Travel

Preparing, planning, purchasing, equipping, experiencing, or stories about travel to anyplace on the planet.

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Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad or the New Pilgrim's Progress, 1869, Conclusion chapter near the book's end. 

From my experience, Twain's observation could not be more true. The more people I meet traveling around the world the more I see that the differences are interesting and superficial. Basically all people want the same thing to—care for their family, make things better for their kids in the future, and to enjoy the day. It is very difficult to treat people as somehow lesser, different, or immaterial after you have met them up close. You can't treat them poorly anymore.

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Nando Italian Bistro

As has now become at least a habit, we were off to ride our motorcycle in Europe for the summer months of 2025. In June, we traveled back to Heidelberg Germany where our motorcycle, a Kawasaki Versys 1000, is stored to begin our trip. This year, our third in a row traveling Europe, was focused on (1) visiting the Anne Frank house, (2) exploring south-eastern England with long stays, and (3) brief visits to villages and museums of the former east Germany headed to the city of Dresden.

On previous trips, we've learned that visiting the Anne Frank house requires advanced planning. Tickets are very limited (it is a small space) and sell out as soon as they become available. So, months in advance, I set an alarm for the minute they became available for the dates we would be visiting. Success! We purchased two spots to tour the house starting at 11 am on the day we would be near it in downtown Amsterdam in the Netherlands. We rode from Heidelberg through the country area along the Moselle River, staying overnight right on the river. Then rode north past the cities of Nijmegan and Arnhem (famous from Operation Market Garden in WWII) to Amsterdam. Our overnight in Amsterdam was at Nando, a unique and perfect hotel. Just 1 mile from the Anne Frank house, Nando is a restaurant in a city park with a few rooms upstairs. It is a pleasant and quiet oasis in a otherwise busy city. Our room was big with a sitting area, balcony, and large tub separate from the bathroom, which also had a shower. The Anne Frank house was a very impactful visit. It is very hard to describe the feelings standing in the rooms the Frank family lived in for two years. We have no pictures to share as they are not allowed in the house. I recommend that you visit. On our way back to our motorcycle we came across a wedding couple on paddle-boards in the Amsterdam canals. Something you don't see everyday.

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Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model (ELM) is composed of four stages which he says are the essence of learning. They can begin with any of the following elements, but usually starts with the first and proceed in order. These elements are:

1. concrete experience - learners must involve themselves fully, openly and without bias in new experiences.

2. reflective observation of the experience from many perspectives.

3. create abstract concepts based upon the reflection into logical sound theories.

4. active testing and experimentation of the new concepts in making decisions and solving problems.

Since my retirement from regular employment began at the start of 2021, I have been traveling (mostly via motorcycle) almost continuously. Specific trips include:

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1365 wooden foot bridge over the Reuss river in Lucerne

We enjoyed riding around Europe for about four months again this summer. Our trip started in Heidelberg, where we store our Kawasaki Versys 1000 motorcycle, then focused on three areas that were new to us—the east (Poland, Baltic, Balkans), France, and Ireland. We finished by riding to Munich (or München) Germany to participate in d'Wiesn.

Pictures from the trip and the ride route.

Here's a brief summary of the trip highlights.

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Listed below are GPS map pages for previous motorcycle rides and trips. Clicking the "Name" link will open the map on this page. Right click and choose either "New Window" or "New Tab" to get the map in a page without the remainder of this page. Enjoy these motorcycle routes as I certainly have while riding them!

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All the bikes at the Voortrekker monument near Pretoria

We completed our 2023 summer ride through Europe (read about that trip Europe for Four Months in 2023) by flying directly to South Africa for a 20-day tour. This was a "bucket list" destination for us. The motorcycle tour company that we had chosen for the trip some years before was offering a discount for trips booked early in 2023, so we took advantage.

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Change the route map display line width

The Zumo 396 displays a colored line on the map when following a route. The default is a rather narrow line that is difficult to discern from all other road lines on the map. To increase the width of this line, use this procedure.

  1. Connect the Zumo 396 to a computer via the USB port. With a file explorer tool, navigate to Computer\zumo 396\Internal Storage\Themes\Map.
  2. Copy the file in the Map folder named Garmin.kmtf to a working folder on the computer like Downloads.
  3. Open the copied file with a text editor like Notepad.
  4. Near the end of the file, change the line
    <STYLE field = "MAP_TRK_CLR" scale = "1.00" > to ...
    <STYLE field = "MAP_TRK_CLR" scale = "2.60" >
    The "2.60" can be any number great than the default "1.00" to make the line thicker.
  5. Save the edited file.
  6. Copy the new file back to the original Map folder replacing the original.

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Knopf (Motorcycle) BnB

The Summer of 2023 will forever be remembered as our first extensive European motorcycle trip. Maybe the most extensive motorcycle trip of any kind so far in our riding history.

In May we flew to Germany to meet up with our Kawasaki Versys 1000 motorcycle, which we shipped from California in Feb 2023. We used it to ride 10,000 miles through 12 countries on roads ranging from 1,960 feet below to 9,092 feet above sea level over the next four months. See our route on a map.

Such a fantastic experience. We visited historic sites, museums and major cities like London, Edinburgh, Liverpool, York, Oslo, Berlin, Stuttgart, and Munich. Such a trip includes so many places, people and experiences that I could not possibly write about it all so I'll keep this as short as possible with a summary of a few stops described in the order we visited each.

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I maintain a base set of waypoints and tracks for my GPS navigator that are useful when travelling in Baja Mexico. Often I start with this base set then add the waypoints, tracks and routes specific to a trip to create the plan that I load into the GPS for a Baja trip.

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Apparently CEO World Magazine annually ranks 100+ country's health care systems. The Health Care Index is a statistical analysis of the overall quality of the healthcare system, driving a ranking based on three numbers; (1) healthcare infrastructure and healthcare professionals (doctors, nursing staff, and other health workers) competencies, (2) availability and cost (USD per capita), and finally (3) government readiness, which are all combined into an overall index.

This information is very useful if you are considering a relocation or an extended stay in another country.

Ranking number one is Taiwan at 78.72. The USA comes in fifteenth (15th) at 56.71. Our neighbors Canada rank fourth (4th) at 71.32 and Mexico ranks 45th at 41.63.

Read all the details in the Aug 2023 CEO World Magazine.

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Alto = Stop
Tope = Speed bump
Peligroso = Dangerous
Cuidado = Caution
Despacio = Slow
Detecha = Right
Izquierdo = Left
Derecho = Straight
Entrada = Entrance
Salida = Exit