Non-safari travel

Anyone who's read this blog knows that I usually have more than a few trips in my head even when I'm focusing on one in particular.  This winter, my sister and I are taking on an unusual bout of travel, three bouts actually, which may seem a little bit crazy.

Earlier this fall, she introduced me to the singer Morrissey, and, immediately smitten with him at the Boston show, I lured her to Portland to see him again and then decided we'd need at least one more show, so we planned to head to Atlantic City in early December to see him close his US tour out there.  Unfortunately, the rest of the tour dates were postponed due to an illness in his family.

A disappointing situation turned into a windfall of new shows, as it seems Morrissey rebooked the prior shows and added a whole slew in the areas devastated by Hurricane Sandy.  We jumped at the chance to see more shows, and bought tickets to three more.

So in January, we do two road trips over long weekends to take in shows.  The first is to Brooklyn and Atlantic City, neither of which I've visited before.  While we won't have oodles of time to kill, we are going to try to fit in the Brooklyn Museum of Art (which has a gorgeous Monet that we saw in the Paris exhibition two years ago) and a stop at MOMA to see Munch's The Scream on loan there.

The next weekend we drive to Reading, PA and then Port Chester, NY for shows.  Neither of us has come up with anything we want to see between the two cities, but there's still time to research that (and god knows I need something to research!).  I've booked hotels in all four cities and we have a rough route sketched out for each weekend.

And in a final show of insanity, my sister texted me one day during work, and while I kept hearing and feeling the buzz of my iPhone as I sat in a meeting, I was unable to grab the text until much later.  It turns out that she had two tickets on hold with Ticketmaster for the Morrissey - Patti Smith double bill in Los Angeles in March.  The problem is, it's a mere 5 days after I get home from safari.  My body will be begging for mercy at that point.  Assuming that silence equaled consent, my sister bought the tickets.  I hemmed and hawed a bit, but when, a day before Thanksgiving, I got a fare alert for LA for $250 all in, I knew it was meant to be.  So crazy or not, we're whisking our way out to LA for literally 36 hours.  I will not have any vacation time left, so we'll see the show, maybe the Shuttle Enterprise and the Getty Museum, then turn around and come home.  YOWZA.  If I'm still alive and mobile after that trip, it'll be a miracle!  My poor body clock....