each day of the new year.
Sunrise alpenglow on the Olympic Mountains from Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park, WA
Lona and I wish you all the joys of the season and hope you have a great new year.
We hope you have had a year more
filled with joy than sorrow. Our year was filled with some of
both (as is typical of the human experience).
The sunrise picture was taken in July on our wonderful truck camping trip to the Pacific Northwest clear to Flattery Cove in the Makah Indian Reservation at the very tip of Washington. We highly recommend their tribal cultural center in Neah Bay, incidentally. We returned from that trip traveling down the coast, thus completing our Pacific coastline travels all the way from Canada to Mexico (super scenery!). The start of this trip was delayed by a week because, sadly, Lona lost her 92 year old, W.W.II vet. brother-in-law (the last remaining member of her immediate family) right when we were planning to leave. Our vacation trip was not as fun for Lona as it should have been because she did not feel her best, fighting a chronic cough, and tiring easily. This caused us to have to shorten most of our many hikes. After our return, we discovered that Lona had pneumonia caused by the very antibiotic resistant bacteria, pseudomonas. How remarkable that Lona could function at all with this. Lona's physician said, "You are one tough lady!" Tests showed that Cipro was the only effective antibiotic, so Lona wound up on a two week course of that. She very rapidly got much better, but a subsequent CT Scan has shown she still has something in her lungs. Thus, we have been involved in many tests and therapies ever since to try to discover the root cause. Only in the first week of Dec. was the diagnosis of bronchiectasis given. This chronic condition causes inefficient elimination of mucus from the lungs which can easily get infected with bacteria. We have been increasingly relieved throughout this period as the various, really horrible conditions it might have been, were eliminated one by one. I surely missed seeing the students, faculty and my other friends this year since I could not go back to MU.
Getting back to the subject of our nearly month long trip, we saw a lot of wonderful scenery that was far different from the desert scenery we usually seek. Mercifully, I will spare you an exhaustive account of the trip, but will attach a few representative pictures of what we saw.
If you poise your mouse over a thumbnail, a description of the picture pops up. You can click on the thumbnail to see a larger picture. After viewing, hit the back button on your browser.
Those of you who still remember my 2007 letter may recall that due to injuries to the medial meniscus in both knees, running hurt. I did not run for 4 years. As long as I only biked or race walked for aerobic exercise, the knees did not hurt, so I elected not to allow a surgeon to carve on me. I hated race walking, so I decided to see if perhaps the knees healed despite everything people (even doctors) say about the meniscus not being able to heal in elderly people. I started with an easy quarter mile run. Despite my many miles of race walking, I felt like I had never run in my life, but my knees did not hurt. I gradually built up distance and speed, and it never hurt. Whoopee! They did heal. The more I have run, the better my knees have felt in general (like going up and down stairs, and getting up from a squat). Over the course of this past year, I have been able to race my running club workouts and gradually improve my times (although they are still pathetic). When I was 51, I still occasionally was able to set a lifetime personal best and sometimes win my age group in local races. I thought I might be the first to be immortal. Now that I am 70 and some of the ravages of old age are overtaking me, I am beginning to suspect that I won't be immortal after all. Age has not taken too bad a toll. Lona and I continue to enjoy our weekly, all day hikes in the mountains surrounding Silicon Valley and enjoy the cultural activities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Life is good.
Lona and I wish you the best for 2011, and are anxious to hear how your 2010 has been.
Your friends,
Lona and Don
The sunrise picture was taken in July on our wonderful truck camping trip to the Pacific Northwest clear to Flattery Cove in the Makah Indian Reservation at the very tip of Washington. We highly recommend their tribal cultural center in Neah Bay, incidentally. We returned from that trip traveling down the coast, thus completing our Pacific coastline travels all the way from Canada to Mexico (super scenery!). The start of this trip was delayed by a week because, sadly, Lona lost her 92 year old, W.W.II vet. brother-in-law (the last remaining member of her immediate family) right when we were planning to leave. Our vacation trip was not as fun for Lona as it should have been because she did not feel her best, fighting a chronic cough, and tiring easily. This caused us to have to shorten most of our many hikes. After our return, we discovered that Lona had pneumonia caused by the very antibiotic resistant bacteria, pseudomonas. How remarkable that Lona could function at all with this. Lona's physician said, "You are one tough lady!" Tests showed that Cipro was the only effective antibiotic, so Lona wound up on a two week course of that. She very rapidly got much better, but a subsequent CT Scan has shown she still has something in her lungs. Thus, we have been involved in many tests and therapies ever since to try to discover the root cause. Only in the first week of Dec. was the diagnosis of bronchiectasis given. This chronic condition causes inefficient elimination of mucus from the lungs which can easily get infected with bacteria. We have been increasingly relieved throughout this period as the various, really horrible conditions it might have been, were eliminated one by one. I surely missed seeing the students, faculty and my other friends this year since I could not go back to MU.
Getting back to the subject of our nearly month long trip, we saw a lot of wonderful scenery that was far different from the desert scenery we usually seek. Mercifully, I will spare you an exhaustive account of the trip, but will attach a few representative pictures of what we saw.
If you poise your mouse over a thumbnail, a description of the picture pops up. You can click on the thumbnail to see a larger picture. After viewing, hit the back button on your browser.
Those of you who still remember my 2007 letter may recall that due to injuries to the medial meniscus in both knees, running hurt. I did not run for 4 years. As long as I only biked or race walked for aerobic exercise, the knees did not hurt, so I elected not to allow a surgeon to carve on me. I hated race walking, so I decided to see if perhaps the knees healed despite everything people (even doctors) say about the meniscus not being able to heal in elderly people. I started with an easy quarter mile run. Despite my many miles of race walking, I felt like I had never run in my life, but my knees did not hurt. I gradually built up distance and speed, and it never hurt. Whoopee! They did heal. The more I have run, the better my knees have felt in general (like going up and down stairs, and getting up from a squat). Over the course of this past year, I have been able to race my running club workouts and gradually improve my times (although they are still pathetic). When I was 51, I still occasionally was able to set a lifetime personal best and sometimes win my age group in local races. I thought I might be the first to be immortal. Now that I am 70 and some of the ravages of old age are overtaking me, I am beginning to suspect that I won't be immortal after all. Age has not taken too bad a toll. Lona and I continue to enjoy our weekly, all day hikes in the mountains surrounding Silicon Valley and enjoy the cultural activities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Life is good.
Lona and I wish you the best for 2011, and are anxious to hear how your 2010 has been.
Your friends,
Lona and Don