Travel and Other Updates - June 2020

Travel Updates
We're getting ready to pull the plug on our October 2020 trip to Italy.  We had planned to travel several days on our own in Florence and then board a Viking Ocean cruise ship that would take us to Mediterranean ports. Although the Tuscany area has not seen as many COVID-19 infections as the regions of Veneto and Lombardy, we have no COVID-19  immunity, if such a thing actually exists.
    
We remain questionable about 2021 travel. Reservations include an expedition trip to the Russian Arctic area and a round-trip Princess cruise from San Francisco to Hawaii. Actually, these two trips may be cancelled if travel restrictions are too cumbersome. Another reason for cancellation is any suspicion that either ship could become a ghost ship - wandering from port to port, hoping for local port embarkation authorization.

In preparation for these many trip cancellations, we arranged some backup plans. Should we cancel our October 2020 Viking Ocean cruise, we have reservations for a Viking Ocean Mediterrnean cruise in 2022. Our cancelled April 2020 Egypt trip was already moved to 2022. The Russian Arctic expedition can always be shifted to a 2022 or 2023 polar trip, health willing.

We still have hopes for a short hiking trip into Lassen Volcanic National Park in the fall, but this is tentative. 

Other News
In April, someone hijacked my UPS shipping account and charged three shipments to my UPS account. The UPS fraud office has been helpful in clearing up this problem and reversing $300 worth of shipping charges back to my bank. This has been quite an experience and, after six weeks, it looks like all three charges will soon be reversed by UPS.

With the "stay at home" policy in California, I have more time for backyard and vegetable gardening. My vegetable garden has been planted with tomatoes, bell peppers, kale, cucumbers, eggplant, beans and peas. The romaine lettuce, broccoli, spinach and cilantro were harvested during the spring.

Like many others with time on their hands, I've been focusing on sourdough bread making. I now have a jar of strong sourdough starter. I have three sourdough loaves under my belt at this point. I was pleased with the last two loaves. 

It was a challenge to find enough flour in April to be confident that I could both feed the starter and create a few loaves. It seems that the initial run on flour has subsided as bread and all-purpose flour can now be found on many grocery shelves.