We Interrupt This Broadcast to Bring You: Ten Years!

Hello yes thank you.

As of this month it has now been Ten!!!  Entire!!!  Years!!!  Since starting this blog.  Despite a few lulls over the years, I am still a big fan.  This thing is great.  It serves the same function as an old-school photo album for me, allowing me to look back on cherished memories and revisit old times.  It apparently allows that for others that were with me on these trips as well, much to my surprise!  That anyone would ever reach out to me to tell me how much they enjoyed re-reading about a trip somewhere is completely amazing.

In my very first post, I showed a picture of myself for reference:

Here, now, is a more recent photo of me:

Older n' fatter.  It happens.

In my last anniversary post, the Five Year anniversary, I posted a few stats about my trips as of that writing.  Rather than just repeat with updated numbers, I thought I'd do a few different stats, some that relate to the content of this blog, but stretch beyond its scope.  Here we go!

A few bucket list numbers:

# of States visited: 35

# of State Capitals visited: 20

# of National Parks visited: 16 (paltry!  Gotta pump those numbers up!)

# of Countries visited (excluding U.S.): 15

# of Country Capitals visited (including U.S.): 12

Blog Stats:

Total trips recorded in this blog: 72

Total days spent traveling since August 2012: 246

The year with the most # of days spent traveling was 2017, with 46, fully 12.6% of the year.  No surprise there - that was a truly crazy year of travel, mostly through the UofL Choirs.

The year with the lowest number of travel days was, oddly enough, 2014, with 6.  Not 2020 when the world shut down, or 2022 when I moved back to Charlotte and started a new job.  No real idea on why that was.  I went to Lexington, Indianapolis, and Chicago - and that was it.

And finally, once again, a smattering of favorites and highlights, from trips taken since the five year anniversary post:

Indiana Dunes and the coolest photo I've taken - https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2019/08/michigan-city-in-and-new-buffalo-mi.html

Irish Evensong - https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2019/10/dublin-ireland-september-4-7-2019.html

Knoxville during covid - https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2020/06/knoxville-tn-june-11-13-2020-fun-in-sun.html

Acadia - https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2021/06/bangor-and-bar-harbor-me-june-26-28.html

The Pristine Nowhere of North Dakota - https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2021/07/medora-nd-july-30-31-2021-teddy.html

An American History tour with Clayford - https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2022/05/dover-and-wilmington-de-and.html

And the newest member of the club, Wishigan - https://mattwetmore.blogspot.com/2023/09/milwaukee-wi-september-2-2023-wishigan.html

As for what's next, be on the lookout for the rest of Wishigan, to be posted later this Whenever!

After that, I really don't know.  I'm one of those people now.  Got a 9-5 job and weeknight commitments!  I've dove head first into the choral scene here in Charlotte and that takes quite a lot of time.  But there's no reason to think I won't still get out there from time to time and see more of this fantastic world.

15 Year Anniversary here I come!

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!

Hi Hello

So, I've been doing just a wee bit of traveling over the past little while, and I felt like putting all the stories, pictures, and timeline in one place for easy nostalgia-browsing later.  And if other people read it, well that's good too.

I mean, I'm sure the last thing we need in this world is another travel blog, but here I am anyway.

Let me retract that statement.  "The last thing we need" is something orders of magnitude worse than a superfluous travel blog.  Like genocide maybe.  But you know what I mean.

Anyway, here's me, for the record:

I'm going to try to force this thing to let me post posts from the past so everything will be ordered and labeled correctly by default.  There is a good chance this is impossible.  So we may just have to deal with it when the time comes.

That's all for now