My Summer Vacation: Yoga Mats, Dental Chairs, Church Pews

OK, peeps, here they are: the final pix and entries you’ll be seeing for some time. We start with photos taken in the latter stages of my cross-country trek in late May: these were all taken at rest stops in Colorado and Utah, aside from the beautiful sunset shot just below, which was taken from the moving vehicle just north of St. George, Utah, the evening before my arrival in LA. Driving across the US is almost always a pleasure for me — it’s so big and beautiful, and I’m sorry I didn’t get the camera out earlier to record tornado-laden thunderclouds over the great plains; wide, generous streams running through green grassy fields in the midwest; my beloved alma mater of Oberlin; or the great long weekend Steve & I spent with Heather in Pittsburgh seeing operas, exhibits and plays. I’ve got one month of vacation left, and I plan to shut down completely in order to be fully rested before heading off to Port Harcourt, Nigeria, which is my next planned assignment. (Assuming nothing changes, viz dental nightmares noted below…) Wish me luck, take care of yourselves, enjoy the pix and texts, and drop me a note when you can.

To my shock and horror, my summer vacation is mostly over. And it really has been a summer vacation, like we used to have as schoolkids: what a treat! In response to requests…mostly from my beloved Ondrej (who’s solidly in love with someone else, so any single guys out there take heart: I’m still eminently available, more’s the pity)…I started taking pictures of the American landscapes I traveled through en route from Pittsburgh to LA. I’ve also continued, for the sake of my non-American friends who are holding off on US visits until they’re too old to go trekking on Borneo, to record some of what I’ve been up to here in California. As I draft this on August 2, I’m sitting in my favorite café on Noe Street in San Francisco, possibly my most-loved city in the world and certainly one of those in which I feel most at home, and pondering the fact that in about about six weeks I’m likely to be en route to Nigeria, which appears to be my next assignment. More on that when the time is right.