Day 86, Year 11: Back in the Land of Palm Trees
Date: Saturday, January 16, 2016
Weather: Partly Sunny and Warm, High of 61 degrees F
Location: Back Aboard Windbird, Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, SC

After a tour of another universe this morning, we are back in the land of palm trees tonight. Our day started with a fantastic breakfast prepared by Kevin with coffee and fresh baked bread served by Dillon. Kelly and Dillon, the friends we met last night, came over for breakfast. I know Kevin and Claire are going to miss them when they (Kelly and Dillon) leave Janelia this spring. After a few weeks of biking in Japan, Kelly and Dillon are both headed to Princeton to do post-doc work. Dillon is from Cambridge in the UK and is about 6’5” tall. Although I have never met the husband of our daughter-in-law Jo’s sister, Dillon reminds me of pictures of Tom Warmerdam just because of his height. Tom is also very tall at 6’7”. Tom and Jo’s sister Kath live in Southampton, about four hours from Cambridge where Dillon is from, but with Dillon’s deep interest in biking, I told him about Tom as Tom is an award winning bike frame builder. You never know, they might meet someday.

After breakfast, we said farewell to Kelly and Dillon and headed off with Kevin and Claire on a tour of Janelia Farm. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute opened their research center at Janelia Farm in 2006. Obviously money was no object in the construction of the facility. It is literally like entering another futuristic universe. All construction is glass and steel. As you walk from the new housing area where Kevin and Claire live, you walk past the Janelia mansion that was once owned by Vinton and Robert Pickens. They had two daughters, Jane and Cornelia, thus the name Janelia. From the manor house, there is a view of Sugarloaf Mountain across the Potomac River. Due to a scenic easement that was legally binding in the purchase of the property, no buildings can obscure the view of Sugarloaf. So from the manor house, you don’t even see the main research facility which is called the Landscape Building. The 900 foot-long building is built into the hill and from the manor house, you can actually walk along the entire roof line which is landscaped with many varieties of grasses. When you enter the building, you walk down three flights of stairs to the bottom floor some 275 feet below the roofline. As you walk down the stairs, glass is above you and in front of you, allowing a complete view of the rest of the campus and all the way to Sugarloaf Mountain in the distance. The research center houses one of the largest installations of structural glass in the United States. The offices and labs are all surrounded by glass. The place looks more like an art museum than a research facility until you actually enter the labs and see scientists using the equipment. Claire showed us all of the areas where she works to uncover the secrets of the human mind using fruit flies as the model. What a fabulous setting for doing research. It really is an amazing place.

After a tour of the research facility, we walked out the front of the Landscape Building to see the outdoor landscaping. There are ponds and plants intermixed with grasses and sculptures. One sculpture of particular interest was a 7 foot tall and 3 foot wide white granite sculpture called Curved Wings by Bertalan Andrasfalvy. He is just a little older than Kevin and Claire and is not only a sculptor, but also a researcher at Janelia. Curved Wings is a butterfly, not a fruit fly, and the small scale model he sculpted to present his idea to the institute sits in Kevin and Claire’s apartment. Bertalan is a friend and when they approached him about buying the small model, he offered it to them at a ridiculously low price. They had to talk him into taking more money for it! But what a special piece they will take with them when Claire leaves Janelia.

Another friend we met last night was Jason Osborne. He is with the Instrument & Design Fabrication Group at Janelia and makes cutting-edge neuroscience instruments for Janelia. In addition, Jason is also interested in paleontology and geology. He has taken Claire on various fossil hunts. Most finds are sent to museums, but Claire has collected some fossils on her own that are quite impressive. When she and Kevin are sailing the Chesapeake in the summers, they stop at beaches and Claire digs into the banks finding specimens of all types. She gave us a fern fossil in shale from a trip she and Kevin took with Jason to a Pennsylvania coal mine. Thank you, Claire . . . for the fossil and for the fabulous tour of Janelia. It was so special to finally see all of the things Claire has told us about for years now.

160115 Day 86 Cape Cod, USA–Tour of Janelia Farm

Day 85, Year 11: Impromptu Visit with Good Friends
Date: Friday, January 15, 2016
Weather: Overcast and Warmer
Location: At Home with Kevin and Claire, Janelia Farm, Ashburn, VA

I really hate good byes, so saying farewell to the Goldstones once again was tough. But we had a nice morning with the boys before they went to school with promises of seeing them in a couple of months when Mark has to return to Mass General for another CT scan.

160115 Day 85a Cape Cod, USA–Saying Farewell to the Goldstones

We then barely got out of Heather and Jed’s drive way this morning when Mark posed a question. Since we were going to be driving down I-95, should we call our good friends Kevin and Claire to see if they could meet us for dinner? They live on the campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Ashburn, Virginia which is about half an hour off I-95. We should have thought of this last night to give them a bit of warning, but regardless, Mark called Kevin and the deal was struck. Actually we are now in their bed for the night and they are sleeping on an inflatable mattress in their living room. So we not only had dinner, but we found a home for the night. Thank you, Kevin and Claire.

We met Kevin and Claire the first year we lived aboard Windbird in Boston. Claire was a graduate student at Harvard Medical and had decided to buy a sailboat and live aboard instead of paying the high price of Boston housing. Although Kevin and Claire are the age of our children, we become good friends and have remained such throughout the years. Not long after we left to sail around the world, Claire got a post doc position here at the then brand new Howard Hughes Medical Institute generally referred to as Janelia Farm. She is planning to leave here next fall and they have down-sized from a McMansion to a studio apartment on campus. We had dinner in the campus dining facility tonight and the food was fantastic and very reasonably priced. I had the best filet mignon I have ever had and the cost for the meal was $14. And in addition to having great food, we got to meet a number of Kevin and Claire’s friends. One couple, Kelly and Dillon, came back to Kevin and Claire’s to visit. We drank some of Dillon’s homemade mead which was very good and then we went to the game room to play pinball, table shuffle board, and air hockey. It was a really fun evening and we are so glad this impromptu visit worked out so perfectly.

160115 Day 85a Cape Cod, USA–Visit with Kevin and Claire

Day 84, Year 11: Getting Ready to Head South
Date: Thursday, January 14, 2016
Weather: Partly Sunny and Cold, High of 33 degrees F,
Location: At Home with Heather and Family, East Falmouth, MA

Today was spent futzing about getting ourselves ready to leave here tomorrow morning. We will drive as far south as possible tomorrow and then make it to Little River in South Carolina on Saturday. Today I needed to do a little shopping to complete Sam’s birthday gift, exchange a couple of Christmas gifts, and do a little shopping for dinner tonight. Unfortunately we will miss Sam’s party on Monday (a school holiday) and his birthday dinner on his actual birthday on Wednesday, but we will be with him in spirit. Can’t believe our first grandchild is going to be 9 years old! The years do slip by so quickly.

Day 83, Year 11: Could Be Better, Could Be Worse
Date: Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Weather: Partly Sunny and Cold, High of 32 degrees F,
Location: At Home with Heather and Family, East Falmouth, MA

We woke up this morning with a skiff of snow on the ground from last night’s ‘thunder snow’–thunder and lightning with our little snow shower. That’s a first for me, but then we have had lots of weather firsts this past year. It was very cold and windy today for our drive to Boston, but then you don’t feel the cold when you are snug and warm in your car. However, the gusts of cold wind were wicked as we walked from the parking garage to the hospital. We met with Mark’s oncologists to hear the results of his latest scan. The news could be better, but it could be whole lot worse. As we have known for quite some time now, Mark has metastatic cancer. His original colon cancer spread to the liver and to the abdominal cavity. The radiation treatments he had in September and October were successful in that the cancer on the liver can no longer be seen in the scan. So that is good. The very small spots in the abdominal cavity are still there, however, and may be a little larger. So that is the bad news. But for now, no treatment is being recommended. That was definitely the news we wanted to hear. But, and there always seems to be a ‘but’, Mark has been having pain in the abdomen for the past few weeks. Dr. Kwak feels almost certain it is not cancer-related. She had a few suggestions for resolving the issue and wants us to try those things and report back to her in a month. If her recommendations work and Mark is feeling great, we are free for another month or so before he would need to return to Mass General for the next scan. Sooooooo . . . on Friday we will leave here and drive to back to Windbird in South Carolina. We will stay there until the stomach issues are resolved. If there is resolution, we will sail to Florida. If there is no resolution, we will stay put and return to Boston in a month to reconsider our situation. We may or may not make it to the Bahamas this winter. We’ll just take it one step at a time and have fun whatever we end up doing.

After we left Mass General today, we visited with my niece Lynn who lives in the Boston area. Then we made a beeline for home as we were to have an early dinner out with Jed and the boys. Heather actually joined us and then we took her to the Falmouth Library where she gave a presentation about the Paris Climate Talks she attended in December. I haven’t seen her make a presentation since she defended her doctoral dissertation in 2003. She was good then, but she is now a polished, phenomenal presenter. Forgive the bragging, but we are very proud parents. After the presentation, good friend Bruce Woodin took us out for a drink and a chance to talk and catch up on what all of us have been doing the past couple of months. Thank you, Bruce! Jane was hosting her book club at home, so we missed her company tonight. We’ll just have to look forward to our return to Falmouth in the spring to visit with both Bruce and Jane.

160113 Day 83 Cape Cod, USA–Heather's Climate Change Presentation

Day 82, Year 11: Busy Day
Date: Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Weather: Overcast, High in the 30’s, Thunder and Snow Flurries Tonight
Location: At Home with Heather and Family, East Falmouth, MA

The days just get busier and busier. This morning I headed out to do some clothes shopping for Sam for his birthday next week. He needs new pants and if I ordered them online I knew the cost would be about $35 per pair. But with the sales in the stores, I could get the same pants for $12. So a ‘real’ shopping trip seemed worth it and I did find what I was after. Mark stayed home and he picked the boys up from school at 12:40 pm as this was an Early Release Day. I got home about one minute before Mark drove up with the boys and then we started our afternoon projects—working on Pinewood Derby cars for the upcoming race and cleaning the guinea pig cage. Before we knew it, it was time to fix dinner. Heather made the most amazing roasted cauliflower with an anchovy sauce. We had a variety of other things and it was like a holiday feast. I didn’t take a picture so you will just have to imagine the table with the roasted head of cauliflower surrounded by roasted baby zucchinis, spicy green beans, sliced chicken breast for the boys and chicken cashew stir fry for the adults, and the Lazy Susan dishes filled with fresh strawberries, sticks of cucumber and baby zucchini with a dip, and pistachios. The presentation of the whole head of cauliflower on the table was really beautiful and it tasted so good. Thank you, Heather.

Tomorrow we head to Boston again. Mark’s appointment with his doctors is at 11:30, so we will get up and go. On the way home I have a few more stops I need to make to complete Sam’s birthday gift shopping and we are going to stop to visit with my niece Lynn. Then we hope to get back here in time for an early dinner out. Heather is speaking to the Newcomers group at the public library tomorrow night and we’d like to go hear her talk about climate change and her experience at the Climate Conference in Paris. Somewhere in all of that, we will process the news we get from the doctors and decide when we can return to Windbird. If all is well, we could actually be flying to South Carolina as soon as Thursday morning at 5:10 am. Stay tuned on that one.

Day 81, Year 11: Day Trip to Boston (and beyond)
Date: Monday, January 11, 2016
Weather: Mostly Sunny and Cooler
Location: At Home with Heather and Family, East Falmouth, MA

This was a travel day. We had only intended to drive to Boston to Mass General for Mark’s CT scan, but on the way there we realized that we had not sent the signed letter to the City Clerk in Concord, New Hampshire to have them send us ballots so we can vote in the NH Primary in early February. If we are really able to leave here this week, there will be no place for them to send the ballots. So I dropped Mark off and made a mad dash to Concord. It takes about an hour and a quarter to drive there and my goal was to be back at Mass General in time to pick Mark up as soon as his scan was completed. I knew I could only pick up my ballot, but I also knew that delivering Mark’s signed request would speed up the delivery of his ballot. The trip up went great, but when I got there all of the parking places required a quarter for the meter. I had no change at all with me, so I took the chance, parked and went into City Hall. When I returned five minutes later, I had a parking ticket. The price of being a good citizen just went up! It seems crazy to me that we still have to vote in New Hampshire, but evidently the law states that ‘transients’ (people who do not own or rent a home or pay utilities at someone else’s home) must use their last permanent address as their voting address. So we will be able to vote in the primary and I did make it back to Mass General just as Mark was finished with the scan and we made it out of Boston before the heavy rush hour traffic. So all in all, it was a successful day. We will return to Boston on Wednesday to meet with Mark’s doctors and get the results of today’s scan. In the meantime, we will be here having fun with the Goldpebbles.

Day 80, Year 11: Rainy Sunday
Date: Sunday, January 10, 2016
Weather: Rain All Day, High in the 50’s F
Location: At Home with Heather and Family, East Falmouth, MA

It was a rainy, rainy Sunday, so we stayed inside all day. We played games, worked puzzles, and worked on projects with the kids. Not sure where the day went, but whatever we did, I’m exhausted. Mark worked with Jonah on a Scout project making a knight’s shield with symbols representing Jonah’s interests—soccer, the ocean, and sea turtles.

160110 Day 80 Cape Cod, USA–Sir Jonah's Shield

Mark also helped Ollie make a race car, but we didn’t get around to making race cars for the Boy Scout Pinewood Derby in two weeks. Tomorrow we travel to Boston for Mark’s CT scan. Sure hope the rain stops and the sun shines, but I shouldn’t complain as it is relatively warm out.

Day 79, Year 11: Back Home with the Goldstones
Date: Saturday, January 9, 2016
Weather: Overcast, Sprinkles in the Afternoon, High in the 40’s F
Location: At Home with Heather and Family, East Falmouth, MA

We are back home with the Goldstones. It was an easy drive from Nyack to here, but since we didn’t leave there until after 11 am and made a stop at Whole Foods on the way, we didn’t arrive here until late afternoon. We stopped at our storage unit to empty the car, went to a car wash to get rid of some of the Virginia mud we picked up when we drove down that logging road from Mountain Lake, and then went to Heather and Jed’s. The boys were outside playing in the backyard, but they took time out to give us big hugs and kisses. When all three of them run at you at one time, you always wonder if you will survive the exuberant greeting, but we survived and loved the big hugs. Ollie decided to help Granddad unpack what was left in the car and then he came in to entertain us. He showed us the new corner piece that now connects the two sofas and the new coffee table that he more appropriately calls a game table. I then went to the kitchen and Ollie and Granddad played in the playroom. Heather came home about that time and I helped her get dinner started. After dinner, we sat around the table talking. Ollie and Jonah used a drawing program on Mark’s tablet to create some pretty fancy art work and Sam used my computer to show us his final science project PowerPoint presentation that we helped him with when we were here in December. And then Ollie put on a show for us and Jonah joined in. It was really a nice, relaxed evening with the kids. Tomorrow we are expecting rain, so we’ll have lots of time for indoor projects.

160109 Day 79 Cape Cod, USA–Back Home with the Goldstones

Day 78, Year 11: Last Stop . . . Nyack, NY
Date: Friday, January 8, 2016
Weather: Overcast and Misty, High in the 40’s F
Location: At Home with Ed and Lynne Kirwin, Nyack, NY

We made it to Nyack, New York last this afternoon, the last stop before this ‘train’ heads to Cape Cod tomorrow morning. We are here with our good friends Ed and Lynne Kirwin. Those of you who follow this log have heard their names many times. Windbird and Constance (Ed and Lynne’s sailboat) crossed the Indian Ocean together from Thailand to India to The Chagos Archipelago to Madagascar and finally to South Africa. It was a glorious nine months and was definitely a highlight of our trip around the world. And in those nine months, we became ‘friends forever’ with Ed and Lynne. Mark and Ed are now both battling cancer and that creates a new kind of closeness. This is our third visit here since last summer so we hope we aren’t wearing out the welcome mat. We have gotten to know the Kirwin sons, Frank and Ed Jr., their wives Nicole and Gigi, and the grandchildren. Tonight we had dinner with Ed and Lynne and then got together with the whole family and enjoyed the evening together. Thank you, Ed and Lynne, for your friendship and the hospitality.

Earlier today we made a stop in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to have breakfast with another cousin of mine. Sidney Jane Shingleton and I grew up in the same town, but it has been 15 years since we last saw each other. We had a great visit this morning. We will leave here after breakfast tomorrow morning and should arrive at our daughter Heather’s home sometime tomorrow afternoon. We can’t wait to see Heather and Jed, the three Goldpebbles, and the newest additions to the family—Max and Mortimer the guinea pigs.

160108 Day 78 Nashville Trip–Visit with the Kirwins

Day 77, Year 11: Reconnecting
Date: Thursday, January 7, 2016
Weather: Sunny, High 51 degrees F
Location: Ramada Inn, Strasburg, Virginia

Today was dedicated to reconnecting with the past . . . with family members I haven’t seen for way too many years and with places family members lived long ago. We started at Aunt Ethel’s. By the time we got up, she had the dining table set with china and silver and was ready to serve a breakfast featuring her ‘famous’ stewed apples. She also served bacon and eggs with grits. What a way to break the fast. After breakfast, I made calls to phone numbers Aunt Ethel and I had searched out last night for two cousins who we hoped still lived in the Roanoke area. Aunt Ethel used to communicate with one of them but had lost contact. So I matched phone numbers I found on the internet against a very old phone book Aunt Ethel had. Unfortunately no one answered at either number. So we said our farewells to Aunt Ethel and drove to the first address. No one home. I walked to the neighbors on either side of the house and again found no one home. Then I spotted a woman walking to her mailbox. I ran to catch her to tell her my plight. She didn’t recognize my cousin’s name, but when I mentioned her son’s name, she said a man by that name used to live there, had divorced, and left the wife in that home. So close, but no cousin there. We then drove to Salem, which is the town next to Roanoke, to the second address. Again, no one home. Again, I knocked on neighbors’ doors and found no one home. I walked across the street and finally found someone home who confirmed that my 85 year-old cousin still lives in that home. So I returned and knocked on the side door. Still no answer. Then a car drove into the drive-way and I felt like I had hit the jackpot. Both cousins were in the car. We spent the next two and a half talking with Louvena Anderson and Ama Lowe Reid, the oldest daughters of my father’s brother. Louvena’s son has done an amazing job of documenting much of the Martin family history on Ancestry.com, so hopefully on my next trip through that area I will get to meet with him. By this time it was mid-afternoon and time to move on. We had to backtrack a bit as I wanted to drive through an area called Clover Hollow one more time. This is where my grandmother was born. We didn’t have time yesterday to finish the complete circuit of the area and I wanted to give one more try at finding some clue to just where in the hollow she might have lived. This time we ended up at the top of the mountain at Mountain Lake Lodge and we drove on a logging road down the north side of the mountain where my father’s father might have been born. That was an interesting drive on a dirt road barely wide enough for one car and with a few wicked hairpin turns and ice and snow. Not sure when it snowed, but obviously it doesn’t melt very quickly on the north side of the mountain. This road led us down the mountain and through a valley along Pott’s Creek and passed the house where my father and his brother grew up. As I continue my family research, I now have real pictures in my head of the places where the people I’m researching lived. It gives a whole different dimension that will eventually help me reconstruct stories from the past.

Tomorrow morning we will make a stop in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to have breakfast with a cousin from my mother’s side of the family. In 2000, Sidney Jane and I worked together to publish a booklet of the Biggs family history for a reunion. I haven’t seen Sidney Jane since then, so it will be fun to catch up after so many years. Then Mark and I will make a beeline for Nyack, New York, to visit with friends Lynne and Ed Kirwin. On Saturday morning we’ll leave Nyack and head to Cape Cod, ending eight weeks on the road. It’s time for a couple of days of rest.

160107 Day 77 Nashville Trip–Leaving Aunt Ethel's, Meeting Cousins, Clover Hollow