September 2022

The original plan for this trip was to share a villa in Provence for two weeks in the fall of 2021 with old friends from Walt's grad school days. Way back in 2019 we selected a large house in Orgon and made a deposit on it as soon as the dates we wanted appeared on the rental website. Then, of course, there was COVID. Although vaccines became available at the beginning of 2021 raising our hopes that we would be able to make the trip as planned, the emergence of the Delta variant forced us to reschedule it to the fall of 2022.

As 2022 dawned and Omicron surged, we wondered if the trip would have to be delayed once again. There were still a lot of travel requirements to figure out as we finalized the details, but we doggedly filled out the required forms and even bought some expensive travel insurance.

We like to break up the long trip to Europe by spending a couple of days in San Francisco. We were deciding how to spend those days when when our daughter called to tell us that tickets had just gone on sale for a Jackson Browne concert at the Greek Theater on the UC Berkeley campus. How serendipitous!

In the end, all COVID-related requirements were rescinded by both France and the US, we had a great time at the concert, and as a bonus we got to spend several days visiting friends in Oakland.