24487: Corbett -- Invitation to be on Bob Corbett's travel email list

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

>From Bob Corbett

Folks,

In the past I had an email list of several hundred people who would
receive my writings while travelling.  Quite a few of you from this
Haiti list were on that list.    A few months ago Webster U suffered
a hardware crash and my email address book was one of the victims of that
crash.

Now I am getting ready to head to Ireland for a month long trip and I am
about to build a new traveling mailing list.  These will be my journals
from the Ireland trip and will not be mailed to this mailing list, only to
the travel list.

If you would like to be on that list just let me know.

This will be a very different trip for me than my previous trips to
Ireland.  I will be traveling by Irish public buses.  Just two of us, my
traval companion, Sally Sharamitaro will be making her first trip to
Ireland, and I'm returning again having been several times before.

After my brother John and Terri's accident and my own distaste for driving
in Ireland, I decided to try this trip via the buses.  There are a few
real advantages:

-- safety, obviously.
-- vision is another.  Many Irish roads are bordered, at the very edge of
	the road, by sizeable stone walls.  These are extremely difficult
	to see over.  It is my hope that we can see much more on this
	trip.  The bus seats set much higher up, above those walls.
-- I've driven before myself, and was the navigator when my brother John
	drove on a trip he and I made in 2003.  I found that when I was
	driving and when I navigating, it took time and took away from
	sight-seeing
-- Lastly, it is much much cheaper than a rental car.

There are certainly DISADVANTAGES as well:

-- when one has a rental car the baggage can be in the boot (trunk)
	and one only has to take a small carry-in bag to one's B&B.
-- one can go places at any time of the day or night, places where
	buses don't even run.

The notion of a third option -- a tour -- well that is just so horrible a
thought to me I couldn't even entertain the thought much less the reality.
I'm just too independent for that.

But, I'm convinced the trade offs of the bus for the rental car are worth
it.  Sally and I will find out, and those on the travel list will be able
to hear all about it.

I have no idea how much email time we will have while in Ireland.  Email
isn't available everywhere or all times and it modestly expensive.
However, I will be writing in my journal, and in case I can't get notes
out as often as I would wish or as extensively as I would wish, then I can
post them to this travel list when I get home.

I welcome you to the list, and if you want to be on it just drop me an
email with the address you want used for the new Corbett travel list.

I will be taking another trip in the fall, a six week trip to Costa Rica
and will report on that trip as well when it comes to pass.  I'm going
there to explore, hoping to find somewhere to spend the winter months
since I simply DETEST winter.

Ah, the Haiti list may well be radically curtailed for the period of my
Ireland trip -- March 23rd to April 22nd.

Bob Corbett