Breadcrumbs

Boston

 

Boston

  

Unlike my first ever flight just a few years before, this was uneventful. A quick refresher, the first flight was from Kathmandu, Nepal to London Heathrow, via transfer at New Delhi. On the second leg of the journey, on an Air India B-747, just after take off from New Delhi Airport, one of the engines blew-up, with near catastrophic consequences. But that is a different story, which you can read about on page 85 of my first e-book.

To be fair, it was nearly 50 years ago as I write this, so some things are somewhat vague.

I was allowed into the country. That was the extent of my preplaning, getting to the US. I had no plan as to where I was going to go, nor how long I was going to stay. With one possible exception, visiting Pete's sister. That story in due time.

I left the airport with my huge rucksack on my back. With a Union Flag sewn on to the red material and a tourist type Union Flag on a plastic stick, stuck out the top of my rucksack. I suspect I picked up a local map of Boston at the airport, an headed towards the Massachusetts Turnpike, on foot. I did a lot of walking, and not a lot of getting on transport that costs money. I guess I headed out of the city for a similar reason, to avoid spending money. Cities tend to be expensive places.

First Pam-Am Boeing B-747 flight to London
First Pam-Am Boeing B-747 flight to London

Amsterdam - launch to USA

 

Amsterdam - launch to USA

 

{Header images from the Pan Am Historical Foundation, which I found looking for information on my flight, and could not resist sharing with you. Unfortunately nothing on Amsterdam to Boston but 'My Flight to London on the “Queen of the Skies,” by Glenn Little'  gives some insight.}

Returning back from our second overland trip to Asia we travelled back with the coach and picked up passengers on the way, having sold the truck in Nepal.

Pete and I applied for driving jobs in Germany on the way through, and following a brief spell in England, returned to Germany separately. Pete got work driving trucks but I did not, and so continued to travel. I went to Amsterdam and stayed with one of the passengers and his girlfriend. It was a pleasant stay with both of them. The passenger owed us money from the trip, so I set up a bank account with Deutsche Bank whist I was there to make it easy for him to pay it back.

I was in town one day and I remember a bus full of school girls drove past a little distance away, but not far enough to drown out to collective singing of Saturday Night Fever. Sung with gusto. Apparently new to the streets of Amsterdam. Defiantly new to me. I only found out what they were singing sometime later, when I heard it again.

North America

 

North America

Trips to North America include hitch-hiking around parts of New England, a family visit to California, combined with a road trip. Some trips to Canada, and a cruise from Vancouver to Alaska via the Inside Passage, together with an attached land cruise in Alaska.

The hitch-hiking was a solo trip in 1977, starting in Amsterdam.

 

 

 

 

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 The flag counter below is for my original travelogue, which is slowly being replaced by this one, but can still be found here.

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News Flash

Change of host Sept 2023

 

Change of host Sept 2023

 

In the begining of August 2023 I transfered my ivanhurst.me.uk sites, including this one from 123-reg to IONOS. It was meant to be a simple task. However, that was to to be the case. The reason for the move was primarily the hugh increase in price that 123-reg was applying regarding email boxes. Previously, the upto 500 of the boxes were included in the various hosting packages I had. Now they were going to charge for each mailbox based on size, and as far as I could make out, this was going to cost me nearly £2,000. This was not acceptable, and I did not get satisfactory answers from support. So I turned of all the auto renews and stated to move sites and domains accross to IONOS.

Travel data problems

 

Travel data problems

This is where it starts to get a little technical.

The site is built on a content management system, CMS, using Joomla. Joomla is moving forward and version 3.10.?? is being discontinued. Future developments are for version 4.??

Similarly, PHP 7 is being replaced with PHP 8.

Part of the migration is relatively simple, I have already changed to a new template which works on the new platforms.

However, some of the helper applications, which work within Joomla are not yet ready.

Fabrik is one of those applications, if fact a significant 'Joomla Custom Website Application Builder'.

Refresh 2021

 

Site refresh Easter 2021

I decided to give the site a bit of a refresh over Easter 2021 and install a new template and some additional functions. One of the things I didn't like about the old site was the delay in text appearing which probably meant some people left before the content appeared. This has been corrected now.