Planning ahead

Written 6 August 2026

Last year, we spent most of our European trip on a Tauck land tour in the UK, then took the Eurostar through the Chunnel to spend a week in Paris, mostly eating. This year, David proposed we do it the other way around—spend a week in London, mostly going to the theater, then take the Eurostar to Paris and join a Tauck tour in France. For the latter phase, we settled on Tauck's "French Escapade," which starts in Paris, ends on the French Riviera, and in between includes a 10-day cruise on the Rhône, the river that runs through Burgundy, then Lyon, and on to the Mediterranean, passing through the "Côtes du Rhône" region, David's favorite source of red wine.

From what I understand, the Rhône is not subject to the extremely low water levels that are plaguing the Rhine and the Danube. I just hope the wildfire smoke keeps its distance.

We've actually been avoiding river cruises and other group tours in France because we've spent so much time there on our own that we've usually already spent a week everywhere the tour stops for a day. But we're getting older, so group tours (especially cruises, where you don't have to pack and unpack all the time) have increasing appeal, and most of those places in France are worth multiple visits, so we chose a Tauck itinerary that at least stops a few places we haven't explored.

As soon as we mentioned our plan to long-time friend and sometimes traveling companion Rachel Sinnett, she was enthralled! Could she join us for the London phase?! Of course, we said, but as we talked about the rest of our plans, she started dragging her feet on planning for London and confessed she's rather skip London and come on the Tauck tour instead. We were delighted, but our ship was all booked up . . . Undaunted, Rachel got in touch with our travel agent (the legendary Bill Duzinski), who dogged the Tauck websites until a cancellation came up and grabbed it for her. So Rachel will be flying directly to Paris and joining us at the Tauck hotel, arriving a few hours before we do.

One feature of the Tauck itinerary that we especially looked forward to was the trip to Monaco near the end. I called the Tauck rep to make sure we were free for lunch that day, hoping we could finally make it to Café de Paris, which we missed when we were there in 2005. That's when I found out that, for our sailing date alone, the tour would go to Cannes rather than Monaco—because the a giant yacht show was happening on the day we were supposed to go, and the hotels couldn't accommodate us. That explains why ours was one of the few sailing dates that still had vacancies when we signed up! Ah, well, I'm sure Cannes will be great as well.

Written 7 August 2026

Right now, as I write, we are once again on Bailey Island, Maine, visiting Rachel and her extended family at Ev's family's compound on the cliffs overlooking Casco Bay. I brought my computer along, because I was anxiously awaiting the roster of pollworkers I'll be supervising for the Florida primaries, on 18 August. As soon as it arrived, I had many people to notify of many things—the Westminster Oaks catering folks, WO Housekeeping, the pollworkes themselves . . . The roster finally arrived late yesterday, so I immediately forwarded it to one of the crew who is helping me arranging the catering, before I went to bed. And a good thing, too. This morning, I got up, did my computer puzzles as usual, no problem, checked my email, where I found a couple of items requiring electronic replies, and the minute I tried to respond, found that the entire bottom row of letters on my computer keyboard had failed! Aargh! I texted the colleague to whom I had sent the roster and asked her to distribute it, and I figured I was in for a lot of detailed phone calls. But it's all in who you know . . . .

Rachel's #1 son Henry is here as well. He's a serious computer professional and works remotely from the garage while he's here. As soon as I mentioned my computer problem, he said, "Would you like to borrow a spare keyboard? I always bring a couple extra, just in case." I plugged it into a USB port, and suddenly I'm back up and running! He's sending it home with me, to tide me over until I can order a new machine (I'll bring it back when we see each other in Maryland over New Years). and while I wrote all those emails I had to send, he spent about 40 minutes on research and presented me with a ranked list of the five best replacement computers, together with the websites where I could order them most cheaply! I had planned to replace the computer after this trip anyway—its innards work perfectly, but one of its hinges is wonky, several pieces of trim have fallen off, the (nonreplaceable) battery charges only at certain phases of the moon, and the body is held together with Scotch tape. And now the keyboard doesn't work.

Written 30 August 2026

Unfortunately, that was a Friday, and I thought about it overnight before placing an order, only to find, Saturday morning, that prices had doubled! Henry, indignant, redoubled his research efforts and learned that computer professionals shop on weekdays, whereas amateurs like me shop on weekends, so the vendors jack their prices way up on Saturdays and Sundays! So I waited until Monday (the day we traveled home) to place the order. I had already given the guys in the Biological Science computer lab a heads-up that I would need their help setting up a new computer, but strangely, once the computer arrived a few days later, I couldn't reach them! Time was short before this trip, so I tried telephoning—no one ever picked up, and I never got the option to leave a message. So I called other people I knew who had offices on the same hallway, then the department's main office—same result everywhere. At the main office, the phone didn't even ring before going straight to "nobody's available to take your call" and a hang-up. Finally, I called the cell phone of a former colleague, who actually answered. She was on vacation in Croatia, but she explained that, some months earlier, FSU had confiscated the phones off everyone's desks and went over to some sort of Zoom-based phone network. Only one member of the computer lab staff had it on his computer, and he was on vacation! Meanwhile, the long and elaborate lists of phone numbers on the department's website were useless—all those number went only to the "nobody's available" message. My colleague admitted that no one could call anyone any more, and she just asked for and used her coworkers' private cell phone numbers to get in touch with them!

Meanwhile, I had missed the ideal time to leave my new and old computers with the guys—August 18, election day, when I would be busy working the polls 6 am to 8 pm and wouldn't have time for computer work anyway. But I finally caught up with them by email, and took the computers in. They kept them about 24 hours, some of which I sat with them supplying passwords and whatnot, and finally, I got the new, functional computer home on Thursday afternoon, 20 August.

Written 31 August

And why, you may wonder, was I so desperate to have a working computer when I still had 10 days before our scheduled departure? Because, back in June, I had taken on a really fun free-lance book-editing project (at a steep discount, since it was for a nonprofit; it was such a cool job I would almost have done it for free) and promised to have it done before I left for Europe. Then the farther I got into it the more it mushroomed—I have never before been so far off in my estimate! It was going to be touch and go whether I could get the index done in time, and working with that auxiliary keyboard slowed me down a lot! New computer in hand, I warned David the week's dinners might be a little slap-dash, and I indexed for all I was worth. Abruptly, on Thursday evening (27 August) I found I was done! Whew! So I didn't have to do all my packing in two hours today, then email the finished index home from the Atlanta airport during our projected five-hour layover there . . . .

Now, after a long, tense period of election planning and speed-editing, I can get back to the upcoming trip—I can't believe we leave tomorrow! I'm all packed, though I'll run the checklist one more time, just to be sure.

Here's the map of the cruise portion. Because of the yacht show in Monaco, we'll be ending up in Cannes, which isn't shown on the map but is maybe 3/4 of the way from Arles to Nice. We've been there, in 2005, but only for a couple of hours, when it was blowing a gale and freezing cold, so we'll be glad to get a better look at it under pleasanter conditions.

Let the traveling begin!