Sunday, May 31, 2020

Travel Planning in 2021

Greetings!

We are planning next year's travels, resigned to just take the Airstream on a trip to somewhere in the Western United States or Canada later this year (no, we're not moving to Vancouver if Trump wins).  We're going to visit Bhutan and the surrounding areas for a week in late January (after President Biden is inaugurated) before heading to Northern India to complete what we missed this year.   After that, we'll fly to Nepal to complete the month away.

Six months later, we'll travel to northwestern Australia to enjoy the top half of that continent, and the the North Island of New Zealand for three and a half months.  We'll finish that adventure by joining Overseas Adventure Travel's "Galapagos of the Southern Ocean" cruise to visit some of the best birding islands in the world.  We'll be back well before Christmas.

For the following year, we're hoping that Biden normalizes relations again with Iran.  There are so many ruins and historic towns we want to visit there.  And then there's Madagascar and a return visit to East Africa.





Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Hobie Surfboard by Rodney Sumpter

Greetings!

Yesterday, while dreaming about what travels to plan when this virus is defeated, I decided to walk back in time to my surfing days along the San Diego coast in the early 1960's.  A young man I met last week brought me back there as it turns out his father (Dennis Murphy) was a surfboard shaper long after I left the area.  

As Youtube and Google will do, it led me to a news column in the Orange County Register by one of the shapers featured in the YouTube video (Corky Carroll).  Corky and I shared some of the same history in the waves in our early teens on the Southern California coast.  He going on to surfing greatness as the first professional surfer at 16, and I joining many others trying our best to follow his lead.

Walking down memory lane was fun, as I read the column by Corky recounting his time with a friend (Rodney Sumpter) as shapers for Hobie Surfboards in 1963-64.  As the owner of a late 1963 Hobie surfboard, shaped by Rodney, I chuckled that I might have a surfboard created during the time they spent together in that shack behind the Hobie factory in Dana Point.


To see a few more photos, click on "Hobie Surfboard by Rodney Sumpter"