It was a terrific visit.  It was so good to get away from the busy-ness of life and just relax.  Berkeley itself is such a great place to visit.  In some ways it’s like stepping back to another time for me.  It’s a walking friendly city and not so friendly for driving.  Erin & Justin live just a couple of blocks from UC, downtown and the BART.  I absolutely loved walking around town.  Jeanie and I enjoyed brunch at a little cafe one morning where Handel’s Water Music reminded us to relax, we were on vacation.  We strolled through shops and bookstores. Such a relaxing, fun time.

I read a whole book! It felt so good to read a fairly sizable book in a week. Galileo’s Daughter was a stirring account of Galileo’s life including much about his run-in with the Church, but also about his relationship with his family–especially his oldest daughter, (many of her letters to her father still exist).  The story of his life, the scientific and historical setting was fascinating.  The stirring came from my own experience and how his story reminded me of my own.  I’m finding that the importance of reading for me is not so much from the “lessons” I learn from others, but from the stirrings I feel and explore based on the reading.  Galileo’s experience was tremendously important in history, but it is history.  I am alive today and I’m no Galileo.  I don’t want to be Galileo, but his story stirs me in many ways.  Those stirrings are about the way I am “wired up”.  The more I explore and reflect on those stirrings, the better I’ll understand who God has made me to be.  (The phrase I just wrote rubbed me the wrong way, so much so that I almost re-worded it.  I made it sounds like it’s all past tense.  As if the work of creation is done and my role is merely to figure out the puzzle that is me.  I believe that I am uniquely equipped to be the best Jim Anderson I can be.  The more I understand who I am, the more effective I will be.  But at the same time, I’m still a work in progress.  I’m still being influenced every day by the world I live in.  I still have a lot of growing up to do.

When the Ogrens arrived we did some touristy things like visiting the sea lions at Pier 39 and driving up to Muir Woods and the Marin Headlands.  Mark’s brother Jake and his new bride, Ashley joined them and they headed to Napa Valley for a day trip. While they were gone, Erin and Jeanie went off to get their toes done and Justin and I walked around town.  I talked about my stirrings from the book and Justin shared some of his thoughts.  I felt like the two of us connected on a whole new level, which I enjoyed tremendously.

Molly was a real princess.  We had so much fun watching her grow.  She has just learned to clap.  Danae said she was imitating us because we would clap and call out, “Yeah… Molly!” which made her clap.  Actually, what I think she was learning was manipulation.  She learned that by merely touching her hands together, she could turn these big people into silly clowns.  She enjoyed her first carousel ride and her first swing on the playground.  If they gave out awards for best traveling baby, she would have won hands down.  Be sure to check out the photo of her sleeping on the plane in the slide show!

I think all of us would agree that this was just about a perfect trip.  The weather was cool and sunny and the dispositions were mostly cheery.  We spent a little more money than we intended, but that’s to be expected on a vacation.  I hope you enjoy the photo slide show below.  It was so hard to narrow down the hundreds of great photos to a somewhat manageable size, but it was worth it.

Yes!  After much wrestling with the puzzle of life, I have now figured it all out.  In case you were wondering, you will observe from the accompanying Rubic’s Cube , the puzzle is now solved.  I have the whole Jimazing answer.  There is nothing else to say.

Now I will have to think of something else to write about.

Prehistoric Citrus Were Very Clever Hunters

Paper Training Our Little Dog, Frank

The first two days at sea, I was still feeling sick. I have been feeling poorly since February 1st and the trip to the ship from Charlotte was more than I was ready for. Having two days at sea was just what I needed to get well. By the time we reached St Maarten, I was ready for the sailboat ride excursion we planned. Little did I know that this leisurely sailboat ride was really an America’s Cup sailboat race in which we were the crew! What a rush. Early on in the race, the boat was tilted so far that water was about to come over the side where Jeanie was sitting. One of the crewmen asked if anyone was uncomfortable with the current position of the boat. Jeanie said, “I am!” He shouted back, “Get over it, there’s nothing I can do about it!”

We met the guy who created Yoda for the Star Wars movie and picked up a neat gift for someone we know and love who has loved Yoda for as long as I can remember.

At St John, we visited Trunk Bay, which must be one of the most beautiful places in the whole wide world. There I did my first snorkelling. I enjoyed it with the one exception that it was hard for me to see without my glasses. They had markers under the water explaining what we were looking at. I could see them, but I couldn’t read them. I could see the fishes and the coral which was just beautiful.

After leaving St John / St Thomas, we had one day at sea before we would arrive at Castaway Cay (say “kee”), Disney’s own private island. They had a problem with one of the ship’s engines and the captain announced that, since we would be three hours late, they were going to refund everyone $100 and provide all rentals of floats, bikes and snorkel equipment for free. I thought to myself, “Disney even fails well!”

The final act of great customer service was the luggage handling. Like all cruises, they handle getting your luggage on and off the ship, nothing special there… however, Disney didn’t just take our luggage off the ship for us to pick it up, they sent it to the airport and transferred it to Delta who moved it on to our destination. We didn’t touch our luggage until we got back home! Unfortunately for us, they don’t have any control over the air traffic system. We spent the entire day in the Orlando airport waiting for our flight to take us home. We arrived safely though and we’re struggling to get back into the swing of real life…

I leave you with a recording of the coolest ship’s horn you will ever hear

Click here for a quick photo tour…

Having a convertible was fun in the great San Francisco weather.

Friday night, we met Justin and Erin for a night tour of Alcatraz.

This is a great place to visit, but I am sure glad I don’t live there. (Did you know that some of the guard’s families lived with them on the island? Can you imagine growing up on Alcatraz and inviting your friends over for a pajama party? It’s true!)

On the night tour, they have special presentations and make it a lot of fun. Right before we left, they demonstrated the locking of the cell doors… Now I know why it is called The Slammer! I will tell the story of our adventure after Alcatraz in another Blog entry. A visit to Muir Woods and the redwood trees. The photos don’t come anywhere close to capturing the majesty of this place.

Muir Woods inspired some of us to become little girls again…

While others waited until we visited Muir Beach to become a little boy. What’s a visit to the beach without making a drip castle?

The couple who climbs the rock together, stays together.

Justin, Erin, Jeanie and me at the Marin Headlands. Thinking this was a great view, we stopped for a photo then went on to the top where we learned what a great view really looked like…

This is at the top of the Marin Headlands. What a spectacular view!

A walking tour around San Francisco took us through Chinatown and all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf. Pier 39 is where the sea lions have taken up residence. They are a hoot… barking and shoving one another…

Can’t visit San Francisco without a ride on the cable car! Besides, who wants to walk all the way back to the BART? I just cannot understand why Jeanie kept getting irritated with me for singing the .

The last tour day, we slowed down considerably and toured the Scharffen Berger Chocolate factory. From the time we entered, we were enveloped in the smell of chocolate. Yum Yum! I would hate to work there because I would get so used to the smell that I wouldn’t notice it any more.

All in all, a great trip. I am up later than I should be, but it’s not very late on the west coast… I think I left my body clock in San Francisco.   If you want to see more photos in a short slide show, click here.

Seriously it was a great time. It seemed to me that everyone was more relaxed than at previous reunions. Maybe we have finally gotten to a place in life where we are going to just be ourselves no matter what people think. Or maybe we just don’t really remember one another and we pretend that we do. Or maybe it was just me who doesn’t care any more and can’t remember anyone.

That’s not true though. While there were a few that I honestly don’t remember at all, there were a few who I would have recognized anywhere. In the middle of a conversation, I noticed Doug walk by and made a mental note to be sure to say hello to him.

As soon as the opportunity presented itself, I walked up to Doug, looked him in the eye and said with confidence, “I don’t remember a lot of people here, but I sure remember you.” Without looking at his nametag, I asked, “How are you, Mike?”

I thought he would burst with laughter as he pointed to his nametag and said, “I am Doug. Mike is my brother.”

I know my face was red, but it was way too funny for me to be embarrassed for long.

It was interesting to notice my feelings around my old friends. Thirty years ago, when we were together all the time, we were teenagers with all the hormones and emotional overload that goes with it. Talk about intense feelings! When I felt my stomach do the little flip thing, I asked myself what it was all about and realized that I was reliving some of those old feelings both good and bad. When I realized it, I gave the feelings a 48-year-old kick in the pants. No one knows what I’m feeling. No one can see inside me. And I am not the same person I was 30 years ago… and neither are they.

We have some special memories that only we can share and friendships that will remain for our whole lives. I am blessed!

On Wednesday, we toured the ancient Mayan City called Tulum. This site is right on the Caribbean Sea and the water was gorgeous. We were a bit disappointed that we couldn’t walk in or climb the stairs of the buildings. They roped everything off to preserve it.

The view of the Caribbean from the cliff at Tulum took our breath away. The water was so clear and so green. Other places it was deep blue.

We walked down some stairs to the beach and waded in the water. I built a drip sandcastle. The sand was very different than what I’m used to. It was less gritty and kinda mushy. The predominant mineral in the area is limestone and I could feel the limestone in the sand.

On the way back to the ship, we shopped in Cozumel. The merchants there were really pushy. They would call out to us to come “spend our last money” in their shops. One of the funniest lines that we heard over and over was “almost free”. At least it would have been funny if they hadn’t meant it. Neither of us care if we ever return there.

Thursday’s adventure was a zipline through the jungle followed by tubing through a cave in Belize. Belize was formerly a British colony and won its independence in 1981, so the native language, surprisingly to us, is English. We rode in a tour bus about 35 miles from the city to the location of the Arial Trek. This trip was along their major East/West highway, which was not much wider than the street our house was on. I was fine with the bus passing cars… even the dump truck. When it started to pass another tour bus, I got scared. Fortunately, he gave up trying. The aerial trek was an absolute blast! They had towers in the trees as high as 40 feet above the ground with cables stretched between them. After we were strapped into harnesses, we walked up the trail to the first tower, which was on the side of a hill. The first run was pretty tame to get us used to the equipment. After that, we were flying high! This photo is Jeanie finishing the longest run. She was terrified and couldn’t wait for it to end. I was terrified and thrilled too, but I can hardly wait for the next opportunity to do it again.

The workers all wore shirts that said on the back, “When was the last time, you did something for the first time?” We both loved the motto so much we each bought a shirt and adopted this as the theme for our cruise. We did so many firsts on this trip. Even the cruise itself was a first.

After the aerial trek, we had a good lunch and hiked to the other side of a hill where we got setup for cave tubing. We took a short hike around to the other side of a hill and jumped into the cold river into our tubes. The water carried us into the cave, which was completely dark except for the lights we had strapped on our heads. At first, Jeanie and I got swept off the wrong way and went through a bit of a drama getting back on course. Our guide, Leroy, was a champ at saving us and straightening us out. I really enjoyed him. He has a great outlook on life. As we floated through the cave, he was singing “Don’t worry, Be Happy”

Back on the ship that night after dinner, the dining staff all danced through the dining room. This is me doing the Macarena with our waiter, Kirat and our dining companion, Rich. Rich and his wife, Theresa were assigned to our table each night and we enjoyed getting to know them. As veteran cruisers, they gave us lots of tips. Rich taught me to order everything you want when the waiter comes. He said, “They only take your order once, so order everything you want at that time. Two or three appetizers and even two meals. Try it all.” I took his advice and had some excellent food. The ship also had a buffet, but I didn’t like the atmosphere as much.It was too much like being at the feeding trough.

Yet another first for Jim was climbing the wall. At the stern of the ship (that’s the back to those of you who have never been on a ship ) was the rock climbing wall. I had never done anything like that and wasn’t sure I could do it. The guy that went before me gave up about half way, so I was even less sure when I started. About half way, I saw why he gave up. The handholds got smaller and further apart. I stopped, tried a few different positions and finally got past it. At the top, I rang the bell and looked back for this final photo by Jeanie.

It is great to be home, but I wish the house would stop moving. I still feel the swaying just like I did on the ship. Mostly the ship felt still, but one night in particular, it was moving a lot and the wooden hangers in the closet were clacking together. It sounded like bones from a skeleton. I just lay in the bed and thought about getting rocked like a baby in the cradle, while the skeletons danced in the closet.

Would I do it again? I can hardly wait!

I was driving home from work on I-77 in Charlotte. My carpool buddy, Mark and I were joking about the silly way they routed the intersection of I-77 and I-85. I jokingly suggested that maybe there were old munitions dumps that they had to avoid and that there might be live bomb shells there to this day. Ok, it wasn’t all that funny, but we were in a silly mood.

What is striking is that, when I said that, I immediately had a feeling that there were people buried beneath the road bed where we were driving. Feelings frequently do not make sense and these feelings really didn’t make sense! As bizarre as I knew it was, I couldn’t shake the feeling. It was that same feeling that I get when I almost remember a dream, but not quite. What was the dream about? When did I dream it? I couldn’t remember. It must not have been a dream after all.

The feeling was so strong that, as silly as the idea of dead people under the road bed was, I had to talk about it. So I started to describe the feelings to Mark (who was probably ready to tell me to pull over and let him out). As I was explaining that I didn’t know if it was a dream or not, the whole thing became clear…

I love to tell stories to my family. We frequently go to the Cracker Barrel restaurants where they have old advertisements and family photos on the walls. Many times while we are waiting for our food to come, someone will ask me to tell them about one of the pictures. I will invent names and whole lives for these images… sometimes I create relationships between folks in different pictures. So an old lady in one photo is the aunt of a little girl in a biscuit advertisement. I frequently get so caught up in the story myself that I’m sorry when the food comes. I want to know what happens too. It can be loads of fun!

Just a few weeks earlier, late on a Sunday night my lovely and I were driving home from our daughter’s home on I-77. (In fact it was the same stretch of highway that Mark and I were driving a few paragraphs ago). Suddenly, we were forced us to the far right lane by orange cones that road crews had put out closing three of the four lanes of the highway. Of course this bottleneck caused a bit of a traffic jam. It wasn’t much more than a minor nuisance.

Annoyed, My Lovely asked (rhetorically), “Why do they have to do this now? What are they doing, anyway?”

Unable to resist a great setup for a story, I told her that many years ago, before there were any super-highways through this region, there were other roads and highways. In fact there was another road that followed this very same route. Road construction can be extremely dangerous work, but back in those days, it was perilous. Many construction workers gave their lives to build that road. Unfortunately, they were dealing with business pressures to meet deadlines for getting the road and they couldn’t take the time to appropriately deal with the bodies of these workers. That meant they just buried them right there in the road bed and paved over their graves!

Recently someone had discovered that these graves were still under the road bed! Even though they had replaced that highway with the current I-77, no one knew about the graves at that time, so no one did anything about the bodies. Of course the government officials didn’t want the bad publicity that would come from such a revelation, so they decided that they should quietly exhume the bodies and move them to a cemetery for a proper burial. “Quietly” meant that they had to do it at a time when there wouldn’t be much traffic and also at night so people wouldn’t see what they are doing… and so no one would get the blame.

So that’s what they were up to on that Sunday night… or so I told My Lovely.

When I remembered the story, I could hardly tell Mark for laughing at myself. So that’s where those feelings were coming from! As outlandish as the story was I must have believed it, on some level of my unconscious! Maybe that is what makes old grandpa stories so engaging. They start believing them themselves. I guess I’m just getting ready to be a grandpa.