Aiming for 80

I was lucky enough to make it back to Maine for the first two weeks of October 2024, at the peak of the fall foliage. I had never experienced Baxter State Park in the brilliance of autumn colors, so magnificently captured on many calendar photos I had seen over the years. So I checked the forecast and contacted Charlotte to see if she’d be up for a day hike in the Park. Unsurprisingly, she was enthusiastic but could only do it on Saturday, October 12. Even though I’d need to

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,...

There was no pressing work-related reason for my returning to Kinshasa in September 2025. I might not have, were it not for the...

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

It would be the 14th annual cross-country ski trip with friends Martha Ellis, Peg Stout, and Marty Grant. We'd had to cancel in 2021 (Covid), and I'd missed 2024 (insufficient snow, then a conflict on the make-up date). Martha had a stress fracture on her foot and was side-lined from skiing on this trip. By 2026 only Marty had a perfect record of being present and skiing on all 14 trips. And only Marty had the same parka (bright pink) that she'd purchased for our very first t

No, the sign isn’t misspelled. Highpointers organized into a group in the late 1980s, through the initiative of Jack Longacre. In 1986,...

It seemed too good to be true. Bill and I found four days in February when his interest in visiting coffee plantations in Puerto Rico aligned with my interest in hiking in El Yunque National Forest with fellow doggy camp participant Jen Lentz. True, I would have to fly from the freezing temperatures of Maine into the tropical climes of Puerto Rico. Perhaps a larger issue was hauling around a single suitcase that included two puff jackets, two pairs of boots, and ski pants, as