The Traveling Ridleys: Sunday Journal

In these difficult times where our country seems more divided (often angrily) than ever over countless issues: which life matters or matters more, whose rights are being violated by wearing a mask, how to remember the history of our country and who to support in November… solace can be found…

As people who have spent most of our adult and professional lives planning and preparing for contingencies and who applied this process to our post-professional lives as travelers and bloggers, COVID in a word sucks. It sucks for a whole bunch of reasons: death and sickness, social isolation, the massive…

So what do travel bloggers write about when you can’t really travel places or go see things around the world? Well, you could write about the cruelty of a pandemic that kills indiscriminately but mostly takes out the elderly and compromised. Or you could write about how bandanna and mask…

My work life was divided, simplistically, into pre-9/11 and post-9/11. Pre-9/11, airport “security” was not super secure. Shoes remained on, belts too. Heck, you could carry on all the shampoo you wanted, no clear plastic baggies needed here. You didn’t even need to show an ID when traveling within the…

By Melissa. My watch broke right before all the craziness started to happen and when I could get to the mall to have it repaired going to the mall no longer seemed like such a good idea.  Those who know me well know I’m pretty obsessed with time.  I’m irritated…

Spring is usually a time we really enjoy. Evenings get longer, snow yields to flowers and budding trees. Birds chirp a little more joyously. People resume life more outdoors: exercising, cleaning up winter’s leavings, walking and gathering outside. For obvious reasons, this spring is surreal. Sure, the days are stretching…

There’s one expression we despise more than most. That’s right, you guessed it: it’s “the new normal.” We despised the expression even before people started referring to the current situation as a “new normal”. As a realistic optimist, I refuse to accept this as a “new normal”. This will pass.…

We are in unprecedented territory. Stores closed, concerts canceled, Broadway and Disney World closed, museums closed, schools closed, people shifting to working at home. Basketball and hockey season suspended, March Madness canceled, major league baseball season postponed, the Master’s Golf Tournament and Boston Marathon delayed until fall. Sure there’s some…