Hello dear readers! How are things? I’m sure there’s a few of you wondering “who’s this guy?” or perhaps thinking “I remember him..” because well, my posting regularity has been pretty naff over the last couple of years.
The pandemic eh? So much time, so little posting! This is just my 7th post in the last 12 months but perhaps it’ll be lucky number seven? The one to get me back to posting a bit more frequently?
I don’t know what the cause is, perhaps Covid just sucked all of the fun out of travel-writing for me but I either haven’t had made the time to post or have actually had time but just no motivation to do so.
So I’m thinking I’m going to revamp things around here. Less structured and more “whatever”. Typically I’ve been posting about each of my trips chronologically but I think I’m going to take this a little less seriously and just blog about trips as and when I want to and maybe even throw in some other topics and life updates along the way – so consider this blog 2.0 going forward!
Maybe some posts will be the usual ramble-y ones (“like this post Jason?), perhaps they’ll be shorter. Maybe they’ll cover trips I’ve taken, maybe they’ll just be a handful of words to check in but I DO enjoy being part of this community and I do want to get back to blogging in some form so we’ll see how things go. However if you’re only here for the travel, maybe now’s the time to jump ship and click that little “unfollow” button.
“Okay Jason, I’m on board! What have you been up to?”
Well, it’s so nice that you asked! Those following me elsewhere on social media will have seen that after September 2021’s postponement, I finally got married in April!! That’ll undoubtedly be the big highlight of 2022. What a lovely day it was! I really don’t get the whole nervousness around weddings – it was a doddle and really nice for my family to make their first trip over to Washington State too – they loved it!
In the end I spent a total of six weeks in the US and visited four different states – Washington (obviously), Oregon, Idaho and Utah. I’ll blog about that trip in more detail soon but six weeks away was wonderful.
I thought going back to England after so long away would be difficult enough but I only went and took a “souvenir” home with me didn’t I? After two years of avoiding it I managed to catch Covid!
I flew home on the Saturday (7th May) and woke up with a scratchy throat on the Tuesday. I wouldn’t have caught it from anyone inbetween so I’m convinced I caught it in this busy pub in Seattle a few hours before my flight home – oops!
Following on from the CDC guidance changes around mask-wearing I then flew home maskless too so suffering a little Covid-related guilt there. Admittedly I had nobody sat next to me on the flight and I know it’s unlikely I’d have passed it on that quickly anyway but still, typical eh?
Fortunately symptoms didn’t stick around long. I tested negative twice before testing positive and by the time the positive tests started coming I was pretty much over the worst of it anyway. Nevertheless I’ve been laying low for the last couple of weeks, it has been nice to get back among civilisation this week!
I’m heading up North this coming weekend. A friend is celebrating her 30th birthday in a town called Northallerton and I figured I’d make the best of it and booked myself a hotel for two nights in Newcastle. I’ve never spent any proper time in the city so any recommendations are more than welcome! I’m excited to explore it a little bit and I’ll keep you posted on what I discover haha.
Anyway, I’ll wrap this up so this is relatively short by my usual standards. You can see a few more wedding photos over at Instagram for anyone interested. I’ll blog about that trip pretty soon but I just wanted to give some form of update before then.
Until next time!
Jason
Jason likes to travel 