Notes on a Plane and Ohio Authority

I write in my journal on days when we have long stretches of time during travel between cities—usually by plane (but sometimes by train, or by bus…but I went with “plane” because it makes it sound a lot like Snakes on a Plane, which I think is funny).

Cynthia and I thought that sharing some of these simple, daily journal notes, in the form of a recurring section called Notes on a Plane, might be a good way to keep our followers more informed of what happens to us on a daily basis.  After five months, I now realize I can’t always fit every blog-worthy moment into the kind of long-form stories that I like to write.  Honestly, I realize now, sometimes I might just want to share the fact that a bird pooped on my head the other day.  Before now, I couldn’t, because it didn’t happen in the beginning, middle, or end of some “amazing”, story-worthy experience.  The truth is, when the poop landed, in the middle of my forehead, I wasn’t doing anything (literally sitting in a chair and staring at grass).  So we’re tweaking the scope of our blog to more easily welcome bird-poop anecdotes.

Admittedly, it’s an effort to lower the bar a bit, a sacrifice of quality for quantity, yes, but it will definitely keep you more in the loop with what we’re doing—“amazing” or not—and hopefully will increase the frequency of our posts.  We want this blog, first and foremost, to be a more complete catalog of our experiences, a place to share anything and everything about the trip, a place to engage with family and friends from afar.

However, if it’s the long-form narrative stuff you like, I’ll still be writing it, if and when I can.  It’s just that, going forward, you won’t find it here.  I’m happy to share that somehow I was able to convince Ohio Authority, an online magazine based in Cleveland, to give me a column that will allow me to share some of our more memorable travel stories, as well as tout the benefits (and warn against the pitfalls) of frugal travel.   It’s an exciting opportunity to write for a quality website that, although focuses largely on area interests, has a great deal of content that can be appreciated by a far wider audience than its title suggests.

If you are interested, here is my introduction and here is my first piece (a modified version of an older post from this blog).  Going forward, I hope to produce unique content for Ohio Authority, but I’ll always post links on this blog as each piece is published.

As always, Cynthia’s phenomenal photography will conclude each post, but starting with our next post (Paris in words, going up shortly), you’ll begin to see  much shorter narratives in addition to the aforementioned Notes on a Plane–a combination that I think will be much more sustainable and, ultimately, will allow the blog to do what it’s supposed to do: keep us better connected to home.

Hope you enjoy!

We’re in Southern India now and loving it!  More on that soon.