South Africa Adventure #1

Pinky and I are about to embark on another amorous adventure, this one to South Africa. About a year ago I "won" a bid for a week at Ezulwini Game Lodges located in the big 7 Balule nature reserve, part of the greater Kruger National Park. We fly later today to Johannesburg, where we will stay for a few days before flying north to Ezulwini. Once there, we will be staying at two different lodges for a total of five days, going out on two photo safaris each day. After week one, we fly to Cape Town for a week. This will be our second excursion to Africa, the first being The engineers without Borders mission in Ethiopia in 2006. I do not expect to lose 16 pounds this time around.

November 2, 2012 Hurricane Sandy Pittstown, NJ

Pinky and I are now four days without power, telephone service, water, heat, television or internet service. Thank goodness we have cell phone service. This is all due to Frankenstorm Sandy, which hit us Monday evening and lasted well into Tuesday. We would have had to be totally clueless not to know about the threat of the storm being on its way. News coverage was non stop. Even the mainstream media got it right! We didn’t have that much rain, only about 2”, but the wind was terrific! Anticipating Sandy’s arrival, we invited our next door neighbors, Tom and Doris Hurban, over for wine and snacks. This was a brilliant move on our part because rather than obsessing over the storm, we instead enjoyed the company of good friends and fine wine. As the evening wore on, the bumps on the roof became of less concern, largely because we didn’t care quite so much about them. We slept well despite the roar of the storm’s fury! The next day we awoke to find ourselves isolated due to numerous large trees having blown down over our 900’ long driveway. I heard the sound of a chainsaw and on investigating found Tom busy attending to sawing away. I joined him late in the AM. Tom rejoiced when Ryan unexpectedly arrived with chainsaw in tow to help us out! I did, too, for that matter, and he was a tremendous help. By the middle of the afternoon we cleared the path for ingress and egress for both our houses. (Ryan later admitted that if he had known the conditions were so bad, he might not have come to our help!) Later in the afternoon when fruitlessly seeking a shower at Courtside tennis club, I found that a straight route didn’t exist and that roads everywhere were closed due to fallen trees and downed wires. Clinton was totally dark, and most signalized intersections along state route 31were without power and closed down. That evening Pinky and I (without shower) were guests with the Lazarottis of the Hurbans, who had the forethought spend thriftiness to have a generator in their home, for one of Doris’ magnificently prepared dinners. Things weren’t so bad after all, and no one complained about me. My mistake on Wednesday was to drive to Panera Restaurant in Flemington to connect to the internet to finish an overdue ’69 CSF report. It was totally mobbed, with an unbelievable long line to order something to eat. Half of Flemington must have been there – high school students, crying babies, the works. I found an outlet next to a table I shared with a Kutztown coed, did my work and escaped. The commercial areas of Flemington had power, and there were long, long lines at the couple of gas stations that were open. There were many people standing in line with gas cans getting fuel for their home generators. The big events Thursday were lunch at Applebys in Flemington, where Pinky and I saw a TV for the first time since Monday morning, and my shower after tennis that evening at Courtside (where I was also able to charge my laptop and mifi)! How great it was. I hadn’t gone that long without a shower since Ethiopia in 2006! So now it’s Friday and still no power in Pittstown. So what are we going to do? Movie time at the Phillipsburg Regal theater, which has power and is open, to see Argo, a welcome reprieve from tending to the woodstove and fireplace. Then Monday – off to Cancun with the Mitchells. It is ironic that we have to go to essentially a third world country to renew our connection with the world and improve our standard of living!

Carnival Dream, Western Caribbean Sea February 7, 2012

In our never-ending quest for the next chapter in our Amorous Adventures, Pinky and I left NJ last Wednesday for a few days in Orlando before embarking on a week’s western Caribbean cruise.  Always mindful of getting the best bang for our buck, we stayed three nights at Marriott’s Grande Vista before cashing in a cruise certificate good for a week for $1850 for the two of us. In FL, I shook off the frost of recent skiing for more moderate climate and resumed to try and improve my golf game at the Faldo Institute, located on the Grande Vista grounds.  I can’t say that anything exciting happened during our stay.  One unexpected feature was that we were given a Chrysler convertible with only 24 miles and Sirius radio.  We enjoyed tooling around getting to places as much as being at places.  Highlights of the visit included seafood at Fulton’s Crab house in Downtown Disney, gin and tonics while watching the Magic Kingdom fireworks from the California Grille atop the Contemporary Hotel, and blues at BB Kings, just up International Dr. from where were staying.  Our hot convertible sped us to Port Canaveral, where we boarded our home for a week, Carnival Dream. Now, there is a ship!  We are joining 4200 passengers and 1450 crew aboard a vessel that has about 15 stories (I haven’t counted them all so far), 4 pools, 8 hot tubs, and countless bars conveniently located wherever we happen to be.  Absolutely huge, particularly imposing given our last cruise included only 225 passengers.   Our stateroom is on the 9th deck!  It has a balcony and is really cozy.  Stress? None here that we can discern.  The food is good and, if nothing else, plentiful.  At 8:15 PM dinner we join a family of 6 and another couple for the week.  So far I haven’t alienated anyone at the table that I am aware of, and the 4 kids liked Pinky after our first night’s dinner, to no surprise.  The couple, Ray and Deb, reign from Minneapolis, and Ray likes to talk a lot.  We seem to run into them everywhere despite the low odds provided by the 4200 passengers on the ship.  The people on board come in all sizes and shapes, but mostly large.  The large ones are particularly conspicuous at the breakfast and lunch buffets, where they really pile it on.  The plates lend themselves to this, as they are shaped and about the same size as a rugby ball, and that ovalness has a lot of room for all sorts of food.  Pinky and I have been pretty moderate in our intake and actually find ourselves hungry by the time the next meal comes around.  Super Bowl Sunday was great.  There is a sports bar with a dozen flat screen TVs on deck 5.  I scoped it out early and succeeded in claiming 2 stools at the bar by 4:45 PM, and Pinky joined me for the entire game.  And what a game it was!  The couple to our left supported New England, and I felt bad for the guy because he took the Giants win particularly hard.  Interestingly, our signal feed had NO commercials, but we did see Madonna for the half time show.  (I was told she is 52, which is hard to believe.) Yesterday the ship moored at Cozumel, off the Mayan coast of Mexico.  We opted out of the many excursion offerings and spent the afternoon at Alberto’s beach.  Nobody has ever heard of it, and for good reason.  It is small with a bar and kitchen.  We read on the beach and enjoyed an occasional Pacifico cerveza.  I confess to be really getting into my Kindle and downloaded Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage. Yes, we are really exciting, the two of us sitting for hours on the beach glued to our Kindles!  But, what could be better? Tonight is Cruise Elegant, so we all should look pretty sharp.  I expect we will meet the captain this evening – Massimo Marino.  Yes, Italian.   However, upon careful checking, I’ve confirmed that the ship goes nowhere near any rocks. Nevertheless, the two of us have been practicing daily putting on our life preservers, which we have down to about 4 seconds now. One thing the ship has that Pinky and I really like is a piano bar.   We spent an hour or so last evening after dinner and enjoyed a great mix of Billy Joel, Beatles and Ray Charles.  If we can stay up we will return after dinner this evening.

Marsh Harbour, Abaco, Bahamas March 13, 2011

We have been almost entirely out of contact since we left Harbour Island. My wifi hasn’t worked since we left Harbour Is., and I can’t send or receive email or get on the internet. And I haven’t had access to wifi anywhere. Our stay on the island was relaxing, and we came to be recognized by a number of people there. We became friends with our inn keeper, Rosie, and we enjoyed talking with her and her mother, Stephanie, and daughter Wongechi. Rosie’s situation is rather interesting. She is married to a Kenyan who runs a tea and coffee plantation in Kenya. Obviously, they don’t live together for much of the year. He is 20 years older than she is. Curiously, both her husband and mother are my age, 64. She was quite interested to hear of our 2006 experiences in Ethiopia and wants us to see her and her Kenyan family in Kenya. We enjoyed our dinners on the island and on Sunday went to the Anglican Church with Rosie. Her daughter had a dance performance during the service. I was asked to introduce us to the congregation, which I did standing by stating my name and that I am from NJ, and this is my wife Pinky and she is from NJ, too. For some reason, everybody laughed at that. There was a lot of hymn singing, and the service was not unlike that of a Roman Catholic Church. Father Russell gave a memorial sermon about going to the mountain and then into the valley. This service ran about 2 hours, the longest regular church service I’ve ever been to. For the remainder of our stay we ran into people who recognized us in one way or another. For instance, our waitress at Sip Sip recognized us from church. At dinner Sunday we ran into Father Russell and his wife and exchanged cordialities with them. Later, at Valentines Marina where they had a great Bahaman band that played Shout, we had the running lady, who I encouraged earlier while she was jogging along a street, speak with us, and a man from Richmond who sat behind us at the church service stopped by, too. The beach was a short ride from Rosie’s B&B. It faced the Atlantic Ocean, was flat and covered with fine white sand. The water was refreshing and relatively calm due to a reef off shore. I was in frequent contact via email with Jerry Brown. On Monday morning Jerry advised that they were docked at Spanish Wells, at the north end of Eleuthera Island, and were waiting for a mechanic to attend to their inoperative generator. On her instruction, after bidding farewell to Rosie and her family, we boarded the 3:40 ferry for Spanish Wells. The Browns met us there with a golf cart, but not without a little drama. The gang plank was raised before we got off, and we almost didn’t disembark with our luggage before the ferry left. It was a close call. Since then we have been cruising around in the 46’ trawler in beautiful Bahamian waters, brilliant sun, continuous breezes (heavier at times) and moderate temperatures that haven’t risen above 80 degrees. Their trawler is a wonderful craft with quarters aft (ours) and for (Browns). The two are separated by a living/dining area, complete with reading lamps and Sirius radio. Above is the bridge, where Capt. Andy directs our passage. The boat is equipped with a rubber dingy that we use to get to landfall when moored. We even had a pretty neat toilet that we flushed with a hand pump.

Hope Town, Elbow Cay, Bahamas March 12, 2011

We have been almost entirely out of contact since we left Harbour Island. My mifi hasn’t worked, and I can’t send or receive email or get on the internet. Our stay on the island was relaxing, and we came to be recognized by a number of people there. We became friends with our inn keeper, Rosie, and we enjoyed talking with her and her mother, Stephanie, and daughter. Rosie’s situation is rather interesting. She is married to a Kenyan who runs a tea and coffee plantation in Kenya. Obviously, they don’t live together for much of the year. He is 20 years older than she is. Curiously, both her husband and mother are my age, 64. She was quite interested to hear of our 2006 experiences in Ethiopia and wants us to see her and her Kenyan family in Kenya. We enjoyed our dinners on the island and on Sunday went to the Anglican church with Rosie. Her daughter had a dance performance during the service. I was asked to introduce us to the congregation, which I did standing by stating my name and that I am from NJ, and this is my wife Pinky and she is from NJ, too. For some reason, everybody laughed at that. There was a lot of hymn singing, and the service was not unlike that of a Roman Catholic Church. Father Russell gave a memorial sermon about going to the mountain and then into the valley. This service ran about 2 hours, the longest regular church service I’ve ever been to. For the remainder of our stay we ran into people who recognized us in one way or another. Our waitress at Sip Sip recognized us from church. For instance, at dinner we ran into Father Russell and his wife and exchanged cordialities with them. At Valentines Marina Sunday night where they had a great Bahaman band that played Shout we had the running lady, who I encouraged earlier while she was jogging along a street, speak with us, and a man from Richmond who sat behind us at the church service stopped by, too.

Dunmore Town, Eleutera Bahamas Friday, March 4, 1011

Pinky and I embarked on another of our adventures today. This all started after I had a couple beers and dinner with Princeton classmate Andy Brown on February 2 after a class Community Service Fund board meeting and Andy told me he and his wife Jerry were leaving the following Monday for the Bahamas to cruise around the islands on their troller. He then asked if Pinky and I would be interested in meeting them in the Bahamas and cruising with them for a few days. My first question, of course, was, “Just what is a troller?” Well, it is an engine driven boat that does not depend on wind power. After following up with Pinky about this we enthusiastically said yes! Andy said they would pick up us up on the island of Eleuthera on or about March 7, and we would all fly back to NJ on Sunday the 13th. All we had to do was get ourselves to Eleuthera! I booked a flight to North Eleuthera airport and a return from Great Abaco. I confess to having to look both islands up on the world atlas, as I really didn’t know where any Bahamas island is except Nassau (a key place given that I was born on Nassau Road in High Bridge and have a particular soft spot in my heart for Nassau Hall.) So, we left on a flight from Newark today, after having an unpleasant incident with TASA. We brought with us 16 oz. containers of sun block and daily moisture lotion, along with a prescription for these needed applications from Dr. Jim Johnson (’69). The TASA agent confiscated these two dangerous substances at security, advising that they each exceeded the maximum permitted 3 oz. and that they were merely over the counter crèmes, not perscriptions. Despite my protests to the contrary, he grabbed them and dumped them in the garbage. Needless to say, I was pissed and also concerned about spending 9 days in the Bahamas without these much needed skin conditioners. Adding insult to this is that when we arrived in Ft. Lauderdale en route to Eleuthera, upon inquiry the TASA agent there told me that the Newark agent was wrong in confiscating the crèmes and that Dr. Jim’s scribbled prescription should have sufficed. (This is where we are today compared to the ‘60’s, less liberty and freedom, more inflexible government imposition, less common sense….) Our flight to Eleuthera was a 10 seater, but I handled it pretty well. We settled into our home for 3 days – the Sugar Maple, a modest 7-room B&B on Harbour Island, a 10 minute water taxi ride east of Eleuthera. Harbour Island is a tiny 3-mile long by 1-mile wide island with lots of restaurants and doll-house like architecture. The best way to get around here is by golf cart, and we have already reasonably mastered the island’s traffic patterns - no traffic lights, no tour buses, no trucks, narrow paved roads with lots of pot holes, no traffic police, people actually wave to you when you drive by and they drive on the left side of the road. I imagine it is like Nassau was 50 years ago before the big hotels and cruise ships. This is a far cry from our usual stays at places like Marriott Vacation Club but looks to be an ideal get away for a few days before we join the Browns on their troller. Our dinner tonight was at a local restaurant and consisted of “Bahamas lobster” - superb!

Sunday, June 27, 2010, St. Petersburg, Russia

When I left off in my earlier dispatch, we were assembled at the Atlantic Hotel in St. Petersburg, Russia, waiting to disembark for the wedding celebration of Jamie Blackburn and Victoria Leontieva, which was to include getting there as well as being there. None of us knew what to expect, including the groom. The 43 of us that traveled from the US were all smiles and anxious talk, particularly the mother of the groom, Cyndy Blackburn. We knew we were about to have a good and memorable time, but we didn’t know the half of it. Three days before when Pinky and I arrived in St. Petersburg, time lagged and exhausted as we were, we had dragged ourselves to the ballet for a presentation of Swan Lake at the Majiinski Theater, part of St. Petersburg’s Stars of the White Nights Music Festival. At the time we didn’t think anything could top what we experienced. For those not familiar with Swan Lake, and I confess to not having been, this is the quintessential of ballets, with music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and performances by artists with long and complicated Russian names On top of it the theater is historically magnificent, with impeccable acoustics. Swan Lake proved to be merely an introduction to The Wedding Celebration We Will All Remember! Each of the guests had been provided with an invitation in Russian, but with enough English that we should have at least some sense of what was coming: Dear passengers, have a good trip! Don’t be late on the ship of contemporaneity, which will be waiting for you at Moyka Nab. 96 at 18.00 o’clock and leave, when two wedding dabble phial banged and one is simple (18:30) All hands on deck, there, when marriages are concluded! Now, I confess that I read this invitation at least a half a dozen times and had no idea what it said, so along with everyone else I anxiously boarded one of the two buses and left @ 5:30 PM for the waterways, looking forward to having a vodka toast to the bride and groom with Jimmy! Once on board the canal boats, we enjoyed oeuvre deuves, chilled vodka, entertainment and sights of St. Petersburg from the canal (or river, I’m not sure which.) We had music and a hilarious magician. The boat ride was an event in itself and went on for quite some time. In Russia, it is thought that if the bride and groom see angels on their wedding day, it will bring them luck. Well, along the way a group of white angels caught up with us and kept up along the way riding bicycles and letting us all know their presence by blowing whistles and saluting us all from the walkways lining the waterway and from bridges overhead. We eventually got to more open water, when the white pigeons appeared. Out they came, and many of the family took them and raised them into the air on signal for an incredible aerial display. White doves apparently also bring good luck to the bride and groom, who were sailing in their own boat with the maid of honor and best man and who looked like they were having the time of their lives! We arrived where we were to have the wedding feast and disembarked to the greetings of various angels, two of which were young women elevated high above the ground with enormous white dresses. Needless to say, I was snapping away with my Canon TiII digital SLR camera. Everyone was smiling and obviously pleased with the unfolding of events. The assembled, which looked to be between 125 and 150, greeted the bride and groom. Victoria’s dress was stunning, and her father had to be beside himself with pride and happiness. (I relate better to the father since I am the father of a recent bride but realize well that Victoria’s mother had to be equally inspired.) Both parents, Rosteslav and Marionella Leontiev, proved to be most wonderful of hosts. The bride and groom danced briefly on an outside patio, framed on one side by the river and two enormous semicircular montages of the bride and groom, and on the other side by the restaurant. We were entertained by a series of performances, including American Indian dancing led by the father of the groom, complete with chief’s headdress; bluegrass band Sundown, complete with 5-string banjo, all Russian (VERY impressive): Irish dancers; Irish bagpipers; Russian folk dancers; a special video wherein US President Barak Obama and Russia President Dmitry Medvedev greeted the newlyweds and spoke to their hopes for a happy and productive marriage. The US President told the assembled that this alliance by marriage is very symbolic and as Russian character, cheerful disposition of Moldovia and endurance of Yakutia are wonderfully mixed in Victoria; ballroom dancing brilliantly performed by a child couple; cooking contest between the bride’s and groom’s families; more folk dancing where the wedding guests jumped in and showed their stuff; three red-clad strong men who performed incredible feats of strength, and a finale of an assemblage of dancers doing a Broadway-like number outside in the rain, topped off by a Reunions-like fireworks display! When it came time for Victoria to toss her flowers, I told Olga that she should be sure to catch it, and she dutifully did! Back on the boats, the wedding guests were treated to White Nights on the St. Petersburg waterways, including raising of the many drawbridges, fully lit and visible during the brief period of darkness. Still more vodka and fellowship, great conversation, and the American contingent were by now great friends sharing in an experience we all knew was really special. Jimmy was so taken (either by the events but more probably by vodka or Champaign) that he took a header down the stairs in the bow, but suffered only a minor abrasion on his head after I helped to break his fall. Soon thereafter we docked, and Pinky and I smartly elected to walk back to the Atlantic Hotel. Thank goodness we went with Bart and Mary Jane Stuck. Bart is Jimmy’s boyhood buddy from Detroit. He helped us find our way with nary a mishap, and we made it back just as daybreak emerged at 3:30 AM.