A calendar for the new year

January 1, 2024

Continuing with an annul tradition that began four years ago we’ve assembled a virtual calendar of photos from the past year, emulating the physical ones we had printed to hang at the kitchen wall at home and in our office cubicles during our working years. They make a nice thumbnail sketch of where the year went and a reminder of how fortunate we’ve been in our vagabond lives.

Here are the previous digital calendars, for display in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023; and here is our calendar for 2024, to tack up on our virtual wall in the months ahead.

On the cover: October 5th, on a day ride from Calatayud.

January 13th: in Saguaro National Park on a ride with Susan Carpenter.

February 18th: on Sauvie Island, admiring a favorite barn I’ve been watching slowly deteriorate over the past twenty years.

March 23rd: in southern Sicily, dropping from Salemi to Mazara del Vallo.

April 25th: in Puglia, biking toward Minervino Murge on a day that began in a small apartment shared with Rachel and Patrick Hugens and ended with me losing my wallet.

May 9th: in Molise, staring at Montenegro di Bidaccia on a day ride from Termoli. This shot will help us remember that we’d love to make it back to Molise someday.

June 10th: in Bassano del Grappa with Suzanne and János, near the end of a splendid week biking together from Trento to Padova.

July 29th: Kinney Lake, in Mount Robson Provincial Park.

August 4th: biking east of Saskatchewan River Crossing on the David Thompson Highway on a day that ends with us in Canmore as guests in Lyle and Kirsten’s home.

September 30th: in the Bardenas Reales, on a day ride from Tudela. Later in the day we’ll share lunch on the plaza with our friends Ken and Judy, on their own tour of Iberia.

October 3rd: the view from the deck of our B&B in Malanquilla, maybe the best surprise stop of our tour in Spain. There were four or five photos from this one day stay that were on the short list for this year’s calendar.

November 23rd: Snow geese, Sauvie Island.

December 12th: in Death Valley, biking east of Stovepipe Wells toward Furnace Creek.

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Kelly IniguezI"ve been looking forward to your yearly calendar of photos - I'm sure the decisions were difficult!
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4 months ago

Tricia GrahamHave just had a very interesting read. I was hunting through your journals to see if I could find information about riding around Murcia and came across your 1991 trip to NZ. It certainly was like going back in time and you sèem so young. The weather was certainly terrible and I was very impressed by seven 100km days in a row. You travel so differently now though the thread of losing things remains! Cycle touring was certainly so much more difficult with no Garmins, no mobile phones, no booking aps and tires that regularly pictured
Thanks for a very amusing read
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4 months ago

Scott AndersonTo Tricia GrahamYes, we were so young then! This was our first overseas travel experience, and Rachael was barely 30 years old. I’m so glad I kept a journal back then because there’s so much we would have forgotten otherwise. It is pretty funny to look back though and remember I lost my wallet before we even left America, and my glasses in Greymouth. We’re older, but apparently not that much wiser for all the experience we’ve had.
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4 months ago

Gregory GarceauI remember almost all of those scenery pictures individually, but seeing them all together here makes me even MORE impressed with your year. Yeah, I know, I pretty much just copied my comment on the last page.
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4 months ago

Tricia GrahamTo Scott AndersonYou certainly chose a wild route through NZ particularly in the North island. What surprised me was that there were no bird photos and that there was no mention of birds except at Miranda which is not surprising as it is an internationally recognised site for migrating birds to the Arctic as well as about 40 other species which feed on the shell banks of the Firth of Thames
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4 months ago