TravelBio

As mentioned a few posts ago, I took a new job back in the US starting in mid-January. I flew back from Japan to my hometown in Ohio at the end of December, arriving just in time for New Year's. My initial contract in Japan ended along with 2020, so it didn't make sense to start a new one for a week or two in January. This way I was also able to spend time with my parents and my sister and her husband (who live nearby) before moving to Washington, DC. In addition to family time, I had a lot of administrative tasks to take care of before the move; my new job is with the government, which involves a long, at times frustrating onboarding process. I had to fill out several HR packets, arrange temporary housing for my training in DC, decide on consequential things such as life insurance and thrift savings plan contributions, and choose my healthcare plan. By the way, why is healthcare so complicated here?! The electronic form listed over 200 healthcare options to chose from! After e...

During my stay in the DC area I also took a day trip to Harper's Ferry, an historic town where West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland meet. Harper's Ferry was a small ferry port during the 18th century, but sprang to prominence in the lead up to the Civil War, when abolitionist John Brown attempted to initiate a slave revolt by seizing the US arsenal in the town.  Harper's Ferry is at the easternmost point of West Virginia Brown and his 22 raiders initially captured the arsenal, but were quickly overwhelmed by a company of US Marines lead by Robert E Lee (later the commander of the Confederate Army). Those who survived, including Brown, were later executed. The event was widely and quickly covered across the US thanks to the new electrical telegraph. Today the town is home to only a few hundred people, but some of the historical buildings are well preserved, including a church and several storefronts, one of which is now a museum. Harper's Ferry is just over an hour from...

Now that I finished up my posts from Japan, I have a few more from early 2021 to add to the blog. I will keep these fairly short due to limited time (at the end of April I finally started my full-time training in Georgia).  Back in March, when I was doing remote training in the DC area, I visited Shenandoah National Park. Shenandoah is nearly 80 thousand acres of forest stretching along the Blue Ridge Mountains, itself part of the Appalachians. Danny, one of the other guys in my training class, decided to make a day trip there to fly fish and invited us to ride along. It turned out that I was the only one to take him up on the offer. Skyline Drive (in red) is the main park road cutting through the  national park; the DC suburbs extend to the top right of this map Danny left his house in Alexandria at the god-awful time of 4 am and picked me up at twenty after. He wanted to get to the park and set up before anyone else walked through and scared off the fish. Since we went on a ...