were speaking French and our soldiers took the recipe home and called them French Fries. Whatever the story, the fish were excellent if just a bit much. Central Market was a beehive of activity and more like a flea market or a pulga mercado back home.

Lunch at central market

Central Market

             

The City Museum cache was worth the revisit.  This is billed as the world's largest geocache container and the entire museum is considered the container.. We spent some time admiring all of the travel bugs permanently affixed to a basket in a side office where the log was located. We beat it back to the shp and were soon off for our next stop: Saint Petersburg Russia.

Rønne Bornholm

Welcome to Ronne

 Our first stop was Rønne where we had a short but wild ride on a tender into port.We walked the short distance to the "large square" and were surprised to find no evidence of tourism. No vendors, no shored excursions and the local currency is not the Euro. The town/island is more of a vacation site with lots of cycling and camping. There were some geocaches in town but none that called out my name. While on ship we had met Richard and Jo-Ann Simon from Michigan who I had met online via cruise critic. I'm still friends on Facebook with Jo-Ann but Richard sadly left us a few years ago. We said goodby to town and took the tender back to the ship in time for 4:00 tea and met a couple of other English speakers:Angela and Bob from NY/FL and Shiela and Sonny from England/Belgium. The 8 of us had dinner and caught the second show: a nice variety singer from South Africa.

The next day was at sea on our way to Helsinki. Weather was partly cloudy, chilly in the 60s but warm in the sun. We listened awhile to Duo Caseopia (piano and cello) in the Chocolate Bar. 

The hike into the Large Square

A wild tender ride

Onboard the Costa Romantica

Boarding the Costa Romantica

 Before we left Rolla, Judy managed to snag a Baltic cruise on the Costa Romantica out of Amsterdam. The ship was smaller than many of our Caribbean cruise ships so we were surprised to find ourselves in a cabin that was actually larger than our hotel room with a lot more storage. The food was good and included the usual buffet with assorted restaurants around the ship. Coffee was scarce and only available at breakfast so I began hoarding instant coffee packets. No ice tea at all so Judy was out of luck until she discovered that hot tea and ice worked just as well. Entertainment included a piano/cello duet, Gordio (an Italian piano player singing rock songs), and a couple of guitarists from South America who were very good. Other than the crew, we were some of the few English speakers aboard. A comedy act one night was a lost cause! We missed the theater
shows on other cruises but the lounge music was great and we got along just fine. Unlike other cruises we were able to see coastlines often and saw LOTS of other ships - mainly cargo vessels.  The Baltic is a busy place. 

Goodbye Amsterdam

Amsterdam Trip

 I'm finally getting around to catching up on my travel blog. For some reason or other, we quit just as the travel was starting to pick up. In 2014 I was still volunteering for IEEE on the Region 5 executive board. This was Sections Congress year and the board decided to send everyone to Amsterdam. It almost broke the bank but we had a good time anyway. Judy went with me and did the sight seeing while I sat in a faceless conference room attending meetings. We and the Merediths stayed at the Citizen M hotel which John said looked like two WWII submarines welded together. He and I walked the few blocks to the conference through Beatrix Park, a gorgeous nearby park each morning, rain or shine. Some memories: Getting stuck at the airport in St Louis before even starting; an unscheduled stop in Frankfort; losing our luggage; running into Tim Ault, one of our old students from UMR; watching out for bicycles before crossing a street; riding the city buses; geocaching in Amsterdam (very fun, even in the rain). Judy managed to snag a cruise on a Costa ship through the Baltic after the conference. More on that later.

Our home in Amsterdam: Citizen M

HP3 arriving at Sectons Congress 2014

Meeting the Cousins

We left the hotel and went to Webster Groves and had brunch at Stafford Restaurant where we met up with two cousins of Hardy's.  He had never met these two and Nancy was from his mother's side and Carol was from his father's side.  They both live in that area but did not know each other...now they do!  They were both a delight to meet but we forgot to take any pictures.  How redundant is that! 

After the brunch, which lasted for three hours, we went back to the hotel then started geocaching in the area.  The geo's that we found were in the downtown area close to the hotel and in parks nearby.  One of the caches was a multi-cache in City Garden which has sculptures all over and this cool fountain of dancing water that the kids were really enjoying running through and getting totally soaked and trying to catch the water.  We had to go from sculpture to sculpture and answer questions to get the coordinates of the real cache and sign the log book.  There were two young girls where we signed the log book so we explained what we were doing so maybe they would want to start geocaching too.

Later that evening we went to an Irish restaurant called the "Dubliner" for dinner.  After that we stopped at Jack Patricks which is an Irish Pub.  I asked a young man if we had to go in to order our drinks and he very politely told me that he was just a customer but we did have to go inside.  He wanted to know if we were from there and we told him we were from out of town and there celebrating my birthday.  He bought me my birthday drink!