Rafting on the Amazon

I always knew that Miranda was capable of doing just about anything -- and probably would do it whatever we said. But I never really expected to hear that she would be going rafting on the Amazon in Peru! Having completed two days of the race, I hear she's still alive and well. That's good news indeed.

She's in Peru on a Fogarty Scholarship for the academic year 09-10 and will therefore be graduating from Vet school in '11 instead of '10. She definitely seems to be having fun there in Peru. So far, she hasn't done a lot of real work, I gather, but she's still trying to get her project organized. Things operate slowly down there, I guess. Mañana.

I'm not quite sure how wide the river is at Iquitos but having watched Michael Palin's travel program Full Circle, I'd guess it's about a mile across. It doesn't seem like an ideal place to go rafting -- especially on a raft you built yourself just the previous day -- but there are plenty of crazies who come from all over the world to do it!

Fall - on steroids

At this time of year, we're accustomed to nice fluffy light things falling down around us -- leaves! But this year, we are in constant danger (when outside) of nasty hard things falling down on us -- acorns! I've never seen so many acorns. I've been discussing it this week with Kim. This morning, the Boston Globe ran a story about the acorn glut.

Still, the weather is actually delightful! This morning we went to Great Brook State Park with the three dogs and the map from last week's orienteering event. We did some trails that I hadn't really known about before last week and we never met a soul on those trails. It was wonderful. Cooper (and Puga) had a wonderful time romping about. We discovered that, in addition to new people (women especially), Cooper is apprehensive about horses and bikes. The corn stalks as not quite as high as an elephant's eye, but it's getting up there.

We found that Cooper loves ice cream too (no big surprise there). Cindy ate a huge amount of it too. Kim also found out this morning at the vet/groomers where Cooper was getting his nails clipped that we aren't the only ones that think he's a super handsome nice dog! Apparently, there's a friend of one of the groomers who's looking for a dog. We'll have to see what happens.

Incidentally, I'm sitting here with five dogs (the muppets are here while K & K are at a concert) and all is quiet. It's great that they all get along!

Up, down and roundabout

What a day! By 10am we'd been up in a balloon and picked apples at the local orchard. I then went out orienteering while the others went for a walk in the woods. After all that, I was feeling my age and needing a nap!

We – Joan, Kara, Kim and I – arrived at Minuteman field (Stow, MA) at 6:15 for a date with Rudy and the rest of Dragonfire Balloon. We arrived, in the dawn's early light, a few minutes earlier than the vans and crew. Although we knew in advance that there would be two balloons, we were a bit surprised to find that, for four passengers, there were two pilots and seven crew! Once we saw all the work and preparations that had to be performed however, we could see that all were necessary.
Here we see the critical operation whereby the air in the balloon is heated, without the benefit of being above the burner. In a while, everything was ready and it was time to board and fasten our seatbelts, except of course there are no seats and definitely no seatbelts!

Our pilot was Mark and theirs was Rudy (obscured by the pylon). Then, without me even realizing it (I was busy photographing the other balloon) we were up! Pretty soon we were at almost 750' (about 650' above ground) which was our maximum altitude and tripping along at 8.5 mph. At that point, it was really magical – floating over ponds, marshes, woods with two Great Blue Herons below. Soon we were chatting with joggers on the ground. Then we were in West Acton and soon over Route 2. As we were coming in to land, I saw a goshawk flying up into a tree. Mark brought us down towards a baseball field next to a school, but just as we were coming down to about 50', the wind died and we began to hover over the school buses. But the chase crew was right there and soon we were down in the parking area having experienced the gentlest possible landing. The flight was 4.4 miles and took 61 minutes to complete.

We had a fantastic time –I'd love to do it again! Joan, who was the "instigator" of the trip had it on her "bucket list", but now she'd like to go again, as would we all.

It isn't an inexpensive pastime, however, so a many of the enthusiasts earn flights by crewing for paying customers. Maybe we could try that!

Finally, once the balloon was packed up and loaded in the van (maybe 20 minutes), we headed back to the airfield for our champagne and snack. Rudy and the whole team were really great. We'd definitely recommend them!

On the way home, we went to our local orchard to get some Macouns.

Finally, I went orienteering at Carlisle State Park where, surprisingly, I've never orienteered. I decided to do the difficult course and it certainly was hard – I'm not as good at finding the controls as I used to be of course (you need practice). But I had a great time and completed it.

Now, all together now: Up Up and Away...

Dog days and orchestra

This (Friday) afternoon, we went to pick up our latest foster dog, Cooper. He's half Shetland Sheepdog ("Sheltie") and half... well we don't know but he looks a bit German Shepherdish to me. In any case, he (yes our first ever male dog) is the sweetest and best behaved dog imaginable. He's not really house-trained yet so we're keeping fingers crossed!

He came up from Tennessee starting out last Monday and after the two day journey and two day quarantine he was ready to be picked up today.

Meanwhile, Wednesday was our first orchestra rehearsal of the season. The program for the first concert of the year. We'll be playing Mendelssohn's 3rd (Scottish) Symphony and Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs. I don't really know the latter piece well, but I already love it after a few hearings of the CD that I just got. It's going to be a great concert!

(Sun morning)...

Well, Cooper has been a super dog -- no problems whatsoever. More on him soon, I expect. But for now, we're off for our balloon ride!

Good times, blights and crashes

We've been having a good time lately. After last weekend's hike, we've been feeling good. The weather was nice all week (until Saturday) and the nicest time of year is here.

Some of you will be pleased to note that I now have a bridge blog where I will now be putting any detailed accounts of bridge games, hands, etc.

When Saturday turned so dismal we decided to play bridge. Normally we would go all the way to Westwood (about 35-40 mins) because they have a very competitive game. But this weekend there was a sectional in Rhode Island (drawing the better players) so we decided to try Dean's "Good Timers" game at the Bridge Spot in Woburn (only 20-25 mins). We had a good time. Dean runs a very nice game there. We didn't suffer any terrible fixes (the bridge equivalent of a "bad beat") and we received a handsome number of gifts. That's the thing about playing in games where most of the players are new to the game. There are a lot more fixes and a lot more gifts. You have to hope that the latter outweigh the former.

Our first year of growing vegetables appears to have been a failure. Not an abject failure, because we have been receiving our "share" of wonderful fresh organically grown vegetables. But the squashes that Charlie planted do not seem to be doing anything. Surely we should be seeing them by now? And all the tomatoes got the blight. Apparently, the early wet weather this summer has precipitated the worst tomato/potato blight in years in these parts. So yesterday (Shh.. don't tell anyone how late we were) I pulled up all of the tomato plants and put them into garbage bags.

But just as you think everything is going well, life throws you a curve ball. My server down in New York which has been hosting PartnershipDesk for the last three years has crashed quite badly. Both the power supply and the motherboard were fried it seems. Since I don't believe in coincidences, I would imagine that the power supply failed and in turn zapped the motherboard. There's still a perfectly good processor, two mirrored hard drives (of which I now have one) and the memory to salvage if it comes to that. Meanwhile, I have to get the site up and running again!

The Instant Matchpoint Game

The finals are in progress in São Paulo (third set of six). USA 2 is battling Italy in the Bermuda Bowl, but currently with a fair lead - oops - Italy surged ahead in the second set and it is they who have the lead. In the Venice cup, the Chinese women are comfortably leading USA. In the Seniors, Poland has a commanding lead over England.

Kim and I took the opportunity of a free Wednesday evening to play in the Instant Matchpoint Game at the Winchester club. In turn that enabled us to eat at one of our favorite places, Punjab in Arlington center. The food was good as always. But, OMG, the traffic was bad. We were both 30 minutes late for our date!

The way the IMP game works (not to be confused with International matchpoints) is that each board has a set score (out of 100) for each of the probable, and many of the not-so-probable, outcomes. This allows you to see immediately how your result was. Supposedly, the matchpoints are based on about a thousand results from the table at some unknown previous event. But they were certainly bizarre. Given that the setter, Larry Cohen in this case, has significant discretion to "correct" odd happenings from previous plays, you'd expect, or at least hope, that the absolute par on a board would score somewhere around 50, unless it's a very lucky layout or requires double-dummy play or defense. But very often the par score was far from 50. A case in point: on board 25, par is NS -600 (E/W can make 3NT or 5C) for which the unlucky N/S pair would receive 23. Our score was -100 yet, for that, we got only 63! What would have to happen for us to get a really good score?

On the whole, we didn't play particularly well and ended up fractionally below average. Nevertheless, we received 1.28 masterpoints! A strange world, indeed.

Blog about a movie about a blog (and a book)

We just returned from the very entertaining movie Julie and Julia about Julie Powell who wrote a blog for a year on making the 524 recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Indeed the blog continues and recently she commented on whether or not Julia Child was irritated by her blog. Meryl Streep was, as always, incredible. There's no one to compare with her.

The timing was excellent as we have just recently returned from France. French cuisine is indeed fantastic but I believe not because it is so very particular and hard to get right -- but because it uses simple ingredients and doesn't try to "improve" natural flavors, as tends to be the obsession over here. But what do I know? I'm from England -- the home of wonderful, if different, food too.

Speaking (or writing) about good food reminds me of our dinner, shared with good friends, on Friday in Nashua at the Villa Banca in Nashua during the break between bridge sessions. It was my second visit in as many days and the food - cucina Italiana - was really excellent. Definitely a place worth many returns.

Mt. Bigelow

What a fantastic hike! We planned (and trained) for this all year and it exceeded all expectations. Joining us on this hike were Kara and, of course, Clover (near foreground) and Jigsaw (Kara's lap) (two 8 pound Maltipoos), Larry and Cheryl with Juniper (a 10-yr-old Bichon Frisse - on right of photo) and of course our own Puga (16 pound mutt) and Cindy (19 pound Cairn Terrier) -- both too busy to be in photo.

Avery peak of Mt. Bigelow (in Maine) is officially 4088' but my GPS consistently put it at 4104'. The total length of our hike was 10.6 miles, which took us about 10h 30m (including about 75-90 minutes on the top of the mountain). The elevation gain was 2835'. At one point, the trail goes up very steeply indeed -- 995' in 0.72 miles -- but it was very well laid out with many easy rock steps in places. Nevertheless, it took a fair bit of puff to get up there!

The peak (one of two separate peaks at the top of Mt. Bigelow) was named after Myron Avery, a lawyer and advocate (and first completer) of the 2000-mile Appalachian Trail (since then it has been extended to 2175 miles). Appropriately, Mt. Bigelow is the first point on the AT whence hikers can (on a good day) clearly see their destination, Mt. Katahdin (a further 180 miles). Three "thru-hikers" came through while we ate our lunch: "Blackstone" from Northern VA, and two brothers from Florida. The former had started in April and was planning to finish in ten days time. We wish them well.

The weather (and visibility) were perfect. Mt. Katahdin was indeed visible (though a bit hazy) and the views of Flagstaff lake (the result of damming the Dead River -- see photo below) were spectacular. We never saw a black fly and only saw one or two mosquitoes when we were well down and almost back to the car. The temperature was around 43F when we set out and was probably in the high 60s or low 70s while on the summit. There was only a light breeze and the sun more than made up for any heat lost thereby.


While I'm on the subject, let me do what I can for the reputation of Benedict Arnold. Most school text books pretty much concentrate on the fact of his treason without giving much of the background, and indeed without honoring his earlier successes. One of the major actions he commanded was the (eastern) expeditionary force to capture Quebec in 1775. He led his small contingent of 1100 men up the Kennebec river, thence up the Dead river (passing at the foot of Mt. Bigelow, therefore) into Quebec. He reached Quebec before the western force arrived (using the supposedly easier route up Lake Champlain) and they joined forces. Despite their audaciousness and their excellent wilderness skills, their quest was ultimately unsuccessful. Major Bigelow was one of Arnold's four division commanders in this action and was the first known to ascend the mountain (for reconnaissance purposes).

Nashua Regional and Bermuda Bowl

Yesterday I played with Len in the open Swiss at the Nashua Regional with teammates Kathy and Saul (not a regular partnership). Because of the new flighting by average masterpoints, we ended up being in flight B which was just as well since we didn't distinguish ourselves brilliantly, ending up 8= in B. There were 52 teams altogether and we were tied for 20th overall (but flight A "paid" only 19 places). Surprisingly, we didn't bid and make any slams. We got to the six level twice, pushing a bit too much perhaps, but both times the slam failed. Other than that we didn't have any major problems. For the uninitiated, a "Swiss" is run by matching teams with the same current total victory points (each of the eight matches that a team plays has 20 victory points available to be shared between the two opponents).

Today, Kim is playing in the open pairs with Donna. At the break they were lying 2nd so I'm hoping that the Chicken Parm at dinner at the Villa Banca has helped push them into first place. We had dinner with our friends Rob, Melissa, Steve and Dave from NY/NJ.

Meanwhile, Adam and Doug and the rest of USA 1 in Sao Paulo are not doing too well. They're lying 17th (of 22) teams. But USA 2 looks well placed (5th currently) to qualify for the 8-team playoffs.

The Messenger

February 4th is a special day to be born, apparently. Kim was born on that day and so too was my niece, Mia. They both have such sunny dispositions. Something to do with Groundhog day being two days earlier perhaps. My maternal grandfather was also born that day -- by all accounts another cheerful soul. Other famous people born that day include Charles Lindbergh and Rosa Parks.

Mia is seven and is a wonderfully happy, sophisticated and intelligent young lady. When we were in France, the houses that we were living in were separated by about 400' and if there was a message to be delivered, Mia would literally run down the street and up the dozen or so stone steps. Never did she tire of this.

We took as a gift the European edition of Ticket to Ride, a board game involving developing railroad routes, a little bit similar to Monopoly. Having won her only two monopoly games, she was ready to try TTR. Naturally she won. "This is such a great game," she exclaimed, "I'm going to throw Monopoly out". We suggested she might want to keep Monopoly regardless. Next day, she failed to win TTR and of course now, Monopoly was back "in". But she really puts everything into these games, and all other activities. She draws well and thus keeps herself busy for hours on end.

We knew that Mia would enjoy seeing around the Château d'Ussé, which supposedly inspired the story of Sleeping Beauty (La Belle au bois dormant). Here she is peeking in the dining room window.

Fall

September already and fall is definitely in the air. It was 50F (10C) this morning. Orchestra rehearsals start soon and it looks like a great program this year. Football season is also about to start and now we hear that Tedy Bruschi has retired. It's the end of an era. We sure are going to miss him!

"Bill" (no, not Belicheck) blew down our lovely apple tree while we were away and so that will have to be cleared up. The deer are going to be disappointed. The tomatoes are coming along well though. I'm not so sure about Charlie's squashes though.

I was at Wilson farms the other day. Why is it that when people get in there, they lose all consciousness of what's going on around them? They just stop in the middle of the aisle without a care in the world for other shoppers. I suppose it's the sight of all that wonderful looking food. Perhaps we are more like dogs than we think. When food is a possibility, even just one chance in a hundred, our dogs cannot concentrate on anything else.

The Fall regional (bridge) starts tomorrow in Nashua. But we are going to miss most of it this year. But that's OK - working and getting outdoors are much better for us. Meanwhile, the Bermuda Bowl (the biennial world bridge championships) is continuing in São Paulo. This year, one of the pairs on USA I is known to us somewhat: Doug Doub and Adam Wildavsky. I'm a Facebook friend of Adam so am getting updates on his feelings. The team is not doing well. After two days, they are lying in 17th place of 21. We're really hoping that they can get themselves going. We can watch their play live on BBO which is fun, but doesn't help to get things done!

Next blog: The messenger