Monday Morning Musings

Posted on January 3, 2022 under Monday Morning Musings with 2 comments

 

 

A podcast in the making

(Pete MacDonald photo)

 

“I’ve been everywhere man,

I’ve been everywhere man,

 Crossed the deserts bare man,

I’ve breathed the mountain air man,

Of travel, I’ve had my share man,

I’ve been everywhere.”

I’ve Been Everywhere – Hank Snow

Hardly.

Yes. “Of travel, I’ve had my share, man”, but there are so many places that I haven’t been.

I’ve been from Pomquet to Paris.

I’ve been from Sydney to San Francisco.

I’ve been from Kamloops to Kangiqsujuaq and Kannyakumari.

I’ve been from Bayfield to Barbados.

I’ve been from Victoria to Varanasi.

I still have the travel bug, but this pandemic has sure put a damper on things. It will get better, possibly later this year but even then, will it be really safe to go to a foreign country?

I have a partial solution for some of you. Come and travel with me in my upcoming podcasts. One of the most common comments I receive from my readers is that they are living vicariously through me. Most people won’t ever travel to one of the hottest places on the earth (India) or the coldest (the Arctic).

It appears that the younger generation and a handful of savvy seniors have been consumers of podcasts for many years now. The audio format lends itself to those who want to be able to go for a walk and listen to something educational or entertaining. Ditto for those who need a distraction as they’re doing the dishes or housework.

My son, Peter has been encouraging me for some time to listen to podcasts but in an odd twist, as we were eating Christmas dinner together (two of us rather than the 10-12 we had over the years), the notion of doing our own podcast started to bubble up… along with the champagne. Actually, there wasn’t a drop of bubbly in the house although there may have been a can of Bubli sparkling water in the fridge. We discussed the idea of creating a travel podcast for my Week45 website.

Those of you who know me well understand that when I get an idea in my head, I don’t dwell on it too long before taking action. To some, you view this as impulsiveness. I call it living.

Fortuitously, Peter had brought along recording equipment when he traveled home for Christmas vacation from Victoria. He used the gear to record the 10^th Christmas album with the Sleigher crew in Halifax. Here is their take on a Christmas classic: https://youtu.be/nDh-DM96O88.

Pete was supposed to go back to the west coast on December 27^th, but Mother Nature threw a nasty curveball. You see, Pete lives a few kilometers outside Victoria in a yurt. Now, to many, this is a romantic notion, cohabitating in the wilderness with all manner of wildlife, including a noisy family of big horned owls. From their early morning squawking (4:30), they may be more suitably dubbed Great Horny Owls!

Just before Christmas, “the big chill” descended on the west coast taking temperatures to all time lows. There were days when it felt like -20. This is bad enough for the locals, many who chose Victoria for its temperate climate, but when you live in an uninsulated yurt, it becomes a situation that is untenable. Peter spent three hours on hold with his airline carrier before making changes to his travel plans. With two additional weeks of holidays and with nowhere to go because of the outbreak of Omicron, we decided to record a few episodes of the Wekk45 podcast.

For the month of January, I will be doing an experiment and will need your feedback. You are used to you regular diet of Monday Morning Musings and Thursday Tidbits. When you click on Thursday Tidbits this week, you will see the first of four podcasts. Most days, you can easily read my posts while having your morning coffee. I realize that you are creatures of habit and that any change might send you into a tizzy. We have prerecorded the podcasts and most of them are between 25-30 minutes.

What can you expect?

Peter and I did four epic road trips in 2015 and 2018. We crisscrossed North America. Many of our travel adventures are chronicled in my third book, “Tales, Trails and Tunes”. We hope to bring these stories to life in a different format. There will be storytelling, banter and some musical clips. We are hoping you will take the time to check these out. I will decide at the end of January whether or not to continue the podcasts. Of course, if I do choose to continue, there’s an endless supply of stories from my travels to such places as India, Spain and the Arctic.

Here’s a snippet of music from episode 3: https://youtu.be/t7ht0dUu1fM

“I’ve been to Hollywood,

I’ve been to Redwood,

I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold.”

Heart of Gold – Neil Young

Have a great week and Happy New Year!

P.S. “I will not procrastinate. I will not procrastinate.”

Starting today, I will continue to write my 7^th book about my time in the north.