Good Morning World!

What a beautiful morning. The sun is shining, temps are moderate, the air is fresh. It’s just a perfect spring morning and it’s Sunday. No work! (maybe) I’ve got some updates and housekeeping items to share today. There is more change on the breeze than the scent of flowers and grass.

What Is Going on with aroundustyroads?

Aroundustyroads.com is my baby blog. I wrote my first post on September 8, 2010. I was based on Blogspot at that time. A couple of years later I migrated to WordPress. That was a pretty smooth transition but I was still new and didn’t have a lot of content. What I had can be found by clicking on the archive link in the side panel.

7 Years Later

Its been 7 years and I hope my blogging skills have grown with experience. What hasn’t changed is the look and feel of aroundustyroads.com. Lately I’ve been hearing more and more about successful bloggers, even meeting one, and I realized that I, we, needed to make some changes if I want to move to the next level. These successful bloggers have been at it 2-5 years. I’ve been doing this for 7 years and being left in the dust! What’s up with that!?

The Changes in the Works

The first thing I did was move again. Like moving from Blogspot to WordPress, I moved to Bluehost to give me more adaptability. For non geeks, that’s like moving your cell service from Verizon to Sprint or from a 2 bedroom ranch to a 6 bedroom colonial. It was more painful this time so I need your help. If you are not getting email alerts, please let me know. If anything else is not working for you like it did before. Let me know that too. Enter it in the comments so we can work on getting it fixed.

New Look

While the dust settles on the move, I’m looking into upgrading our look. Take a look at one blog I found and like: http://brittanyfromboston.com/. Or this very successful blog http://joshuaberman.net/ . I just have to learn how to make these changes.

Drum roll Please….

INTRODUCING

A new companion blog. downdustylanes.com No it is not replacing aroundustyroads. I can’t give up my baby but in trying to find out how to change our look, I got a new website built for me. It’s gorgeous. I haven’t started using it yet but will make my first post there in May. It will help me learn my way around a more advanced website.

One Last Change

Because of the current work load at my job. I am going to reduce my posting schedule for a couple of months. I am going to try to post 3 times per week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday. When things slow down at work I’ll kick it back up.

Tell me what you think of all this. as the saying goes, inquiring minds what to know.

I was just thinking how much air travel has changed in the last 30+ years. Yes that’s how long I’ve been flying the friendly skies. But I didn’t always travel for fun so I don’t think of those business trips as “travel”. “Travel” to me is a vacation, an exploration of my choosing.

But anyway, “back in the day” they didn’t have security, x-ray machines, body scans and pat-downs. Oh occasionally there was a hijacking but it was to get to Cuba or some such thing. Because gates weren’t locked away the duty-free shops and restaurants were all along the concourse.

Since we didn’t have to take our shoes off and belts were ok, travelers dressed up. Flying was a “Big Deal”. I know I always felt very important. Jet ways were rare if at all. Most of the time you crossed the tarmac and climbed the stairs. The planes were small but they weren’t crowded. I seldom had to share a row with anyone unlike today where we sit on top of each other.

But in spite of the modern inconveniences of air travel there are some nice trade offs.

The airports are much fancier. Some have the moving sidewalks like flat escalators. Many have shuttles to take you from concourse to concourse . Good thing because the airports are so big now that we’d never make our connections if we had to walk and carry luggage too.

The restaurants have definitely improved and since they are often beyond security they are closer together. Lots more choices in less space.

We dress simpler so we can get through the security scanners without setting alarms off and slip on shoes like loafers or boat shoes are much more comfortable than even sneakers.

Yes, air travel has changed, some good , some bad but I like it more now because most of the time it’s taking me to someplace new and exciting, or so I hope. 🙂

(PS. I had more pictures to share but they were all taken with my camera phone and for some reason, the transfer keeps failing. I’ve been trying for 2 days to get them from my phone to the computer so I’m just settling for the one that went right through. That was in Chicago O’Hare )