Steve and Judy's Travels!

…roadrunner in this picture?

The average wedding now costs $29,000.

That makes us reflect on our own wedding.  One week of planning.  Judy’s brother Earl bought her a wedding dress.  (Judy weighed 98 pounds.  Nobody had wedding dresses for kids, so he bought her a cocktail dress at House of Nine and they modified it.)  I went to rent a tux, and at 120 pounds they didn’t have anything close to fitting me and couldn’t do any alterations in less than a week, so I wore my Army dress uniform.  Bill and Diane worked out the venue.  Diane had a friend who did this sort of thing and found us a local chapel we could use.  And a church official to preside.  I suspect they covered the cost of this.  I don’t remember paying anyone for it.  I might have been unaware.  Judy walked down the aisle.  I remember that.  We each proclaimed “I do”, one of us softly and the other forcefully.  For the photos after, the photographer called for Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, and it didn’t register.  We thought they were starting with my mom and dad.  There was rice.  John Duncan, the Best Man, my friend from my last duty assignment, provided the car for the getaway and drove us back to my house.  We changed clothes and Judy and I headed straight off on our honeymoon with a drive north along the coast, east through Yosemite Valley, and back south down the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Range, making up places to stop as we went.  We were limited on time because I only had a 30 day leave before I reported for duty at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.  Brother Tom loaned us his car for the honeymoon.  Dad gave us his Chevron gas credit card.  We walked into a restaurant in Santa Barbara for dinner the first night with no reservations.  They asked us if it was our prom.  We had prime rib.  After dinner we inquired at a hotel, without reservations, and they not only found us a room, but upgraded it to the honeymoon suite.  That’s how our honeymoon went.  Bolstered by the kindness of stangers.

We had the wedding reception at Mom and Dad’s house a week later when we returned home.  The wedding cake was a sheet cake.  Judy’s mom bought it.  We paid $50 for the wedding pictures.  It would have cost $75 to have them in color and that seemed extravagant, so our pictures are forever in black and white.

So, come to think of it, I only remember spending $50 on our wedding, thanks to the kindness of family.  I suspect altogether it cost less than the average cost now of $29,000.

Stopping for a burger while driving down the road with helicopters!

I want a helicopter!

They’re out there right now.  Well, maybe not in the U.S. but in other parts of the world.  It’s a little early in the technology, but they’re coming.  Battery electric cars with solar panels to augment their range. Aptera.  Fisker.  Sono Motors.  Mercedes Benz.  They’re all working on them.

Aptera claims a combined range, solar and plug-in, of 1,000 miles for its car that’s almost in production.

But imagine an order of magnitude improvement in battery technology.  An order of magnitude improvement in solar technology.  That will happen in a few years (or decades).  Put them together on cars and one day we’ll be looking back saying “Remember when you had to stop and put fuel in a car?”  We’ll be driving whenever we want and as far as we want, without ever stopping to fuel up.  There will still need to be convenience stores along the highway so we can stock up on Krispy Kremes though.

But it cleared.