Don Pogreba is a current writer and retired teacher of English, Social Studies and Debate, and a loyal, if often sad, fan of the San Diego Padres and Portland Timbers. When he is not traveling, he is working on his classroom web site or dreaming about another adventure.
I told myself that I booked the flight to Madrid that included a 33 hour layover in Reykjavik because it saved a few hundred dollars. The truth is that I booked it because I wanted to make sure to see Iceland one more time. The trip was a bit more complicated than I had hoped it would be, as I realized in Seattle that I had left my...
This afternoon as I went through the security procedure at SEATAC, it was the usual mix of frustration and confusion about a system that seems designed to simultaneously, complete with all the accoutrement of theater, give us the illusion of safety and the absolutely certainty of frustration. The experience was amplified by the...
As I watch my friends debate the ongoing protests in Ferguson on its tragic anniversary and the Black Lives Matters demonstrators interrupting Bernie Sanders rallies, it’s even more apparent that many of us are simply so far removed from the lived experience of black Americans in the United States to offer more than a kneejerk or...
Turkey didn’t happen. I was feeling quite nervous about the trip and decided that one more serious attack would be a sign that I should maybe wait before making the trip. Just a week or so before I was scheduled to leave, there was another large attack, this one about six blocks from the apartment I had been planning to stay in. I...
While it was incredibly difficult to narrow down the hundreds of photographs I took on my European journey down to a manageable number, this slideshow represents the 25 that, right now, are my favorites from the trip. They’re not necessarily the best photos–and some are quite flawed–but they capture some of the best...
Much of what I have written here, and what many others have written about the experience of travel far more artfully than I could, centers on the transformative power of seeing the world. While I may never reach the level of epiphanies experience of my friend Lindsey, it’s fair to say that travel, and this lengthy trip in particular, has...
Let’s be honest here: among my “gifts” in life is a powerful ability to discern a person’s most annoying characteristic rather rapidly. That gift is accompanied by a corresponding curse that makes me a little less able than most to let things go, especially when I am tired or frustrated, feelings that occasionally arise when one is...
