McGaffs On The Fly

We left our beautiful spot outside Knoxville and made a 2 1/2 hour trip due east, with great stops along the way, to a more beautifuller (my word) spot just near Pineola, NC. Our new campground is a quiet “over 55” community with old men lurking on every patio visually inspecting your RV backing and setting up capabilities. I’m always game for insider tips on how “they would do it” and appreciate each and every recommendation. We only hope that they don’t change the rules to “80 and older” because we would be the only ones that would have to leave.

Everywhere we have been since arriving in this part of the country has been green and the locals love to mow their lawns and acreage…it almost seems like it’s a competition. The weather has been wonderful with average temps between 55-75. Today we actually were able to see that thing they call “rain”, poor Little Al didn’t know what was hitting him. As a reminder to those in Texas, “rain” is when gray clouds appear in the sky and water falls from them in heavy drops…crazy, right?

Today is Joanie’s birthday so her “don’t do anything special” will become a month long celebration of life for the little beauty that God dropped in my lap. Golf…pickleball…beach time…dinners…concerts…house searching…more to come…

Marc, “Hey Little Al, ready for a road trip?”

Little Al, “I’m always ready, long one?”

Marc, “No, just 3 weeks to NC and The Outer Bank plus a few side trips?”

Little Al, “What about that chick, I think her name is Joanie, she going?”

Marc, “She is, I never travel without her.”

Little Al, “Whatever, I’m ready to go.”

Marc, “Hey Joanie, start packing. We’re heading out. Don’t forget to bring clothes for minus 30 in case we decide to climb Mt Everest.”

Joanie, “Check.”

Marc, “And don’t forget to bring something for 125 degrees in case we decide to walk across the Sahara Desert.”

Joanie, “Check.”

Marc, “And you might want to bring something decent in case we decide to go to one of those fancy dancy restaurants.”

Joanie, “Check. Should I bring extra just in case?”

Marc, “Off course, you can never have too many clothes.”

Little Al, “ I will never understand humans, you guys are crazy.”

And we’re off. We spent one night at Blaine and Kate’s then last night in Jackson, Tennessee on our way east . We’re staying at Panther Creek State Park near Knoxville, for a couple of nights before heading towards Newland, NC to check out that part of the world…already enjoying the better temperatures.

More…to…come…

Our final leg of travel back home turned into legs of travel as we had several flights cancelled or delayed. It all started pretty nicely when we were upgraded to business class for our flight across the Atlantic but then were kicked in the “privates” from that point forward. In a nutshell…2 hours waiting for checked bags in Philly causing us to miss connecting flight…oh wait, connecting flight now cancelled…add another leg to DFW…oh wait, flight delayed causing new connecting flight to be possibly missed…oh wait, early arrival so let’s “OJ” to the gate. Short story long…we…are…home.

Trip Notes…

1. No matter how many clothes we bring, why do we only wear 25% of them?

2. Why are we in the same clothes in all pictures when…see #1?

3. It’s great to be in countries that speak English like Scotland but why is it so hard to understand what they are saying?

4. Almost everywhere we went there were English speaking people (in most they spoke many languages), why do I feel like such an idiot that I only speak one…and not that well?

5. Sangria tastes so good in Spain, I already know we are not going to recreate that magic at home no matter how hard we try.

6. Dinner in Spain is served between 9pm and midnight because of the afternoon siesta. Now I can generally eat 24/7 whether I’m hungry or not…and I can commit to an afternoon siesta…but committing to dinner after 9pm is something I cannot do.

7. Portugal in the mid 80s, The Netherlands in the mid 70s, Scotland in the mid 60s, Spain in the mid 80s…Tejas in the upper Hades. Hmmm, why did we come back?

8. Yes, “tested positive” was my secret code for “we got the Covid”…tried to stay undercover while in foreign lands.

9. If there is a worst airport experience than Amsterdam I haven’t yet been there. Even as bad as the Phillie is, and how the employees do their best to make it worse, it does not beat what we went through in Amsterdam.

10. There’s no place like home…there’s no place like home…there’s no place like home.

Until our next adventure…

Joanie decided we should take it easy since we’ve been running pretty hard every day since we arrived in Spain. So…21,000 steps later…in a day we saw just about every side of Barcelona we have yet to see. The highlight of our “easy day” was Park Guell, a development designed for the rich to live in their own subdivision away from the riff-raff below. Unfortunately, the development never took off but the planner convinced his buddy, Antonio Gaudi, to buy a house there and the rest is history. Gaudi turned the spot into a place to be and Guell got his name on a sign…win-win.

We also took another walk by the beach and discovered that yes, they can squeeze more people into that small space. And we took a nice spin around the largest flee market (antique shop) in Europe…or as I like to put it “other peoples old crap that they don’t want anymore.” Yes…easy day.

I think Joanie is sincere today about resting because she has her swim suit on and is heading for the pool…we’ll see…I bet she makes me swim laps. It’s our last day in Europe and we both more than ready to be home.

We’ve spent the last 3 days around the much walkable and enjoyable city of Barcelona. We also decided to try out the “hop on, hop off “ bus but we found that we can easily walk anywhere we want to in half the time the full bus cycle takes. Highlights so far have been plenty of outdoor tapas and sangrias, great people watching at the overcrowded beach and a lot of walking to work off the previously mentioned food and drink.

The highlight of our visit to the city so far has been our tour to Sagrada Familia, the largest unfinished Catholic Church in the world. The building of the church began in 1882. The cathedral is an unbelievable sight with each spire, tower, and/or buttress designed to represent a symbolic meaning all thought out by the deceased architect. Think “Pillars of The Earth” as to the engineering feat used to build this gothic building.

I was totally amazed with the wonderment of the structure and how Gaudi could envision it and follow through on his plans (still 140 years later but with 3D imaging). Compared to the like of St Peters in Rome, think Stradivarius versus Les Paul, Robin Hood versus White Walkers, or Batman versus Superman…very different styles but fantastic in their own way.

Heading to the pool on the top of our hotel for the day, these feetsies need some rest.

Well I just haven’t had the energy the last couple of days to post any updates about our trip. On Saturday I spent most of the day sleeping while the girls took a day trip to Edinburg. Turns out I can’t turn my back on them, they met new friends that taught them about the Baby Guinness and then helped them consume quite a few. Oh yes, by the way, I tested positive.

I was able to go to the course in the morning on Sunday for a while so I did get to see some good golf, later I retreated back to my room for more zzzzzz. My girls were obviously worried about me quite a bit because they went back to the course, met more new friends, and watched the finish with drinks in their hands like they were from Australia. Nothing like a sick pops gonna slow them down…I couldn’t be prouder.

We all flew out of Edinburg this morning, Joanie and I to Barcelona and Brett going back home…something about a j-o-b. Last report was that she has been sitting on the plane for over 3 hours waiting for takeoff. Good news though, I feel much better. Bad news though, Joanie just tested positive and is not taking it well.

Maybe I’ll head out to meet some new friends and have a few rounds…no, I would never do that!

The weather has been great for the golfers and it appears the scores are going to be low this week. Although I really don’t want to deal with bad weather myself, it would be nice to see a little wind and rain to add a little chaos to the scores.

We have three days of tickets so when not attending golf we’ve been taking day trips to local towns, yesterday we went to Crail for the day and enjoyed local food and a distillery. We did learn a few thing while in Crail…

1. Always check bus schedules before the trip.

2. There are not a lot of Uber drivers in Crail.

3. Doesn’t matter what the bus schedules say, they run when they want to.

4. Joanie can always find a new boyfriend to bum a ride from, she came through again.

Joan and Brett took a train to Edinburg today, I’m watching the tournament on the Open app and nursing allergies…hope to be back to normal tomorrow for the final day.

Yesterday we took a quick bus trip to Dundee to visit our friend Brian who we met seven years ago when we visited St Andrews for the first time. Brian was the Chef at the hall we stayed in, he since has moved to another dining hall but has left us in good hands with Chef Tom…according to Brian, “Tom’s food is edible”.

Brian befriended us when he asked Joan a question and she responded “I don’t understand a word you just said”. He told Joan that Scotland has been around since the 9th century and he lives in a house older than the United States and that she needs to do a better job understanding the real English language. Short story long…we’ve been friends since.

Dundee is a great town to visit and unlike a lot of tourist towns you visit, everything is free. It’s nice to be able to visit a museum where you don’t have to pay $20+ to walk in (especially for an art idiot like me). And when I have to actually pay $$ to walk into a church…anyway, enough of that.

First day of The Open…heading down soon.

Yesterday we spent all day walking around St Andrews Old Course and enjoying a full day watching golf. It was a beautiful cloudy day in the low 70s, when you moved into the shade you were glad you had a coat on…much better than the 100+ days we left behind.

There are quite a few more people here than our last visit 7 years ago, it could be post Covid hysteria or just the fact that the weather this time is so much better. Last time we came they actually cancelled Sundays play because of high winds. I can only imagine how many people will arrive over the weekend. Brett seems to be enjoying her first golf tournament…we’ll see if that continues.

More to come.

The answer is…

*Get wisdom teeth taken out without anesthesia.

*Go swimming with sharks with a finger ripped off.

*Replay the night before a colonoscopy.

*Replay the day of a colonoscopy.

The question is…

What would I rather do than depart out of Amsterdam Airport again?

Seriously, you need to show up four hours before your flight and you need every last second to board on time? It was not an exaggeration, “better show upon early or you won’t make it”…they were not kidding. Around every corner there was another makeshift “switchback” queue just laughing at you when you rounded another wall. Just to mess with you, they put up a “45 minutes from here” sign follow by another “45-an hour from here” sign 30 minutes from the first. Now I didn’t major in mathematics but even Jethro Bodine knows those naughts don’t carry.

We’ll I guess I have said all I can say good about todays experience so I’ll move on…we made it to St Andrews, first day tomorrow for us…