New England and New York

Well, things have been going great since getting home (and surviving) deepest, darkest, Africa. We came home to a Reimer family reunion in Eliot, Maine where Gloria's mother lives. The Reimers were having an annual celebration of her father's contributions to the Green Acre Bahai School where he worked for many years.

We then managed to take Gloria's 89 year old mother Janet Reimer on a 3 state tour of northern New England, starting with the beautiful Maine coast at Boothbay Harbor north of Portland. From there we headed west across New Hampshire to Vermont's capital of Montpelier and a tour of the state capitol building, followed by a wonderful and caloric visit to Ben and Jerry's in Waterbury. We visited Middlebury where we played golf again in the early morning hours, just at the time when the black flies and mosquitoes were at their worst -- they're especially heavy this year due to lots of rain.

Next it was south to Keene, New Hampshire, where we lived from 1976-9 and where Doug was born, and Bretwood Golf Course. We had a great visit with Gary and Jane Shapiro in their beautiful old restored farmhouse. They took us kayaking and exploring Keene. Golf was warm but fun, though we didn't play very well. We also had trouble at our next stop in Williamstown, Massachusetts where we tried to get on at the hoity-toity Taconic Golf Course but were thrown out on our ears (we asked for a discount), but had a great time at Waubeka, a public course where the folks were super friendly. We toured the Clark art museum, then drove south to see the Norman Rockwell museum with lots of old Saturday Evening Post covers he designed. What a great old artist/illustrator.

Gloria convinced me to alter our course and go to the Woodstock Museum in Bethel, New York and we had a wonderful time there reliving our past in the 1960's. It's not true that if you remember the 60's you didn' t live it. We did and we remembered thanks to this great museum with lots of music, great dioramas and descriptions of that incredible three day weekend back in 1969 on Max Yasgur's farm. The whole experience was great and we give it our highest vote of all the museums we have seen, with Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama second.

Finally we came back to Cooperstown where Ryan was born and I did my internship. To our surprise, I was paired with someone I knew, Dr. David Vaules and his wife. He was an attending cardiologist when I interned, so I had to be on my best behavior which I did and played the best so far next to St. Francisvile, Louisiana. We also had a wonderful dinner with Dr. John and Amanda May. John interned with me and actually delivered Ryan! (He had forgotten) Cooperstown was great, including the Baseball Hall of Fame.

We will be visiting Lucille Ball's museum in Jamestown, New York tomorrow, than on to the midwest and Ohio. We're making good progress, everything is going great, and we look forward to seeing our good friends John and Edie Corbly in Champaign, Illinois during the Labor Day weekend.

Uganda!!

Greetings again from this golfing duo. We took time off to travel to Africa for some wonderful wildlife viewing before resuming our 50 state golf trip. The timing was good, as we were ready for a bit of a change, and change we definately got. This was our third trip to Africa, a continent we dearly love, though worry about because of the many social problems. Uganda, however, has done extremely well since ridding itself of that awful Idi Amin fellow, and we felt quite safe in our travels there (though some of the treks we went on were accompanied by guards carrying AK-47s).

So here goes. We left Boston accompanied by our son Jamie who had just finished his OB-Gyn training in Galveston, Texas. We flew coach and he enjoyed business class, thanks to a free ticket. Arriving at Heathrow at about 7 AM, we hopped on the subway for a day sightseeing in London where we took the double-decker for a running commentary of the big sights, including a lot of places where so-and-so was beheaded. Those proper English sure have a history of losing their heads. Anyway, we enjoyed a play in the afternoon, then railed it back to Heathrow in time for the night flight to Entebbe, Uganda.

On arrival, we quickly jumped into our waiting Land Cruiser with our intrepid South African guide, Fraser Gear, plus our driver named Elias, and 3 others on the trip -- Wally and Lois Goldfrank and Lois' sister Sally Howlett, all from California. They were a great bunch, and excellent birders (this was a combination birding/wildlife trip). For 17 days we traveled to a number of national parks and had some fantastic experiences. A brief summary follows:

Floating down the broad Nile River, we were cast adrift when the motor conked out and we didn't have any oars. It was very pleasant watching the hippos and Nile crocs pass by, but we were a bit worried when we realized there were no other boats on the river to rescue us. We drifted to a small island where we tied up, away from the hippos, and called for help on a cell phone. Unfortunately, there were no other boats in working order available. We were marooned. Finally, a small boat came by after about an hour and a half and we were rescued!! Our saviors took us to a great resort across the river where we enjoyed pressed coffee and cookies, then piled into the back of a pickup for a hair-raising ride to the dock in time to catch the ferry. We met up with our waiting vehicle on the other side where we rode into a beautiful Savanna and watched giraffes, cape buffalos, elephants, and lots of ungulates. The day ended with a walk in the wild side to see a Shoebill, a funny-looking rare 3 foot tall bird too ugly to believe. We managed to avoid the hippos and elephants on the hike, but were glad out leader was an experienced trekker in the African wilds.

During the trip we saw over 400 species of birds, plus went on mountain gorilla and chimpanzee treks. The gorillas were huge but relatively placid until the Silverback charged our Ugandan guide (I was standing just behind and was glad he was in front). The chimp trek was quite different, as our little band of hikers was eventually surrounded by about 30 screaming chimps, all running around in a great agitation about something -- probably related to the female in estrus. (In heat). Just prior to this several were directly above us in a tree when we noticed some very unusual and very localized rain coming from the tree above. It landed on our heads, but was falling nowhere else. Hmmm. Monkey pee. Oh well, we didn't mind having the tables turned on us homo sapiens by the chimps. Jamie and Lois were especially anointed.

We are now back in Maine, getting organized for the remaining 23 states with lots of exciting days ahead. They will probably be a bit more sedate than our Uganda experience, but lots of fun anyway, so we will keep you posted.