Junes on the Move: Connecting Europe and North Africa

A few years ago, Jay and I realised our retirement calendar had a distinct blind spot. Our long winter getaways reliably carried us toward equatorial heat, yet vast stretches of Europe and beyond remained stubbornly locked behind winter chills during those months. The northern calendar had more to offer. Setting aside the entire month of June provided the logical bridge to explore temperate regions under comfortable conditions.

Our inaugural venture in 2023 proved the value of using the northern Mediterranean coast as a launchpad for low-friction exploration. We leased an apartment on Avenue Durante in Nice for thirty days, relying on the clean tram network and coastal SNCF rails to stitch the shoreline together. Having the tracks right on the water turned regional travel into effortless day trips, letting one pop over to Monaco for the afternoon, browse Friday street markets in Ventimiglia, or hike the steep trails above Èze without ever hauling luggage between hotel rooms. Moving alongside that turquoise sea confirmed that a fixed coastal base beats frantic packing every single time.

Nice, France

The 2024 journey shifted our focus to an overland traverse across the Baltic states. Landing in Berlin, we used regional rail to bridge northern Poland and Lithuania before catching our homeward flight out of Riga. We tracked stations with precision. Connecting those capitals by land provided a grounded sense of northern European geography that air travel entirely skips.

Warsaw, Poland

By June of 2025, we tackled a wider regional arc across the Balkans. Flying into the north of Italy, we pieced together trains and long-distance buses to thread through Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, and Bulgaria, eventually reaching Bucharest. Moving overland from the Adriatic to the Black Sea corridor revealed how distinct each neighbouring border remains. The complex ground transit proved far easier than the guidebooks made it sound.

Belgrade, Serbia

The 2026 circuit carried our late-spring travels across the Mediterranean into Morocco. Arriving in Casablanca, we travelled by train to Tangier, hired a car through Chefchaouen to Fes, and joined an overland route out to the Sahara dunes at Merzouga before swinging back through Marrakech and down the Atlantic coast to Agadir. Camels proved predictably stubborn. Circling from arid desert passes back to coastal breezes showed the full, varied scale of the country.

Tinghir, Morocco

For 2027, the initial clues are already surfacing on the ledger well ahead of time. Early whispers point toward a Dutch staging ground, an extended maritime loop around the British Isles, a quick dash across France, and an eventual return to familiar North African shores in Tunisia. Broad hints beat strict timetables. Four successful seasons have shown that dropping early breadcrumbs is half the pleasure of building the next road.

Our Farewell to 2026 Duck Dinners

Retirement introduces a strange paradox into social calendars. One assumes open days yield endless flexibility, yet coordinating the final "Duck Party" of the year proved remarkably elusive with everyone constantly drifting in separate directions. Today offered our final window to host for the season before the calendar closed. By the end of the evening, the traveling rubber ducks had migrated onwards to Richmond. Ed and Shinji now carry the solemn duty of hosting the gathering when spring returns.

Winter approaches swiftly along the West Coast. Everyone arrived before 3:30 in the afternoon to beat the fading October light. Outside, temperatures hovered around a brisk 8 Celsius, firmly dictating that hospitality remain indoors. An afternoon spread of chips, cheese, and crackers accompanied a sampling of robust Quebec ales. Unibroue's "Fin du Monde" and its fellow brews clock in at a formidable 9.0% ABV. They worked quickly.

Rather than braving an outdoor stroll, the gathering retreated to the soothing warmth of the hot tub for an hour. Steam rose against the thin glass panes while the chilly autumn air pressed against the outside. Water soothes weary bones. It took another full hour of lounging and conversation before everyone drifted back upstairs to assemble for the evening meal.

Jay orchestrated dinner from a methodical clear-out of the refrigerator. The resulting feast delivered comforting, layered flavours centered on chicken curry, yellow dhal curry, a sharp pineapple chutney, and a crisp salad. Rather than serving conventional rice, a quick trip to a local Ethiopian market secured a fresh stack of injera. Injera is a traditional sourdough flatbread made from fermented teff grain, recognized by its spongy, cratered texture and distinctive tartness that pairs exceptionally well with rich stews. Jay sliced, rolled, and briefly microwaved the delicate rolls just before serving. The meal vanished quickly, as did Jay's fruit cake and ice cream

Throughout the evening, the television cycled through vibrant slide reels of June's journey through Morocco before meandering into an eclectic archive spanning forty years of shared memories. Nonstop conversation anchored the room. The glowing gas fireplace maintained a welcoming sanctuary against one of the rare cool, rain-swept evenings of late October. The incoming BC Election results closed the evening. Twilight arrives abruptly now, unmitigated by any seasonal clock shift on our home turf, though boarding our winter flight will inevitably demand resetting watches during a Toronto stopover where switching to standard time remains entrenched. It drew to a tidy, earlier close than summer nights, but proved a thoroughly satisfying send-off for the flock.

A Record on Borrowed Time

An optional errand in Metrotown provided all the justification needed to step out into the morning air. Boarding below Carnarvon Street, the SkyTrain tracks climbed the grade through South Burnaby under a brilliant sun, an almost scandalous sight for late October in the Lower Mainland. Morning runs beat the crowds. The month began typically enough with a couple of damp, gloomy days, and another brief spell of grey crept into the middle of the calendar. Aside from those interruptions, it has been blue sky day after day.

The streak feels miraculous. Mark the weatherman on Global News confirmed just how anomalous this autumn has been, pointing to rainfall totals that read like misprints. A standard October in our corner of the West Coast drowns under roughly 157 millimeters of rain. The contrast is startling. As of today, the gauges at Vancouver Airport sit at a mere 14.3 millimeters. That places us, for the moment, beneath the all-time historic record low of 18.3 millimeters logged back in October 2002. Were the ledger to close this afternoon, it would stand as the driest October since bookkeeping began. The month still has a week to run, however, and that slim buffer will not survive the weekend.

Tomorrow will break the streak, though forecasters expect the front to sweep through quickly. That leaves roughly a week of decent, manageable weather to close out the month before our departure on November 1st. Time is ticking down. It remains to be seen where October 2026 ultimately lands in the provincial record books once the incoming system delivers its payload. Until then, one simply takes the gift of dry pavement and crisp light on an unhurried ride across Burnaby.

Thirty Years Ago in New West

Thirty years ago, landing in British Columbia did not involve swiping through digital listings or cross-referencing street views on a phone screen. We touched down in 1996 fresh from the heat of Dubai, leaving behind tax-free contracts and shipping our entire, meager household across the ocean under the name of one of Jay’s penpals. Interestingly, our temporary baseline was Vancouver's Patricia Hotel on Hastings; we'd seen it was cheap in a BC accommodation magazine and telephoned from overseas for a reservation,  The real task was finding an anchor before the container docked.

The search method was straightforward. We bought tickets, climbed aboard the SkyTrain, and treated the elevated tracks as our personal reconnaissance platform across the Lower Mainland. There was a single line that ended in Surrey.  To narrow the hunt, we used a primitive outfit found in the newspaper classifieds that churned out printed address sheets of available rentals. We unfolded that tractor-feed, dot-matrix printed list on the train to see where we might head. If a neighbourhood sat beyond walking distance of a station, it was crossed off. That transit spine carried us straight into New Westminster. The station back then bore no resemblance to the massive shopping concourse and condo complex that encases it today; it was raw Expo 86 concrete, open air, and bare platforms overlooking industrial tracks and quiet streets. The printed list led us just a short walk over to a rental tower at 838 Agnes Street, where we secured unit 903.

It was basic, functional, and entirely ours. For two years, that coordinate served as the engine room for setting up life here, initial teaching terms at Pitman, and getting used to West Coast rain after years in the desert. Looking at these two photographs from 1996, the view outside tells the real story. The one above looks out from the ninth-floor balcony toward the open expanse of the New Westminster station area before modern development swallowed the sky, while the other peeks from the bedroom between neighbouring towers toward the grey ribbon of the Fraser River. It was our first perch in the Royal City, but thirty years later, that river remains our constant anchor, now from the other end of downtown on Carnarvon Street.

Homework for the Flock

Retirement has cruelly stripped one of my distinct pedagogical pleasures in life, namely the assigning of mandatory homework with impossible deadlines. Fortunately, the impending arrival of the 'Duck Group' this coming Saturday has presented me with this rare opportunity.

The gang will be descending upon Carnarvon Place for dinner. It marks the final formal gathering of the year. Recent convocations have tilted heavily toward wine, but an introductory round of beer alongside pre-dinner appetizers seemed appropriate.

Initial calculations focused on frugality. There are four or five vintage cans lurking in the permafrost near the rear cooling element of our refrigerator. They have occupied that prime real estate for an embarrassing number of years. I am reasonably certain they froze solid during the polar vortex of twenty-twenty-three. Being far too much of an unrepentant miser to toss perfectly serviceable alcohol into the recycling bin, I reasoned that our guests could perform civil duty by relieving me of the burden.

Conscience, or perhaps sheer survival instinct, intervened. A stroll down to the local BC Liquor branch in New Westminster was undertaken to procure an additional fifteen-pack. The familiar Big Rock variety carton was nowhere to be seen. What caught my eye instead was a twelve-pack variety carton from Unibroue, hailing from Chambly, Quebec.

A glance at the specifications rendered the purchase of a bulky fifteen-pack entirely redundant. These are not timid lawnmower lagers. These are heavyweight Belgian-style concoctions clocking in between seven point seven and nine point five percent alcohol by volume. Two cans of this nectar equate to roughly half a conventional six-pack. A prudent economy of volume, if ever there was one.

Naturally, the titles are entirely in French. A quick photographic consult with my digital confederate, Ajith, decoded the mythologies behind each brew. Given that there are exactly two cans of each variant in the carton, the flock cannot simply arrive and bicker casually by the fridge. The assignment must be completed in advance:

• Ce n'est pas la fin du monde (9.5%): "It is Not the End of the World." A potent Belgian IPA. Sarcastic, unyielding, and likely the first to ignite a territorial dispute.

• Maudite (8.0%): "The Damned." Named after the legendary voyageur canoe that flew across the sky via a contract with the Devil. Those who drink this without reading the lore risk paddling alone.

• Don de Dieu (9.0%): "Gift of God." An imperial wheat ale commemorating Champlain's flagship from 1608. The group will appreciate the ecclesiastical naming convention, even if the gravity is decidedly terrestrial.

• Trois Pistoles (9.0%): "Three Pistoles." A dark strong ale paying tribute to lost seventeenth-century silver coins and ghostly black steeds. Deep, moody, and heavy enough to stop conversation dead in its tracks.

• Fin du Monde (9.0%): "The End of the World." The flagship triple. Early European navigators were convinced they had hit the literal rim of creation. Drinkers may share the illusion by the second glass. 

• Eau Bénite (7.7%): "Holy Water." The "lightest" offering of the lot, displaying an angel soaking in a pint pot. Pure blasphemy in a can, though thoroughly delicious.

Consider this your required syllabus, gentlemen. Study the parameters. Tim will predictably bypass the folklore entirely and hone straight in on the nine point five percent metric, while the rest will undoubtedly plot intricate diplomatic alliances.  Come Saturday at around 3:30 pm, but select your weapon early. Otherwise, you will be handed a frozen relic from the back of the fridge.  Your PDF study guide may be found here.

Where the River Squeezes and History Settles

Looking down from the balcony on Carnarvon Street, the river feels surprisingly hemmed in. From the foot of Sixth Street across to the quiet stretch of park off Tannery Road in Surrey, the water spans barely over five hundred metres bank to bank. The bluff's steep elevation deceives the eye, compressing that half-kilometre gap until the opposing shoreline looks almost within arm's reach. The water feels compressed. Bulkheads, wharves, and industrial docks funnel the Fraser into a tight, muscular throat. That urban pinch only magnifies the raw power moving through it, draining a quarter of British Columbia from a watershed larger than the whole of Great Britain. Even here, thirty-five kilometres inland from the ocean, the Pacific pushes back with a heavy twice-daily tide, driving saltwater beneath an average outgoing torrent of thirty-five hundred cubic metres of silt every second.

That relentless volume makes it an irreplaceable biological artery. Millions of returning wild salmon (chinook, sockeye, coho, pink, and chum) funnel through this narrow gap every year, fighting their way past our pier toward interior spawning beds that can lie more than a thousand kilometres upstream near the Rocky Mountains. Down in the murky sediment below the shipping channel, prehistoric white sturgeon continue to patrol the riverbed, some living over a century and growing several metres in length. The river never stops working.

Indigenous communities lived and fished along this waterway for thousands of years, respecting both the dangerous current and the massive salmon runs it carried. When outside explorers finally tried navigating it by boat, they quickly learned the hard way that the churning canyons upstream were nearly suicidal to travel. Then came the 1858 gold rush. Thousands of miners poured in practically overnight, turning this violent river into the only practical supply highway into the interior. A permanent settlement had to be established quickly near the river mouth to collect taxes, maintain law, and guard the border.

The surveyors chose this exact spot because of its geography. Flatter ground farther upstream was rejected because it sat low and defenseless. This north bluff offered high ground with a clear view down the channel, backed by deep water where ocean ships could tie up right against the bank. The military blasted through massive timber to lay out the steep hillside streets we walk today. Because this was the narrowest practical place to cross the lower river, that decision eventually funnelled the current three major bridges straight into downtown. Even after the political capital was shifted over to Vancouver Island a few years later, the riverfront stayed busy. The docks, timber mills, and railways remained right here because the physical geography made sense.

Living alongside this rushing channel for three decades has never dimmed our appreciation of its quiet majesty nor its daily importance. The light still catches the silty boils in unexpected ways at dusk, and the deep horn of an outbound tug continues to command our attention as it clears the bridge pilings. Skylines grow taller, seasons cycle through, and shipping schedules shift, but the brown water keeps paying the freight.

A Dozen Years of Freedom

Today marks the exact twelfth anniversary of Jay stepping out of the workforce for an early retirement. On Sunday, October 19, 2014, he returned home from his very last shift after thirteen years of dedicated service at Covenant House Vancouver. Waiting on the counter to greet him was a celebratory cheesecake, vibrant balloons, and cards congratulating him on the milestone. That sweet afternoon welcome officially marked the end of his employment and inaugurated his new life as a gentleman of leisure.

 

My own turn arrived exactly three days later, on Wednesday, October 22nd. As my final cohort of students concentrated on their term-end examination at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, fellow instructors quietly entered the room bearing a farewell cake and a few mementos to remember my seventeen years teaching at BCIT, marking my definitive final exit from classrooms and computer labs.

 

That coordinated double-play in October of 2014 allowed both of us to chart our own unconventional course and step into permanent liberty. That was the week when decades of commutes, early morning alarms, lesson plans, and punch clocks simply vanished into thin air. The deliberate objective was always to cast off domestic predictable schedules entirely in favour of international departures, long rail journeys, and unhurried exploration across an open calendar. Twelve years down the road, looking back on that joint leap confirms that escaping early was sheer strategic brilliance. These past dozen years have undeniably been some of the premier years of our lives.

 

Voting Twice in the Royal City

We marked our ballots early last weekend for the municipal vote, and the numbers finally surfaced last night. Yet thanks to an ill-timed gamble by the ruling provincial party, an early general election arrived almost immediately on its heels. That overlap produced an unbearable din of competing campaign signs and lawn rhetoric, making it far harder for individual candidates to cut through the local static. The upside to this political clutter was purely logistical. It allowed us to turn out early once again today and cast our ballots for the province of British Columbia.

We caught the local bus two stops up 6th Street and joined the tiny queue outside the New Westminster Armoury. Completed in 1895, the hall stands out as a genuine rarity among Canadian drill halls, which were almost universally built from heavy stone or brick. This facility was framed and sided entirely in regional timber, flanked by square towers with distinctive flared mansard roofs. Miraculously, the massive structure survived the Great Fire of 1898 that flattened downtown New Westminster, serving as emergency shelter for hundreds left homeless by the blaze. Wood outlasted the brick. Today it remains an active wooden military post, home to The Royal Westminster Regiment. Rounding toward the rear of the property, we caught sight of fresh recruits sorting gear and running through equipment checks in preparation for weekend exercises or upcoming deployment.

The line moved with crisp military efficiency. We were in and out of the drill floor within a couple of minutes, leaving behind the gratifying sensation of having our civic chores tidy and squared away. Rather than boarding transit for the return, we drifted homeward on foot through Tipperary Park, enjoying the quiet green slope before turning down 4th Street toward our building. These photographs offer a modest visual log of our morning loop through the neighborhood.

Leisurely Heading Towards Our Departure

It was a standard Saturday routine if not entirely in form, given that Jay was nursing the familiar post-vaccine malaise from yesterday’s twin flu and COVID jabs. We made our customary morning grocery run, though with a distinctly restrained basket. With a mere fortnight remaining before our winter departure, the larder strategy has shifted to ruthless depletion.

Because the power to the apartment gets shut down entirely while we are away, leaving a single forgotten condiment to fend for itself is out of the question. Jay is an absolute master of logistics on this front; by the time departure morning arrives, the refrigerator will be stripped bare, meticulously wiped, and completely food-free.

Our upcoming arrival at Gatwick on November 2nd marks a long overdue return to standard British sightseeing. We will establish base camp in Southampton for five nights before embarking on the cruise to Rio de Janeiro on November 7th. Having not properly played city tourists in London since 2005, a dedicated day trip by rail is firmly on the docket, along with potential runs out toward Stonehenge. Besides, with fresh Electronic Travel Authorizations in hand, one may as well squeeze every drop of value from them; June will see us back again for an extended wander across the realm.

My Fake Seven-Cent Heirlooms

I enjoy wearing a ring, but I have never possessed the discipline required to keep one. Jewelry simply does not cling to me for long. Years ago, I purchased an authentic ruby ear stud in Sri Lanka, an island celebrated for magnificent gems that occasionally migrated into the British Crown Jewels through imperial appropriation. That modest stud survived eight years before vanishing into the ether without a sound. Most precious ornaments fare far worse in my custody. With traditional rings, my personal ownership lifespan is routinely measured in mere weeks.

A sensible alternative presented itself directly on the build plate. I now fabricate PLA rings en masse whenever the impulse strikes. Today I am running off half a dozen fresh bands for our winter voyage to Brazil. Given that a standard spool of budget filament costs roughly twenty-five dollars CAD, each three-gram ring runs to about seven cents. One gets the full aesthetic pleasure of an acceptable band on the knuckle without the lingering heartbreak of an abandoned authentic heirloom.

Reclaiming the Living Room Gallery

A little ahead of Joel and May's recent visit, I noticed a new problem with my television setup.  A bridge had collapsed.

For six years, a modest little application had quietly linked my online photographic archive directly to the television. The app cost less than five dollars to install. That was a bargain. Time, however, is rarely kind to aging code. Operating system updates and newer streaming hardware finally caught up with its plumbing, leaving the software unable to load a single frame. When our guests arrived, the only recourse was casting directly from a phone. It worked, but barely. Handsets disconnect, notifications intrude, and managing an album on a small glass handheld is a poor substitute for a native television interface.

The proper remedy arrived shortly afterward. My AI collaborator suggested looking into an updated viewer called FlickFolio. After a short evaluation, securing a pro lifetime license felt entirely fair. The application treats an archive that now stands at 50,207 photographs on Flickr as a true exhibition. That collection spans a lifetime of visual record, holding everything from snapshots taken this morning right back to scanned paper prints from my earliest childhood years. One can navigate directly to a specific journey with a click, complete with original dates and locations discreetly noted in the corner, or simply leave the screen to wander through decades of our milestones and global travel during quiet hours.

The living room gallery is back in service. It is properly catalogued and ready for the next round of guests without any casting gymnastics. Testing the feed earlier today, photographs of a camel trek from this June flashed across the display, its golden desert tones rendered with startling clarity. Sitting back this afternoon, watching old moments rekindle in vivid colour across the screen, it felt as though decades of a life well lived had stepped back into the room.

Public Health: It's Not All About You

Maintaining an eJournal continues to serve as an indispensable tool for resolving routine household debates over personal chronology. Jay insisted this morning that we had received both our flu and COVID shots at this exact juncture last year, though my own recollection remained entirely blank. A prompt review of the digital log proved his instincts correct, confirming that our previous visit occurred precisely one year ago this week. In the end, a faithfully maintained personal archive leaves no room for uncertainty and settles the historical record decisively.

The provincial booking portal has made securing an immunization appointment remarkably straightforward and efficient. Rather than navigating cumbersome administrative hurdles, one can simply log in, review local pharmacy availability, and lock in a reservation within seconds. Selecting yesterday's 9:45 am slot took virtually no effort at all. Modern public health scheduling proves that well-designed digital infrastructure can strip away unnecessary friction entirely.

Proximity to rapid transit transforms an ordinary health errand into an effortless neighbourhood stroll. A brief descent downstairs into the SkyTrain tunnel led directly to New West Station barely two minutes later, placing Shoppers Drug Mart within immediate reach. Inside the pharmacy, a brief three-minute wait while the staff member finished with the previous patron was the only delay before receiving both injections and heading on. Seamless urban design and transit accessibility make routine daily tasks exceptionally easy to accomplish.

Immunization extends far beyond private autonomy; it is fundamentally an act of shared civic responsibility rather than an isolated personal choice. By stepping up for seasonal influenza and COVID shots, an individual actively severs chains of transmission that would otherwise ripple unchecked through the general public. That simple, routine injection may well be the solitary barrier that shields a fragile neighbour or keeps someone's vulnerable grandparent alive. Wrapping vaccine hesitancy in the hollow banner of individual freedom is both selfish and foolish, confusing anti-social defiance with genuine liberty. Ultimately, being a constructive member of a civilized society requires protecting the vulnerable, proving that collective survival will always matter more than self-absorbed indulgence.

It's a Bit Chilly! (9°C = 48°F )

Jay and I headed uptown this morning for a routine visit to the Walmart at Royal City Centre, mainly picking up odds and ends and getting our prescriptions sorted so we have enough medicine to see us through the winter travels. With the Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend behind us, the holiday quiet had dissolved and the town was visibly back at work. Yet beneath the usual errands and post-holiday bustle, there was an unmistakable shift in the air, something that felt distinctly different.

One becomes spoiled with absurd rapidity.

For the better part of a week, the Lower Mainland has basked beneath an unbroken dome of deep cobalt. Day after day arrived without so much as a stray wisp of cloud drifting off the Strait of Georgia. The light was sharp, the air pleasantly dry, and the usual damp chill seemed entirely forgotten. In such moments, the human mind engages in its favourite parlour trick, quietly convincing itself that the anomaly has become the permanent order of things. One steps out onto the balcony, takes in the sunshine, and begins to operate under the collective delusion that autumn has simply been cancelled this year.

It never lasts, of course.

This morning, reality resumed its scheduled broadcast. The sky outside is a flat, uncompromising wool blanket, and the temperature has settled into that familiar, damp bite. It is completely ordinary for October. In fact, anything else is outright fiction. Yet, looking out across the rooftops, one cannot help feeling an unreasonable twinge of mild betrayal, as if the atmosphere had broken an unspoken promise. We build an entire philosophy of permanence out of five consecutive sunny days, only to act shocked when the rain decides to punch the clock on time.

Updating the October 2025 Lists

We started 2026 at the Galle Face Green, in Colombo Sri Lanka.

Our history marks twelve full years since the start of early retirement. Jay and I have completed eleven seasons of vanishing from the Lower Mainland for four or five consecutive months. One winter was spent tending to a medical issue. And now, the logistical framework for the upcoming journey is firmly ironed out. We plan to spend roughly a month meandering toward Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and settling there from December straight through February. Our homeward trajectory takes a scenic detour through the equator, carving out a week in the Galápagos followed by another in Bogotá, Colombia.

Because those ports and apartments belong to the imminent calendar rather than the finished ledger, they remain off the master tallies for today. Instead, this writing serves as an annual audit of the notes I first published a year ago. I have updated our primary residency figures to account for our most recent months in Sri Lanka, while folding our varied excursions alongside Jay's sisters into the roster of short-term visits.  We've lived a for cumulative total of over four years in the following places during our retirement winters.

Our Retirement Winters (2014 to 2026)

Location	Duration
Bali, Indonesia	2 months
Buenos Aires, Argentina	3 months
Cape Town, South Africa	1 month
Colombo, Sri Lanka	1 year and 1 month (4 stays)
Durban, South Africa	1 month
Dubai, UAE	2.5 months (4 stays)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia	5 months (2 stays)
Luxor, Egypt	5 months
Flic en Flac, Mauritius	1 month
Mazatlán, Mexico	2 months
Penang, Malaysia	3 months
Playa del Carmen, Mexico	3 months
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico	5 months
Siem Reap, Cambodia	2 months
South American Cruise Ports	1 month

The ledger above outlines the domestic bases that have anchored our winter seasons. Even so, our migrations rarely follow a tidy, direct path from Carnarvon Street to a single overseas terrace. We routinely thread regional circuits into the itinerary, whether tacking on side journeys prior to settling down or exploring neighbouring territories on the long haul back to the Canadian West Coast.

The partial catalog below captures some of those short-term detours and transit pauses. Last winter offered a prime illustration of this habit. Beyond our residential weeks in Sri Lanka, we orchestrated several shared excursions alongside Jay’s sisters, looping through both the Middle East and Thailand before joining a cruise from Hong Kong to Japan on our gradual circumnavigation home this past spring.

Additional Short-Term Trips and Visits
Location	Location
Antananarivo, Madagascar	Manila, Philippines
Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei	Mokhotlong, Lesotho
Bangkok, Thailand	Naha (Okinawa), Japan
Boracay, Philippines	Osaka, Japan
Chiang Mai, Thailand	Pattaya, Thailand
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania	Philippines Cruise Ports
Doha, Qatar	Phuket, Thailand
Hong Kong, China	Puerto Princesa, Philippines
Ipoh, Malaysia	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Ishigaki, Japan	Sabah, Malaysia
Island-Wide Trips, Sri Lanka	Saint-Denis, Reunion Island
Istanbul, Turkey	Sarawak, Malaysia
Kaohsiung, Taiwan	Stone Town, Zanzibar
Krabi, Thailand	Taipei (Keelung), Taiwan
Kuching, Malaysia	Taipei, Taiwan
Langkawi, Malaysia	Tokyo (Yokohama), Japan
Malacca, Malaysia	Tokyo, Japan
Manama, Bahrain	Tunis, Tunisia

In the early seasons of early retirement, I indulged in an exhaustive inventory of aspirational targets, scribbling down every distant meridian that caught my eye. Over the ensuing decade, Jay and I methodically picked our way through that optimistic docket with surprising thoroughness. As a consequence of our persistent wandering, the grand archive has dwindled down to a remarkably modest pair of unclaimed frontiers. Even with the official manifest looking lean, the kitchen table tells a different tale, as fresh possibilities and sudden logistical schemes constantly bounce back and forth between my morning coffee and Jay’s proper cup of Ceylon tea.

Planned and Possible Locations

Location
Goa, India
Kampala, Uganda