Travel Notes · January 05, 2026
Visiting friends who “travel for a living”? Here’s a lightly humorous, genuinely welcoming guide for friends and family visiting us abroad. From phones and money to shared meals and daily rhythms, it’s a collection of small, hard-earned travel lessons meant to make time together smoother, easier, and more fun—for everyone involved.
Essays · January 05, 2026
Travel blogs didn’t start out broken. They began as personal, imperfect records shaped by curiosity and uncertainty. This essay looks at how travel writing gradually shifted toward lists, optimization, and authority—and what gets lost when content replaces attention. It’s not a takedown, just a case for slowing down, noticing more, and claiming less certainty.
Travel Notes · November 28, 2025
Full-time travel sounds carefree, but the budgeting behind it is anything but. Here, Rick breaks down the three-bucket system that keeps our “living liquid” life financially steady—fixed expenses, the shifting costs of Phase Four travel, and the weekly fun-money budget that makes the whole thing feel human. Plus, his beloved Rent Shift trick that keeps Quicken’s charts honest.
Essays · November 24, 2025
Air travel didn’t become less civil because people stopped saying please—that happened when flying became cramped, costly, and engineered for discomfort. The Golden Age of Travel never really existed. People don’t miss hats and suits. They miss feeling like the experience was meant for them.
Galleries · October 12, 2025
Portland Art Museum was still emerging from a major renovation when we visited, but there was already plenty to explore. From Oregon landscapes and Japanese prints to contemporary icons like Kehinde Wiley, Keith Haring, and Tracey Emin, these are the works that lingered long after we walked back out into Portland.
Postcards · September 30, 2025
I visited Oaks Amusement Park during the off-season, when the rides stood silent and the midway belonged to fallen leaves instead of screaming children. That unexpected quiet revealed one of Portland’s most beloved landmarks—a trolley park that has survived floods, changing tastes, and more than a century of determined local affection.
Postcards · September 28, 2025
Hidden in the woods above Happy Valley is one of Oregon’s oldest pioneer cemeteries—and finding it proved almost as interesting as its history. What began as a simple afternoon errand became a scavenger hunt through forests, gates, and dead ends in search of a tiny family cemetery that most locals never realize exists.
Postcards · September 26, 2025
The Hood River Fruit Loop sounds like a tourist attraction invented by a crack marketing team—and it was. But following its winding roads with friends turned into something much better, with cider flights, goats, lavender, pie, and one wonderfully unproductive fall day in Oregon.
Postcards · September 15, 2025
A return to Portland Japanese Garden becomes an unexpected lesson in how to look more closely. With help from a friend’s son, a volunteer, and a pond full of fish with names, Geoff discovers that bonsai, gardens, stones, and even koi have more stories than you might suspect.
Galleries · August 31, 2025
Most New York subway riders are focused on catching trains, making connections, or figuring out whether the express is running local again. Meanwhile, mosaics, murals, historic tilework, and public art quietly surround them. A photographic tour of some of the stations that made me stop, look up, and risk missing the next train.