Markleevile (which is actually on the California side) is some hundred and something miles away. Here, it just felt like a very gentle rocking.

I've been in more intense quakes when I lived in Bakersfield, down at the southern end of our Great Valley. We were shocked awake one night around midnight in the summer of 1953 with a loud crash and an intense shake. We had damage: a decanter of Jim Beam bourbon fell from a high shelf in the kitchen, knocking a hole in the kitchen sink! All was not lost, however--the whiskey survived intact.

I have two particular memories from a holiday in Sorrento years ago. The first is standing at one end of the forum in the ruins of Pompeii, looking down the length of it and seeing, 10–15 miles away, the volcano that destroyed it. The second was on our walk up Vesuvius, seeing the farmers tending their crops in the fileds on its lower slopes. And I thought to myself, is the risk really worth it? To them, the amswer was obviously "Yes".

When we got to the top and looked down into the crater, it was perfectly flat and covered with small shale. It looked just like a dark grey hard court for tennis. The only sign of vulcanism was a faint smell of sulphur dioxide and the quiet hissing of the fumarole that was causing it, about 25 ft away to my right.

Let's see now, we have visited the following areas:
The UK, just before mad cow disease;
Hawaii and Sicily, before their volcanoes erupted;
New Zealand, the summer before Christchurch was devastated by earthquakes and blizzards;
Ukraine, just before Putin started making it unpleasant;
Cairo, Egypt, just before the place erupted in
religious/political riots;
China, just before Americans became persona non grata;
Mexico, just before it became unsafe to travel there.