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2021: My Travel Year in Review

by Monte R.
written by Monte R.

Well, another year of the COVID-19 virus pandemic blues comes to a close.  It’s been a pretty depressing couple years, especially without freedom to travel without virus restrictions of some type.

The vaccines have finally helped open up the world again in parts, however, the variants (Delta + Omicrom) keep impeding re-openings, which stutter and stumble.  We’re now going into year three of the Covid virus pandemic nightmare but with more hope than before, at least.

On top of all that, the Death Cult Republicans attempted a coup of our US government in January. Vox ran an article on the coup ending democracy recently “The world as we know it is ending. Why are we still at work?” and that’s about the most “American” thing I’ve read lately.

Virus and political horrors aside, I finally was able to travel some this year domestically: New Mexico (post), Las Vegas, Seattle (post), Sarasota (Florida) and San Francisco and even Cancun (which is almost like part of Texas). Heck, now that I think about, I sure did travel a bit this year despite the pandemic problems, which made it all a bit more expensive, unfortunately.

The lingering effects of the pandemic remain evident everywhere I visited – understaffed hotels and restaurants were the biggest problem.  Long lines, limited menus, higher prices for pretty much everything, especially food and rental cars. Costs aside, I was just happy to be traveling again!

To recap some of the trips, in April, I took a short trip to Cancun with Jenny to spend a few days at the Excellence Riviera Resort.  It’s an adults only resort – the spa at the resort is an incredible highlight I did not expect.

In June, we went to Las Vegas.  We stayed at Nomad MGM and the brand new Virgin Hotel which replaced the old Hard Rock Casino, which I used to frequent back in the day with my brothers.  I really like the new dark English gothic design of Nomad MGM and the sunny desert vibes of the Virgin Hotel and Casino. The interactive art exhibit, Meow Wolf, was also super awesome.

For my 50th birthday, we took a trip to San Francisco.  It had been at least ten years since I last visited, when my aunt passed away.  The city was less busy than I expected likely due to the vaccine card requirement to eat/drink anywhere.  We stayed the Palace Hotel.

For the second part of the trip, we headed up to wine country.  We drove up through Sonoma and Santa Rosa, visiting some nice wineries along the way.  We visited the Charles Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa and ended the trip in Bodega Bay, which had an amazing Pacific coast line view.

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FamilyFeaturedTravel

Seattle Summer Vacation with Kids

by Monte R.
written by Monte R.

We had planned an RV trip across West Texas to New Mexico for spring break earlier this year.  That plan went bust when the RV we planned to rent wasn’t working, which I’m now learning is commonplace with RVs.   There is something always broken on the dang things – just too many contraptions to maintain.

The kids, especially Miles, really wanted another attempt at an RV road trip. So for their 2021 summer vacation, I hatched a crazy plan to fly to Seattle, Washington and rent an RV. Then drive it to one of the national parks (Olympic or Mt. Rainier) in the area.  I figured summer in Seattle would be mild weather.  I do love the Pacific northwest scenery, too.  We all needed a long break after a year of Covid lockdown.

It wasn’t easy given the reopening travel madness. RV rental prices were crazy high. I found a reasonable priced RV to rent on RVShare (it turned out to be problematic rental, unfortunately, but it still worked).

Julie went along on this trip as I thought it would make it all easier with the kids.  I’d been to Seattle two times before many years ago.

We spent eight days in July using some cheap seats I found on Alaska Airlines – three days in Seattle downtown at the Hyatt House Seattle, which was next door to the Seattle Center/Space Needle Park, then four days renting an RV. Hyatt House is a great concept hotel with small kitchenette and large rooms – highly recommended.

The first three days went pretty good: weather was nice, there was lots of things to do and see.  The kids loved the park with the water fountain, elaborate jungle gym.  I liked the Space Needle and Museum of Pop, which were on my bucket list of places to visit. The Pacific Northwest sunsets were stunning.

Pike Place Market was just a tourist zoo.  While it was nice for some pictures, it was too crazy busy for my liking. I really didn’t enjoy it much – long lines for everything.  The Seattle Aquarium was ok, but I’ve been to better.  We also did the Seattle Great Ferris Wheel.  The Asian food was a highlight – fusion, Thai and Vietnamese. 

Seattle had some interesting things to do. I like the scenery on the waterfront.  Many of the city business skyscrapers were still was noticeably shuttered due to the pandemic.  There is a noticeable homeless problem.  The inflation on food was noticeable. Many stores remained shuttered or at limited capacity.

While we had some initial problems with the RV rental. It was an older 31ft Class C and it looked better in the pictures online. At last minute, we decided to head to Mt. Rainier National Park, as it appeared closer than Olympic National Park. 

Mt. Rainier National Park is vast, like maybe the largest national park I’ve ever visited.  The scenery is nice.  It was packed with tourists.  The parking lots in that place were built for far fewer cars, so that was an issue. The steep mountain roads were rough on the RV engine. We had some nice hikes.

We happened upon some really nice RV parks, which were trip highlights. The kids loved being in the RV (the ‘house on wheels’) so it all went fine.  We had a mishap with another driver hitting the RV (not our fault) but those things happen.  I did really love scenery with the rolling hills and tall trees, with mountain lakes and vistas everywhere. 

Except for the RV mishaps, everything went well. The kids loved their summer vacation.

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FamilyFeaturedKidsTravel

Kids – South Padre Island

by Monte R.
written by Monte R.

To escape the lockdown pandemic monotony, we took the kids down to South Padre Island, Texas for summer vacation.  We rented an AirBnB condo near the beach.

IMG_7844It wasn’t too busy and the weather was pretty good (except for two days of light hurricane winds/rain), so it all worked out.

It was only my second time to South Padre since moving here to Texas in 2003.

It was a better than I last remembered it – beach/sand was nice, water was clear, etc.

Kids had a good time, too.  We didn’t go out to eat anymore due to pandemic and instead just cooked/got take-out for all our meals.

We visited the Padre Island Sand Dunes and rented a three-wheel Polaris Slingshot, which was fun to drive.

 

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FamilyFeaturedKidsOther Stuff

BMX Days

by Monte R.
written by Monte R.

With all the free time on my hands during the Covid-19 pandemic, I spent some time on YouTube looking for early BMX bike racing videos, when it all started in the late 70s and early 80s.  I used to race BMX, along with my brothers, Barry and Taylor, back in the early 1980s.

I’ve come across some videos from the era, this one shot on film looks great, some are a bit grainy and poor quality, with a professional one shot by Schwinn Bicycles.

This video of the 1982 JAG BMX Championship Pro race is one of better videos that captured what it was like for us – the pros were older in their 20s, while we were just kids.  Also, this 1985 BMX Grand National video is pretty good.  Someone even has a “BMX Museum” online project, featuring images of the early bikes.

There were also some BMX superstars of that era – like Stu Thomson as as featured in this 1984 Huffy commercial.  The racing BMX guys a different breed from the  freestyling/trick riders.  The racing guys – like us – had to endure crash injuries as part of the experience.

As the the late 1970s and early 1980s BMX racing era was before home video/VHS camcorders became widely available in the mid-1980s there isn’t that much quality video available on YouTube.

My family doesn’t have any home video of us kids BMX racing, just one grainy print photo, all that remains of our experiences.  Everything else, lost to the sands of time.

BMX kids Monte Taylor Barry

Along with my two brothers, we were part of that early BMX movement when it first started and everybody was trying to figure it all out.  Our dad shuttled us around to BMX races in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.

I recall going to dozens of races each year from about 1980-1984.  We assembled bikes from scratch, always looking out for higher quality parts (wheels & frames) to make us ride faster and better than the competition.

As I recall, Taylor had a Mongoose, Barry had a P.K. Ripper, and I had a red color Thruster frame.

My oldest brother Taylor, excelled in his ABA BMX age class, and even got sponsored, at one point as I recall, by a major bike company.  My younger brother, Barry was also pretty good and was always high up in the ABA (American Bike Association) rankings.  I did ok and was about middle of the pack in my ABA age group.

It’s hard to conceptualize now, especially with extreme sports and BMX racing being part of the Olympics, but BMX bike racing was the wild west when it all started.  It was certainly popular, but it was also still a new sport, too.  Bikes were assembled from scratch  before the major manufactures got into the game.

We sure did have fun not just in the extreme races on wild dirt tracks indoors and outdoors, but also the car rides back-and-forth to the events.  Great road trip adventures. I credit my dad for pushing all that along when we were kids.

I don’t recall exactly why, but we eventually lost interest in the mid-1980s.  I think as we got older, we lost interest after we had racked up wins and hundreds of giant trophies (all which my mom, unfortunately, disposed of later in life).  I’ve only got one small trophy left from our hundreds of wins from Midway Race Track (1982), which sits in my office today.

 It was cool to be part of it.

IMG_7218

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