Barbara J. Hamby

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Facts I Didn’t Need to Know

A little fact I picked up today comes under the heading of “things I wish I hadn’t read,” as well as “things the travel agent is never going to tell us.” Beijing, the final destination of our Asian cruise, where we have hotel reservations for two nights, and hope to see the sights before we fly home, is having dust storms. According to the Sunday paper, they have had ten major dust storms since February. Of course, it immediately occurred to me that such a storm could prevent us from seeing the Great Wall and other sights.

We don’t read the newspaper every day, but we do buy it most Sundays. Last Sunday neither of us got around to doing so, but I saw tomorrow’s Oregonian when I was buying cough medicine today, so I picked up a copy. Too bad. If I hadn’t, I’d have one less thing to worry about. Maybe, if I’m lucky, my deteriorating brain will have forgotten about it by the time we leave.

At this point, we’re in the--we paid for this already, now when does the fun start--stage. We are not in the “travel now, pay later” group. Making payments on memories is even less fun than paying several months before a trip starts.

Another little gem in Sunday’s travel section of the paper, reports on communicable diseases being spread on airplane flights. Mumps is the latest. I can’t remember if I ever had them. If I only had them on one side can I get them again, I wonder? The good news there, is it takes up to three weeks after exposure to develop symptoms, so at least we should be home by then.