Molly thinks...

...that it's very exciting to finally have a president that looks more like her.  But is he a Mac guy??  (Probably not, if he has a BlackBerry habit...)

Winnie wonders whether we will ever be brave enough to elect a striped one...

Cycling through Provence, France; Sept. 2008

It's been just over twenty years since I bought my first (serious) bicycle.  I was living at Mom and Dad's and helping Dad get his new company, HR Parts, off the ground.  I needed exercise (and therapy ;-}) and cycling the 10 miles to the office was one way to get it.  

My obsession with bicycle touring was born during those years, first with a week-long ride across Minnesota in 1987, and then with an attempt at a self-contained tour across the US in 1988.  I didn't make it all the way to the east coast that summer, so tried it again over the summer of 1990, starting in Anacortes, Washington and ending in Bath, Maine.  5200 miles.  It was an amazing journey.

Deb, Brian Hamilton, Diane and Peter Furcht, 1988

Since then, my love for cycling has only grown deeper and taken me farther afield.  The journey I am probably most proud of was the 2005 trip around the southwest of England.  I packed up the bike and panniers in May, flew to Gatwick, unpacked and spent a month on my own cycling to Devon and Cornwall, returning over the moors to the Cotswolds and Wiltshire.  It was a grand  journey of self-discovery...

Departing Havant (Portsmouth), UK, on a wet May morning, 2005

This past September, I was fortunate enough to be able to join the Davis Bike Club on a 3-week tour through Provence in south-eastern France.  It started and ended with a couple of non-cycling days in Paris.  Then we transported all the bikes down to Avignon, where we unpacked them and began the tour.  I mapped the route, which you can see here.  (Close the elevation chart and zoom out a couple of notches to see the whole route; sorry about the red flags--I don't know how to get rid of them...)

Just a couple of observations, before I send you over to the slideshow.  At age 50, I was the youngest cyclist in the group.  (I find this completely reassuring, as I want to be cycling well into my 80's!!)  We had two episodes of rain, but both happened overnight, so we had completely dry cycling.  (That never happens...)

Provence was so beautiful.  I had imagined the olive trees and hills and lavender fields, but the gorges and national parks were a complete surprise.  Because Mt. Ventoux is close by, the region is a mecca for cyclists.  So car drivers are respectful, and villagers don't snigger too loudly when a gaggle of lycra-clad cyclists ride by.  Wine was cheap; beer and everything else was expensive.  Most people were patient with our lame attempts at speaking French.

If you have about 10 minutes to spare, you'll find my attempt at creating a succinct slideshow here.  I hope it tells the story of a magical bike tour through a very special region of France.

With lots of love from Deb

Happy Birthday, Mom!

My mom celebrates another birthday on Jan 12th.  (She can post a comment about which one it is, if she wants too!)  

It's tough having a birthday in January; everyone's fairly depleted from the holidays and not overly-enthusiastic about more parties and presents.  One of the more fun ones was when she and Dad came out to celebrate her 75th in Las Vegas two years ago.  (Ooops...)

As usual, nothing is coming in the mail, Mom.  But if you click here, you'll find my gift to you.  

Everyone else can click there as well; you'll see some great photos of the family through the years.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

With lots of love from Deb

Mom and Dad come to California; March 2008

Mom and Dad gamely came out to California in March of last year.  It was their consolation prize for not being able to get away in their RV over the winter as planned.  [Mom's step-mother, Lunia, passed away (at age 92) at her home in Valencia, Spain a couple of days before Christmas.  They spent the holidays and the first couple weeks of the year over there sorting out her flat and its contents.]

We had a great week together, in a small cliff-side bed-sit kind of cottage on Sunset Beach, which is midway between Santa Cruz and Monterey.  We got in lots of hiking and bird-watching.  Besides the beaches and estuaries, which are great spots for birds that time of year, I took them inland to Pinnacles National Monument, with the hopes that we would see some California Condors.  If I could get 'condor' on Mom's life-list, I knew I'd be in the will.  Apparently, that day, the damn birds were over at the beaches, according to one park ranger we chatted with.  Figures.

Here's what we might have seen, if we'd been a bit luckier...

(A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to see some condors on a hiking trip in Big Sur, soaring over the Ventana wilderness.  There are also several lazy birds that just park themselves on the Highway 1 guardrails overlooking the beaches below, waiting for dead seals and other such delicacies to wash ashore.  Volunteers from the Ventana Wildlife Society try to shoo them away from the crowds of people that gather; after years of trying to reintroduce the condors back into the wild, the last thing they want is for them to get friendly with, and reliant on, humans.  We're a dodgy lot.)

There are some nice photos of Mom and Dad here.

With lots of love from Deb

A rainy Wisconsin week, June 2008

There's really not to much to say about the second half of my visit to Wisconsin other than 'weather happened'!  (Dad admits he would hate living in California because there is no weather here.  Sure we have earthquakes and fires and such, but you can't track that stuff on a computer very well...)  There were inches of rain and several tornadoes nearby.  I must admit, it was a bit exciting!  Except that it went on and on for the entire time I was there.  The sun shone, I am not kidding, on the day I left.

Dad! Weather update! There's a rainstorm out there!

(He loves it when we tease him...)

As bad as it was in Walworth, it was worse elsewhere.  Central Wisconsin took the brunt of the storms.  Lake Delton, near the city of Madison, breached its banks and emptied, taking some houses out with it:

Somebody's day is usually worse than yours...

There are some more photos (slightly less dramatic, however) from this GREAT visit with Mom and Dad here.  Select 'slideshow' for the best effect!

With lots of love from Deb

A trip to Virgin Gorda, by way of Wisconsin; June 2008

(I'm just going to pick a random place to start...)

At the end of May, I flew 'home' to Wisconsin for a long-ish visit.  (Little did I know at the time that it might very well have been the last family gathering for a while in Walworth!)  Chris gamely drove the 8+ hours from Ohio as well, although he could only stay for a short couple of days.  (Ali and Will and Nick weren't able to be there; in fact, she was picking them up from their schools on the east coast for the start of summer hols.)  Here are couple of photos, courtesy of Chris and Dad:

L to R: Rico, Viv, Mom, Chris, Deb, Julie, Jaz, Dad, Tiki

A super photo of Viv, Tiki, and Jasmine at the end of the garden

(Tiki belongs to Chris and Ali)

In order not to overwhelm the parents too much, I took myself off for a week in the middle to visit friends who were vacationing on Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands.  Eleanor, my best friend from nursing school (15 years ago, sheesh!) and her husband John love the Caribbean, and have graciously said 'we'd love to have you' whenever I've invited myself along. (Twice now!  Funny, they haven't let me know where they are going this year...).

The Caribbean is hot and humid in June, which is why it is imperative not be too far away from these essentials (sorry, no photos of me in a bathing suit here, for which you are very grateful):

The house pool, which overlooked the beach.

John Ramage at work.  The best internet connections always seemed to be at a bar!

Mahoe Bay.  Our villa was somewhere in that lot, right on the beach.

There was lots of time for snorkeling, reading, eating, and generally watching one's body turn lumpy.  We all need those kinds of holidays from time to time, no?  Click here for more photos.  (John's daughter, Kim, and her family were there as well.  Kim's son, Mason, was only 2 months old...)

But eventually I had to go back to the real world, and when I returned to Wisconsin, I returned to this:

The view from Mom and Dad's front door (in Walworth); water is pouring off the roof!

More photos from the second half of this visit with Mom and Dad are in 'Part 2'.

With lots of love from Deb

I'm sorry I haven't written, called, emailed in a while...

Happy New Year!

This will not be any great news flash to most of you, but I did not inherit a reliably functioning copy of the letter-writing gene!  This is my attempt to correct that, in a 21st century kind of way.

I've been thinking about doing something like this for some time now.  A friend of mine who has family and friends scattered about the US and UK showed me his blog last year, and it seemed like such a great idea for keeping everyone up to date on what had been happening in his life.  It also ends up being a bit of a personal journal that one can look back through, if one is feeling particularly nostalgic.

So new year...new resolution.  Create a blog for family and friends to peek in on from time to time.  A little news here and there, instead of the year-end Christmas letter that I can never make myself sit down and write.  I hope you enjoy it...

With lots of love from Deb