It has been truly an honor to serve as the ACTC President these past eight years. Being on the Board previously for five non-contiguous years as Editor, Publisher, and Communication Coordinator, I knew what I was getting into. For a period of ACTC history, yelling and cursing at Board and ...

On top of beautiful Twin Peaks in a past ACTC tour of San Francisco, I was thrilled to see the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Marching Band making their way up. Marching bands are my favorites; I used to spend my whole day at the UC Davis Picnic Day ...

No luck! Argh! A train strike -- there went the plan to take the TGV and be back to Paris in a few hours. It took us nearly two days. The Musée de l'Orangerie is full of beautiful Monet's larger-than-life water lilies murals, except I never saw them because l'Orangerie was ...

When travelling, it is always exciting to visit historical places: the Paris Mouffetard cafés where Hemingway met with Gertrude Stein and Picasso; Gare St-Lazare where Monet would setup his easel; or Auvers-sur-Oise where Van Gogh roamed the melancholically beautiful wheatfield with crows in tow. Closer to home at Cannery Row, a faded wooden ...

During our last visit to Dalian, China, a child, no older than 5, came up and hugged Jean, asking for money. We knew not to give children money or sweets because the apparent kind act may create beggars of them. Furthermore, parents then will send their children to beg rather ...

On our September low-cost self-supported Italian trip, it was predicted to rain and perhaps snow up at Passo Stelvio by noon that day. We all started bright and early and nearly everyone made it to the top before the rain. As we were waiting it out, warm inside a cafe with an ...

Range of Light "Looking eastward from the summit of Pacheco Pass one shining morning, a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings still appears as the most beautiful I have ever beheld. At my feet lay the Great Central Valley of California, level and flowery, like a lake of pure ...

Years ago, we used to have the Olema Campout on the President's Weekend in February, cold and rainy! It lasted about five years and then another eight years after we moved it to the Point Reyes Hostel. Even though only Jean and I were there during the latter years of ...

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible ...

Timeless travel books encouraged us to take a journey and to find our way. “One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eyes", wrote Antoine St-Exupéry in his children’s book “Le Petit Prince”. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness”, wrote Mark Twain in “The ...