Withers Without You

Travel

Mar 20, 2023 ∞

📷🇲🇽 Analog (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @skarjune)

I made these photos on Playa Cerritos, Baja California Sur, Mexico, on a broken film camera a week ago, then a few days later they were developed in a photo lab at Currumbin Beach, Australia, and I’m posting them today from Las Tunas, Mexico. The wonders of living in a connected world. (Britt has flown back to Australia this week).



Mar 11, 2023 ∞
July: great at selling luggage, not great at supporting it
Update: July have made good on this error and sent me a replacement bag to where I was in the USA. Thanks for going the extra-mile guys.
I feel so heartbroken when I didn’t keep my word. I struggle as a parent when I make a promise - or a threat - to my girls because I want to make sure I can follow through on my word. When I fail to keep my word in friendships, family, or business, it pains me. It’s why I pore over our website copy and contracts to make sure we can and will do what we promise to do.
So I guess that’s why I’m feeling really disappointed in one of my favourite brands: July.
Flying from San Jose del Cabo to Brisbane through Los Angeles in November last year a wheel came off my Checked Plus July luggage somewhere between Alaska Airlines’ check-in at Cabo and the luggage carousel in LAX. I’m no fool, I’m sure one of the gentle giants working in luggage handling delicately placed the bag where it needed to be and the faulty wheel just fell off.
I had travel insurance on the trip, and no doubt Alaska Airlines might have covered it - but I know from experience that airlines are painful about damaged luggage.

So I had one week to make the claim with Alaska Airlines, but I thought travel insurance was the sure bet, but I know they’d ask me if I’d contacted the airline for coverage or the manufacturer for warranty, so I contacted July as I arrived on Australian soil on November 21 - intent to get a quick no from them so I can make an insurance claim, buy a new bag, and be ready to go by the time I leave Australia on December 21. We have one month to solve a hopefully easy problem.
July’s ‘Happiness Team’ replies - and by the way, unless you’re actually going to make people happy, just be a customer service or customer disservice team:
“We would be happy to have replacement wheels sent out for you.”
This I was not expecting!
So I give all the details as required and requested, put to bed any thoughts of wrestling with Alsaka’s premiere airline, and even worse, my travel insurance, and await the wheel.
It shipped from July one month later, as I was boarding my flight to Nashville via Sydney and Dallas. I explicitly communicated that I was in the country for a month and it took a month to send the wheel.
Another wheel was then allegedly shipped to my Mexican address but it’s been three months and all I am left with now is a series of thoughts and no wheels.
• going to “the media” aka social media or the news never works, until it does
• I really like the July suitcases and kind of enjoy having a matching set of five despite one limping
• we’re in Baja California Sur for another month until we go to Nashville and Hawaii then Europe before coming home in August, what am I going to do about this three-wheeled bag.
• I’d really just like another big July bag but do I want to continue to do business with a company that can’t simply keep its word?
• I wish they’d just said no back in November and I would have bought a new bag and they would have never experienced the pain of letting me down.
• Can I even get a July bag in, or to, Mexico before April 8?
Mar 10, 2023 ∞

Rancho Gaspareño

Bryan Jáuregui quotes Greg Schredder regarding Rancho Gaspareño, Baja California Sur, just south of Todos Santos, emphasis and photos mine:



Rancho Gaspareño was named after a Spanish galleon that went aground on the point, the Gaspareño. It was one of the so-called Manila galleons, Spanish ships that sailed between the Philippines and Acapulco for 250 years, bringing spices, silks and other luxuries from the far east to New Spain. All these galleons sailed the Pacific coast of Baja on their way to Acapulco, so naturally enough the area became riddled with pirates, many of them English and Dutch.

There are many tales of buried pirate treasure in the area, and local school groups still come to explore the cave at Rancho Gaspareño each year to tap into the lore. Treasure hunters have reason for optimism; in 1974 when the road from La Paz to the ferry terminal at Pichilingue was being built, a pirate chest of plundered loot was discovered by road workers.

I think of this part of the Baja coastline as the forgotten area. People drive past Rancho Gaspareño going a hundred miles an hour on the new 4-lane highway and have no idea of the history of the area.

The Guaycura and Pericue Indians were the original inhabitants before the Jesuit’s arrival in 1697, and they were essentially wiped out by the time the Jesuits left in 1768. The Jesuits built their theocracy based on a promise to the King of Spain to get rid of the pirates who were plundering his ships, and the pirates faded away with the demise of the Manila galleons in 1815. Dominican Padre Gabriel González had a ranch near Gaspareño from 1825 to 1850, and the tobacco, rum, sugar, corn, and livestock he produced there made him the richest man in Baja California. From his ranch the padre engaged in espionage and guerilla warfare during the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848, and – thanks in part to the Padre – Mexico won a major victory near Gaspareño (but lost the war). By 1855 the Padre had lost his political backing and left Baja for good. For the next one hundred years entrepreneurs made fortunes in the sugar cane industry with fields in areas like Gaspareño, but in the 1950s a severe drought and price drop lead to the demise of the industry; the last sugar processing plant closed in 1974. In that same year the trans peninsular highway made its way to Todos Santos, bringing new life to the town, and in 1985 renowned artist Charles Stewart arrived from Taos, planting the seed for Todos Santos’ current incarnation as an artists’ colony. It remains an agricultural center and surfing hotspot, only now it is firmly on the radar of major developers.

Now we all just speed past at 120km/hr on the four-lane highway and wonder how much the owner wants for it (shhh, $12M).



Mar 1, 2023 ∞

📷🚁🇲🇽 Four aerial frames from Playa Los Cerritos, Baja California Sur



Feb 21, 2023 ∞

Sunday // Playa Cerritos, BCS



Feb 11, 2023 ∞

To celebrate Britt’s birthday we took a walking food tour of Coyoacán in Mexico City with Sabores Mexico Food Tours. 10 points to our guide, Enya, for an excellent tour and secretly arranging a little birthday treat for Britt.



Jan 13, 2023 ∞
My friend Jay has made a really beautiful documentary about being a digital nomad, remote working around the Arctic Circle.
Dec 27, 2022 ∞
Old mate out on the back fence of our Airbnb in Nashville this morning is a bit cold.

Dec 9, 2022 ∞
A week in Tasmania

The first point of order was to check out the land we’ve just bought!

From there it was straight into work.
First in New Norfolk …

Then in Freycinet …


I really do love this state.







Back to work again on kunanyi, formerly known as Mount Wellington.






From Mount Wellington we move to Bruny Island for Katrina and Oscar’s elopement and it’s also my 41st birthday.






The Arch, at Bruny Island




And on arrival to our Airbnb, a 200 year old church, we found a very rare white Bennett’s Wallaby. On the mainland they’d be snapped up by predators, but on Bruny Island a small population of the genetically unique macropod survives and as a result, Bruny Island is the only place on earth you’ll spot one.



Nov 17, 2022 ∞
This is Noah Sushi in Pescadero. The best sushi I have ever tasted, and I’ve had good sushi, even in Japan. It’s on a dirt road, with no signage, and no fancy tables inside. People come from hundreds of kilometres around to enjoy it.
Baja is wild.

Nov 17, 2022 ∞
Street names in Baja are wild, in that they barely exist. To prove my residence/address I need to show an electrical bill. So this street a few blocks from our house is hilariously named.
It’s named after a gardener who still lives in that street, and drinks multiple litres of alcohol a day. His nick name is “Litre” or in Spanish “Litro”. So a gringo who loves him had a street sign made, attached to the pole at the start of the street, now everyone calls it Litro Street.

Nov 7, 2022 ∞
El Arco, Cabo San Lucas
Sunday sunrise from Cabo

Nov 5, 2022 ∞
Cerritos
A Thursday afternoon at Playa Los Cerritos

Nov 5, 2022 ∞
Just a boy and his favourite seventy to two-hundred millimetres of glass photographed by another boy and his medium format film camera, Jack Fitz at Playa Los Cerritos at sunset.

Oct 12, 2022 ∞

Teaching the Withers girls how to share margaritas



Oct 4, 2022 ∞
We're off to Mexico and how we can stay in contact, a manifesto
My anxiety is of the opinion that none of you really care about me, contacting me or enjoying our family travels, if that’s so, please cease reading and thank you for confirming my deepest fears and anxieties. But, if you do wish to stay in contact with me and enjoy our photos and stories of lands far away, I have four notes for you:
1. Every email address you have for me is wrong unless it is my name then an @ symbol then my last name, finishing with a .co … delete all other addresses from your address book or contacts app. Email remains my personal favourite place to communicate, please email whenever and whatever you like.

2. If you must instant message with, or call, me I would prefer for it to happen on iMessage or FaceTime, contacting me with the same email address. If you refuse the beauty and glory of the apple ecosystem I am unsure how we can stay in contact. WhatsApp is ugly, Telegram is full of Russian spam, none of you use the Signal app, plus it’s linked to my phone number which I’ll get to in point three.

3. My phone number will be trashed, and in the future, I’ll have other phone numbers that I’d prefer to not have to keep any longer than internet access is required. I wish to de-link myself from phone numbers in general but the world seems to think they are important.

4. Although I am often tempted to post and share on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and whatever is hot online, my heart longs for a time when we take control of the stories we read, when we personally decide what we get angry or happy about. So my contribution to this effort is to write, photograph, publish, and share on my own personal blog joshwithers.blog … there’s also a weekly digest of what’s been published there and you can get it by visiting at joshwithers.blog/subscribe to subscribe.
If you wish to engage in the same kind of blogging I am, I can highly recommend micro.blog.
I publish, photograph, write, broadcast and share online to satisfy something inside of me that wants to contribute to the fabric of our society, to the story of our generation, and this is me doing that. If you think that’s a bit weird, you’ll love my blog.

Sep 27, 2022 ∞

Why so dramatic, Rockhampton sunrise?



Sep 26, 2022 ∞

Qantas T80 seat selection reminder shortcut for Apple Shortcuts

Reading a recent Point Hacks email about the ol’ ‘T-80’ Qantas rule reminded me of an Apple Shortcuts shortcut I’d been meaning to make for a while. I’m no programmer, or Shortcut-writer, but I whipped the shortcut up today and I think it works really well.

Stealing this next image from Point Hacks, extra seats open up 80 hours out from the flight:



If you’d like a reminder about that opportunity, download the shortcut on your Apple device now. It works on Mac, iOS, and iPadOS, basically anywhere Shortcuts works.

This Shortcut looks for a calendar entry in the next year that has the letters QF in it, assumes that’s a calendar entry about a Qantas flight, and can create a reminder 80 hours before that flight to remind you that most seats that are blocked due to status are now unlocked and you’re able to select that seat if it’s not already taken.

It’s set up to look in all calendars and create a reminder in my Travel Reminders list, but you can edit it to your liking. My Qantas flights appear as part of a Tripit calendar subscription and this works fine.

Here’s how the Shortcut works:

It looks through my calendar and shows me all the calendar entries coming up that contain the letters QF, luckily for us the English language doesn’t afford us many words that use the letters q and f together, so it’s an easy selection.



The Shortcut displays the flights, you choose one, and a reminder is created along with a link to the Qantas manage your booking page.



If you use a different calendar system or a to-do/reminders system, it should retrofit if your system talks to Shortcuts like most do these days.

Download the Apple Shortcuts shortcut

Sep 26, 2022 ∞

If I was going to make a travel vlog this week my episode would be about how you should just stay at home again, airports are terrible, it’s quicker to walk. All hail HRH Lord Joyce, the decider of all airborne transport matters.

Formally: Todays flight issues involved a B717 being ill, and then Rockhampton’s Air Traffic Control being unstaffed until 9:30am so we have to wait in Brisbane until there’s air traffic control.

Aug 21, 2022 ∞

Time to get off the hamster wheel: interview with Spencer Howson

Spencer Howson on 4BC Weekends invited me into the studio to explain why we’re moving to Mexico.