Travel Diary

I suppose this was more a work trip than a vacation, but it involved a flight and I include all destinations with flights in the travel galleries.

I had a red-eye flight with a layover in Portland. Luckily, both were first class. Portland Airport isn’t bad and a bit neat, though I had nothing to see or do there as it was quite late, just being there for an hour or so for a layover.

I arrived in Dallas at 6am with a long delay on the tarmac. Never fun when that happens, but easier to tolerate in first class.

My friend Shawnel picked me up and we headed our for coffee. Notably, it was already getting hot around 8am. After that, I picked up the truck I would borrow for a week.

We grabbed some stuff at Home Depot and I finally saw my home…

Wow. Pretty wild after so many years. The inside was definitely used, but not awful. It smelled like wet dog, however, and would be that way for my entire trip. You get used to it—sort of.

The days were spent working on the house, mostly painting rooms and cleaning up the yard. The pool had turned green, probably from the filter being left off. That was disappointing.

I did what I could and mainly filled entire days with the work. The exception was seeing a show in Dallas (“Funny Girl”) on the second evening. It was a nice distraction, although somehow I lost an ear bud, so no music for the rest of the trip and flight home.

When it appeared that I would not finish in time, I extended my trip two days. That helped, but there was so much still to do. It was over 100 degrees each day, so the work was awful. I guess I could have kept the AC on more, but then that was more to spend on the utility bill.

Overall, the hard work took its toll. My knees were aching every night and my fingers were not happy even with gloves on.

Finally, on the 10th day, I was heading home. I had stayed up all night and then drove to the Herbst place to return the truck and get a ride to the airport. After saying goodbye, I entered the airport and checked my large bag, which I had taken to bring extra tools and supplies. I then noticed TSA PreCheck wasn’t on my boarding pass, so back to the ticket counter I headed to fix that.

Next, I was boarding the plane and heading home. I was upgraded to first and it was now a direct flight. Hours later, I had exited the plane to find a 40-degree change in the weather. Yeah, 100 to 60. Big drop.

And it was all over. The week had been tough and very difficult work. It was worth it for a few reasons, but in the end, I found it’s best to leave that kind of work to the professionals.

It’s not easy.