Dear Friends,
Happy Holidays! This time last year C.J. and I were preparing
for the once-in-a-lifetime Panama Canal cruise. In 2013 we’re just back from
Florida for a Farnsworth family gathering (mid-December) and then, on Christmas
day, we fly almost as far south as the equator to Colombia for a paragliding
trip. As you can see we’ve made a conscious decision to do as much as we can as
long as we can keep on doing it. Thus, we’ve also scheduled our first trip to
Africa for early March – we’re hoping for fall-like weather in South Africa to
provide some paragliding and general tourist-ing as well.
Last January was an exception
to our usual plan to go somewhere warm to get out of the gloom-and-doom of a
Seattle-style winter. We had plenty of sunshine, fluffy snow and blue skies in
Yellowstone, but the temperatures were anything but warm, hovering close to
zero during the day. Ginny and Wally joined us at the Worldmark resort in West
Yellowstone and we did some ski touring and just plain touring using
snowcoaches to get into the park all the way to Old Faithful. The photo above
is from a ski trip in to Taggart Lake in the Tetons on
the way back from Yellowstone.
Good thing we got the active
stuff out of the way because in February C.J. had elective surgery to fix a
bunion that was making walking, skiing, even square dancing painful.
Remembering her first bunionectomy decades ago, we expected a quick return to
full activity. That wasn’t the case and even now her right foot isn’t
pain-free. Meanwhile I was trying to stay active by going for a hike twice a
week while C.J. was in physical therapy. Even with C.J. on a knee scooter we
managed to attend the USHPA board meeting in Colorado Springs, especially
important because Wally was being recognized for his service with one of the highest
awards of the Association. Shortly after getting home I found the (almost)
perfect replacement for our old Subaru: a new-to-us Kia Sorento, and later sold
the Trooper, so we are now a one-car family.
After rigging the Sorento up
with a trailer hitch and the required wiring, we took our first new-car “camping”
trip down to Dog Mountain for the Frostbite Fly-in, although C.J. wasn’t ready
to fly just 2½ months after surgery. C.J. continued PT through May while I put
up a new section of fence hoping to keep the deer from eating the garden
goodies that C.J. was working so hard on growing. Our second camp-out was at
the Blanchard Hill fly-in where we celebrated C.J.’s birthday by going out to
dinner at a well-regarded restaurant on the bay, and by C.J.’s first flights
since her foot surgery.
The demise of the
multi-purpose New Home “sewing” machine, also decades old, necessitated a
replacement. The new Baby Lock Unity does much finer embroidery as well as
providing state-of-the-art laser marking and more decorative stitches than we’ll
probably ever use. Later in June we went to the 11th annual Rat Race
at Woodrat Mountain and on several of the non-flying days we went hiking and to
Oregon Cave Nat. Monument (and I got a new mobile phone that actually works
outside of cities – 425-260-4842).
Then things began to get
busy: we came back from Oregon and went right to Chelan for the XC Classic and
a week later caught a buddy-pass flight to Alaska. Once again C.J. had an
assignment to write an article for HG&PG
magazine about the chapter of the year – the Arctic Airwalkers. Just like the
Hawaii group last year, the Anchorage-based members put us up in their homes,
drove us around to their flying sites and fed us like kings. The weather was
perfect, the bugs were practically non-existent and we actually got some decent
flying in extremely scenic places. Back at home C.J.’s brother Rob and sister
Ginnie visited us, and their uncle. We got Rob down to Mt. Rainier for a hike
to Alta Vista above Paradise, and we all got to check out the new visitor’s
center.
In August after a three day
trip to camp and hike into the Goat Rocks Wilderness, we took the next two
weekends to attend memorial gatherings. First for Dan, one of our paragliding
friends, we went to his friend Dave’s cabin near Winthrop and scattered his
ashes as we flew from Goat Peak. C.J. and I got in another hike the next day
and barely escaped a thunderstorm. The next weekend all but one of the
Farnsworth siblings and a few of the next generation (and for pregnant
Jennifer, the next-next generation) gathered at the old Tuthill plot in the
Washingtonville, NY, cemetery to lay the ashes of their mother beside their
father’s remains. Despite the reason for the gathering, it was still a
celebration more of connections than of death. When C.J. and I weren’t meeting
or eating with the rest of the family, we toured around the area to see places
that we remembered from our time in nearby New Paltz.
By the time we flew home,
summer was winding down. There was just time to go to Dog for Tina and Larry’s
anniversary before we took off for a distant Labor Day fly-in at Sand Turn near
Sheridan, WY. We had a great time driving through Yellowstone and over the
Beartooth Scenic Highway and Big Horn Mountains. On the way back we drove up
into the Wind River Mountains and hiked to Upper Green River Lake through
magnificent scenery. Next we tried flying right from our campsite in Jackson
Hole with some local pilots but the scenery was better than the flying
conditions. On the way home we overnighted in Yellowstone where we ditched the
crowds by taking a hike along the canyon rim. Two days later Belinda and Davis
welcomed us to Boise with lunch and a house concert.
Back home we found that our
water bill was astronomical! The main line was gushing, not leaking;
fortunately our neighbor was able to get a fix on it and do another repair to
the kitchen drain while he was eeling around in the too-low crawl space. So
there was no reason we couldn’t take off for another couple of distant fall
fly-ins…except for the three feet of recently-fallen snow on the Mt. Howard
launch. Oh well, there wasn’t any snow in the red rock country of central Utah
so we went for that fly-in by way of far eastern Oregon and northern Nevada. We
were lucky to catch the aspens still glowing golden on a hike to alpine lakes
and bristlecone pines in Great Basin National Park before reaching Richfield,
UT, and two of the highest launches we’ve taken off from (one at 11,200ft). The
camping at Castle Rocks was particularly scenic.
No long trips in October
because the USHPA board meeting was held in Renton, only a half hour from home.
But we were able to get to the Halloween/Women’s Fly-in at Lake Chelan this
year for the first time in many years (usually the board meeting conflicts with
it) and we opted for kayaking on Sun Lakes rather than doing short paraglider
flights from Chelan Butte.
A windstorm in early November
blew out a section of our aging fence but we were able to patch it back
together, avoiding an expensive and time-consuming replacement. We chose to
celebrate our 37th anniversary in Canada as we had last year, but
this time in Vancouver. We used our timeshare points to book a week at The Canadian,
a high rise condo right down town. It was a different experience having a view
from the 22nd floor of city lights rather than the usual ground-level
view of mountains and meadows.
That about covers what we’ve
been up to. If you want even more detail, go to my blog or C.J.’s online scrapbook. Speaking of which, C.J. continues to scrap every day
both digitally and on actual paper (where cut-and-paste means with scissors and
glue!). Sewing with the new machine and making greeting cards also keep her
creative juices flowing. In preparation for our Colombia trip she
conscientiously spends an hour each day studying Spanish, usually before I even
get out of bed. As copy editor and staff writer for HG&PG magazine, C.J. puts in much more than the ten hours a
month for which she is paid. [I get to read her edited copy as an unpaid
backup.] So far we both seem to be blessed with the good-health gene (fingers
crossed, knock on wood) although we’ve seen some erosion in what we can do, or
at least, in how fast we can do it.
As we think of all our
friends during this holiday season, we hope you are enjoying good health and
finding things to do that make you happy. We always love hearing from you. MERRY
CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Love,
C.J. and
George
Mary and Dave flew in from Chicago and Pat drove down from
Williamsburg, VA. On Saturday Jennifer and Kevin came over from Tampa with
their newborn daughter, Macy. That night Mary prepared her signature pot roast
and we all had a great meal. C.J. baked fresh rolls; Jenn and Kevin brought Key
lime pie and fresh crab; and Mary whipped up a batch of brownies (which, together
with the pie and ice cream, gave us the requisite three desserts).
By Monday we were ready for a break and everyone else had
left except us, Rob and Gin. We took an evening walk along the Intracoastal
Waterway down to the children’s memorial park. Before heading back to the house
for another dinner of leftover pot roast, we stopped at Farley’s, an
Irish/sports bar in European Village.
