As the four of us make our way down the overgrown path toward the cenote — Spanish for “sinkhole” and pronounced “sih-NO-tay” — I could not come up with a way to describe the experience that did not sound like the plot of a horror movie. With no cell phone reception or any real idea of where we were, the four of us followed our tour guide until we reached a rickety set of steps leading us down into a dark hole in the ground, where we planned to swim for the next hour. Underneath the Yucatan peninsula lie a… (read more)

Last week, I, Susan, and our friends Jeff and Heather got to spend some time exploring Uxmal (oosh-MALL), an ancient Maya city and home of the Pyramid of the Magician. Uxmal is not one of Carnival’s typical excursion packages; to get there, Susan arranged for a local tour guide to pick us up at the edge of Progresso and take us to the ruins. Uxmal is located approximately 75 miles (115km) south of the port at Progresso. The most direct route takes you through Merida, the capitol of Yucatan. Along the way, our guide (Daniel) took us through a few… (read more)

There’s a stretch of land in southern Texas known as the Texas Killing Fields. The 25 acres of land, located near I-45 in League City, came by its name honestly. Dating back to the 1970s, dozens of corpses have been recovered from the area — almost all of them women between the ages of 12 and 25. No one knows if the murders are related because most of the murders have ever been solved. While it’s highly unlikely that all of the murders are related it is believed at least some of them are, which means this single wooded area… (read more)

For my past few birthdays, Susan has planned little trips and surprised me every single time. Susan is good at planning things and surprising me and I am good at being surprised, so it all works out. Last Friday Susan asked me to pack an overnight bag and prepare for a fun overnight adventure, and I did. Shortly before our departure, Susan filled me in on what she had planned: an overnight stay at an AirBnB trailer located at the Tee Pee Drive-in in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, right off of Route 66. She also said several of our friends would be… (read more)

Last week, Pee-wee Herman died. Of course what I mean by that is that Paul Reubens, the actor who portrayed the character Pee-wee Herman, passed away. Reubens was 70 years old, and passed away after a six year battle with cancer. For many people, Paul Reubens was inseparable from Pee-wee Herman. Even when he appeared in other films portraying different characters, people rarely asked, “is that Paul Reubens?” Instead, they asked, “is that Pee-wee Herman?” As I recently mentioned on Instagram, I was twelve years old and about to enter seventh grade when Pee-wee’s Big Adventure was released in the… (read more)

For Susan’s fiftieth birthday I wanted to get her something she would love and didn’t already have. I decided to go with a 1,000+ pound poolside chair, sometime I was sure she didn’t already have. Over the past 30 years Susan and I have visited all fifty states together, and along the way we’ve seen an awful lot of interesting and unique roadside attractions. We’ve seen a silo painted like a gigantic can of Coca-Cola, a 20′ tall Transformer statue made from scrap automotive parts, and even the Biggest Ball of Twine in Nebraska (long story), but nothing gets Susan… (read more)

Last Wednesday, my buddy Jeff and I embarked on a five day trip from Oklahoma to Hurricane, West Virginia (and eventually back) in a rented 2022 Class B RV. We drove to West Virginia to attend Boatfest, a small gathering of retrocomputing enthusiasts. I’ll be writing more about Boatfest tomorrow, but today I wanted to write about our experience with and in the RV. The RV we rented was a 2022 Class B Entrada motorhome by EAST TO WEST. Class B motorhomes are built on van frames (this one was a Ford E-350), so it is relatively short (24′) compared… (read more)