Charlie

We stayed at both the Fairmont Vancouver (the original one by the art gallery downtown) and the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, and loved both of them. I was at the Empress in Victoria about 30 years ago.

I have taken the Indian Pacific both ways between Sydney and Perth, and the Ghan from Adelaide to Alice Springs. They were wonderful tourist experiences, but the only people we met who took them for practical reasons were folks who took them because they could take their own cars along for use when they got to their destination.

The train from Vancouver to Toronto used to take 3 days; we took it a couple of months ago, and it now takes 5 days. The problem is the same as in the US: the tracks are owned by the freight lines, which means freight trains get priority, so passenger trains often have to sit on side tracks and wait while the freights keep to their schedule. It is a relaxing way to get across Canada if you are not in a hurry and want to enjoy the scenery, but it's not a practical way to just get from A to B.

Flying makes no sense in the northeast for any trip under 300 miles. Trains don't make sense for most trips over 500 miles. Buses only make sense for trips under 150 miles. In bad weather, trains are more reliable than the other two.

Before making that jump, I would suggest becoming involved in a volunteer program working with kids, to see how you actually feel about spending lots of time with them. That said, being a formal teacher is not the same as just enjoying being with them--see @jeezopete's post above. It is a career, with its own professional obligations which may be just as stressful as what you are dealing with now.

Before making that jump, I would suggest becoming involved in a volunteer program working with kids, to see how you actually feel about spending lots of time with them. That said, being a formal teacher is not the same as just enjoying being with them--see @jeezopete's post above. It is a career, with its own professional obligations which may be just as stressful as what you are dealing with now.

My best friend was born in that hospital.

As I mentioned in the thread linked by @samhexum, when my spouse's doctor converted to a concierge practice, he considered it worthwhile to spend the money to stay in it, because his medical conditions need plenty of monitoring. Eventually I joined the practice, too, because of dissatisfaction with the limited availability of my longtime primary care physician. $1800/yr seems like a bargain to us, since we pay $2200/yr per person.

I prefer hard, because I hate to find shreds of the soft stuff in my underpants when I take them off (I know: TMI).

For me, message is a physically therapeutic experience, while sex is a psychologically therapeutic experience. I prefer not to combine the two experiences, which is why I would not hire a masseur for sex. The few times that I tried to hire a masseur for both, I found the combined experience unsatisfying.

Continuous.

I have always believed in dog-walking as part of a fitness plan, because it's good for both of you. Unless, of course, you have a dog like mine who keeps stopping to intensively sniff something for a couple of minutes.

On a dare when I was a teenager, I once rode a coaster 18 times in a row. I don't think I have been on one since then.

One never needed a/c in London before the late 1970s. Now there are enough days in the 80s to make it worthwhile.

Ditto.

He says his language is English?

It lasted much longer here in PS than yesterday's. The house rolled so long I started to feel a little sick.

Well, there was the time a guy took me home from a bar, and as we were about to get it on in his bedroom, he said, "Please be quiet. My mother is asleep in the next room."

I heard a funny crackling sound in my bedroom wall and stood up to investigate, when the floor beneath me made a sudden quick rolling motion. My spouse, who was lying on the living room sofa, called out, "What the hell was that? Oh....an earthquake." That was all. It was much less dramatic than the much closer Calexico quake several years ago, when I was sitting on the edge of our pool as the whole yard started to roll and the water splashed back and forth as I tried to keep from sliding in.

I have seen some of the photos in an ad under a different name, but like @rvwsnd if don't remember what it was. He also looks vaguely familiar, like someone I have seen around PS, but not in a gay setting.

Is that real? His cock looks thicker than his forearm.

Last year I got my first iPhone, which came with a phone number attached by the service provider. But the number apparently belonged previously to someone else. Every now and then I get a phone call from a potential employer trying to contact this person (it has obviously been in their files for some time), and occasionally a call entirely in Spanish. It's not surprising that someone, like an escort, would discard a number when he stopped using it for a specific purpose, and it would be reissued to someone else, particularly within a packed area code with high turnover.

The one in which I had my first hook-up in 1960 was still there!

I spent plenty of social time in gay bars in the 1960s and 70s, I knew bar managers (e.g., my first partner) and even a few owners fairly well, and I never heard any gossip about blackmailing customers. Given the customer base of the Stonewall, I find it hard to believe that the owners had a lot of wealthy Wall Street types whose identities they knew well enough to blackmail them.

Did you actually join, or just lurk for awhile before joining, as many people did in the early days? HB passed in 2005.