September, 2010

Appleton, WI

September included a trip to visit family in Wisconsin.  My youngest brother Pat was having his wedding celebration and I also wanted to spend time with my 82 year old father.  

During my ten days there, I could literally see the changing of the seasons from summer to fall.  There were trees that had turned color with leaves already starting to fall on the ground.  Within a week!  It was amazing to witness.

Some of the many corn fields which will feed the cows during the winter which will produce milk and cheese.  I saw mostly corn fields with soy bean fields coming in second.

For me, this is a typical farm...a red barn on a slight incline for tractors to enter where hay is stored on the upper level.  Cows have their individual stalls on the lower level where they are milked at 5am and at 'supper' time.  ('Dinner' is the lunch time meal.)  

At St. Therese we went to mass six days a week Sunday through Friday plus catholic school.  

It wasn't until I visited Gothic churches in Europe that I realized that St. Therese catholic church was expensively designed and built after famous cathedrals in France and England.  Until that time, I thought it was a standard catholic church.

The church and school is on the right and the bakery donut shop is across the street.  We were encouraged not to eat breakfast until after mass.  So with six cents in our pocket, we could buy a chocolate or vanilla  'pershing' for breakfast.  This was supplemented with orange juice at school.  What a great breakfast for a hypoglycemic person!

They still make them.  See how you can twist it off in bites?

Pat with his bride Susie.  Pat's son Eric and his fiance Janelle.

Eric driving away in one of his future father-in-laws cars.  A great past time for many people is fixing up old cars and going to car shows and rallies.  My brother Glen has two antique tractors and my brother Pat has two collector cars and a collector pick up truck.  Next time I will have to take photos.  

All the kids except the oldest.  I'm the second oldest.  My brother Glen on the far right is 9 months younger than me.  When his friends meet me for the first time, I ask them if they can see the family resemblance.

 Clay is my dad.

July & August 2010

Duck Dodge, Lake Union, Seattle, WA
I went back to Seattle to take care of business.  And now that I have a new camera, I can add to my blog again.  By the first week of August, business was finished and it was time for more sailing.  I really missed being on boats. Duck Dodges filled the bill.  arrr arrr...ducks...bill.   With about 100 boats racing on a very small lake, things usually get interesting.  There have been many times when boats will get so close that they need to push away from one another.  Especially if it's a down wind drift and the wind dies as we all come around the mark.  Since there are about 5 different starts for all of the different classes, the other interesting times are when some groups of sail boats cross the lines of another group of boats coming in the opposite direction.  Then you will hear a lot of yelling and "Starboard" which means I have the right away and give way to me.  It can get tense but that's part of racing.

On this particular Duck Dodge, I was on a 60' classic wooden sail boat which is very heavy. As you can see from the above two photographs, when the wind died, we were still going faster than the other smaller lighter sail boats but not able to maneuver much.  Tonnage counts.  The other boats had to get out of our way.  

 

Downtown Seattle is so beautiful from Lake Union.

You can see how serious Duck Dodge can be.  Notice the swimmers.

The sun starts to set and this is the most beautiful time of the evening as the lights comes up over the city.

After a big raft up (all the boats tied up together in the middle of the lake to socialize and party), we all head back to our individual docks and watch this beautiful city scape.  It's truly breath taking.  I'm so fortunate to be able to be part of it.