Five Year Anniversary

I posted a little ditty on Facebook concerning this, but I thought I'd say something about it here as well: five years ago this month, just weeks after arriving in Louisville for the first time for grad school, I started my travel blog, almost exclusively at that time to brag about going to Austria the previous summer.  It’s kind of the only really self-indulgent thing I do, so allow me to indulge for a moment.  When I finished my writeups of the trips from the year prior, I had no idea the volume and scope of the trips that would follow in my time at UofL, mainly thanks to the Cardinal Singers, but with some significant exceptions to that as well.  As a way of commemorating this anniversary, I’ve crunched some numbers and gotten some stats from my trips thus far, as well as pulled a number of highlights from the archive – not necessarily my favorites or the biggest and best, but a good sampling.  I also ended the Facebook post with the newest addition to the blog, my trip to St. Louis, which also happens to be my 50^th trip since beginning the blog (but not the 50^th post – many trips cover more than one post).

Some stats since August 2012:

# of trips to another country or countries: 6 (4 in Europe, 2 in Asia)

# of trips taken through or because of UofL choirs: 13

# of trips taken solo: 36

# of trips taken to a camp or conference of some sort: 7

# of trips taken with family: 9

# of trips taken within one day: 22

Longest trip: Harmonie Festival at 16 days, starting 5/23/2017 https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2017/07/staudt-lindenholzhausen-koblenz-limburg.html

Farthest away from home: Suzhou, China, at 7343 miles from Louisville.  https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2016/08/suzhou-and-wuxi-china-july-25-2016.html

Close second was Xi’an, at 7333. https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2017/09/xian-and-beijing-china-july-9-18-2017.html

Total days travelling: 169, which is 7.55% of the time as of today.

Some highlights:

Austria Trip: https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2013/09/munchen-germany-and-schladming-austria.html

Indianapolis: https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2014/08/indianapolis-in-august-19th-20th-2014.html

Portland (NCCO) https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2015/12/portland-or-november-11-14-2015.html

VA and DC with Clay: https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2017/01/fort-eustis-va-and-washington-dc-august.html

A river going on in Asheville: https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2017/04/asheville-nc-march-16-18-2017-on-goes.html

Totality: https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2017/09/russellville-ky-august-21-2017-totality.html

My favorite single post, the Venice story: https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2015/06/venice-and-mestre-italy-june-27-28-2015.html

And finally, the newest addition to the collection, St. Louis MO: https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2018/09/st-louis-mo-september-1-3-2018-catenary.html

Here’s to a kjghpillion more years of travel!