Aiming for 80

In December 2018 I hosted a book launch party to coincide with my 70th birthday for the publication of my recently published book You...

Julie Hernandez was spending the summer near Chamonix in France, training for her trip to Nepal several months later. When she couldn’t...

As per custom, Martha Alden (best friend from kindergarten in Ellsworth, ME) had made the reservations for our ski trip to Maine Huts and...

On New Year’s Eve 2022, I learned from Dave Covill, President of the Highpointers Foundation, that he and wife Beckie planned to spend...

Did all excursions in this 12-month period need to begin with some type of mini-disaster (food poisoning, horrible weather)? #35 was no...

The Mont Blanc experience proved a suspicion I’d had for a while. Julie Hernandez and Dave Covill (President of the Highpointers...

Julie had a glorious day of rock climbing under Dimitri’s tutelage, while I explored the nearby village of Les Bossons and the t-shirt...

When taking a test, go with your first instinct. Your first guess is probably your best guess. Unfortunately, I didn’t follow that logic...

When we failed to summit with Eva Bazant and her family in early July 2023, I blamed myself for not getting 15-year-old Giuliana to the...

Ordinarily, a 3-4-hour hike might not meet the criterion of physically challenging, but the scenery in Acadia National Park on a sunny...

Since 2019 Tulane had received funding for its family planning work in the DRC through the Central Forest African Initiative (CAFI), with...

After a successful ascent up Katahdin in July 2023, Charlotte Stetson and I were ready for the next adventure. I had read about the W...

The first annual extraordinary outdoors adventure of 2024 was scheduled to be the yearly cross country ski trip to Maine Huts and Trails,...

A knee injury in October 2023, followed by a 4-day, 48-mile hike in Chile, landed me back in PT. Despite 2-3 sessions a week for six...

This extraordinary outdoor excursion offered a new twist: the mini catastrophe occurred at the end of the trip, not in the days leading...

Charlotte Stetson and I were well matched for hiking, not only for our interest and physical capacity, but our problematic knees. On our...

When Charlotte Stetson and I reached Baxter Peak on Mount Katahdin in summer 2023, it represented our fifth trip to the summit together:...

The days leading up to the trip to Dubrovnik, Croatia, were pleasantly uneventful. No recently injured knee, no food poisoning. However,...

If the five days in Dubrovnik had lacked for setbacks that made for good anecdotes, Montenegro did not disappoint.   After five days of...

It would be the 13th annual cross-country skiing trip in Maine for Martha Ellis (my best friend from kindergarten in Ellsworth, Maine),...

In early 2025, I had a companion ticket on Delta that would expire on April 29 burning a hole in my pocket, so Julie Hernandez and I...

The drama leading up to excursion #55 involved the weather. The downside of selecting a hiking date three months in advance fully played...

Par for the course for the 2025 excursions, the trip to the Netherlands began with drama. Candelaria Martinez, our housekeeper of 44...

This would be my third trip to Chamonix in four years to visit Julie Hernandez, who rents a small house for two months each summer at the...

I had known Gaby Escudero and Steve Sosler since the early 1990s, when both were getting their MPH at Tulane. Following their wedding in...

I had hoped to summit Mt Katahdin in Maine one final time. To this end I recruited Julie Hernandez as my coach and personal sherpa. The...

In the previous two years, my best friend from second grade Charlotte Stetson and I had hiked in Chile and Montenegro/Croatia. This year,...

When I first learned that the 2025 International Conference on Family Planning would be held in Bogota, I knew I had to attend, retired or not. I had begun my career in international health in Colombia. Several months after graduating from college in 1971, I was hired as a scientific editor for Tulane’s International Center for Medical Research and Training in Cali, Colombia. During that gap year, I was introduced to social science research in a developing country, and I met