Scattered Thoughts . . .

After Friday evening baseball games, the Cincinnati Reds have what they call Fireworks Friday and we happened to be in Cincinnati on a Friday night!   Sheila and I had actually talked about getting tickets to this game but, while we were planning this trip many months in advance, Sheila reminded me that we had no idea what the weather would be like.  I had no desire to sit in the rain so we scrapped that possible activity for our visit.  We knew that, at the very least, we could walk over one of the bridges to Kentucky or hire an Uber to see the fireworks so we figured we wouldn't miss the fireworks show.  Plus, we hadn't told Kenzie and Lukey about the fireworks so that was a bit of a surprise.   We got lucky in that our "high floor" hotel room was looking directly toward the ball park and the Ohio river.  This meant that if we turned out all the lights in the room to eliminate reflections, then we could watch the fireworks from the comfort of ou...

We took a couple of hours out of our weekend to go to one of Lukey's hockey games this past Sunday.  Lukey's team lost the game but it was nice to see him doing what he enjoys. I happened to bump into someone I used to work with at this game which was a complete shock!  As we were leaving the game and passing by the concession, I heard someone call my name.  At first, I didn't recognize him...  partly because it had been so long since we've seen each other, partly because seeing him here at this rink was unexpected and partly because we've both grown quite a bit older and changed a bit.  It turns out his son was on the opposing team playing against Lukey's team.   Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling my best and I was still quite shocked to see him for the few minutes we had together so I was pretty quiet for the very short while we talked.  It was nice to see him though and, hopefully, we'll bump into him again at other games this season.  I'd li...

As I wrote in a previous blog entry, our short trip from our hotel to Cincinnati Union Terminal in the middle of the night was uneventful...  and very quiet.  Catching this train in the middle of the night was a piece of cake.  It was still about 90° outside in the middle of the night but it was nice and quiet with absolutely no logistical problems.   The only remarkable event on this night was that we had to check our large rolling luggage...  four pieces in total.  There were four of us and we had packed for a two week trip anticipating sweaty clothes everyday so we had quite a bit to pack.  We each had a rolling piece of luggage and a small carry-on bag.  Fortunately, we planned for this possibility (needing to check our big luggage) so had already put everything we might need on the train in our carry-on bags so this was a painless change of plans.   We had already planned for this because we knew that these new Viewliner II tra...