Happy Anniversary Don & Joan

Lori's parents, Don and Joan celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary this past summer.   They were married in June 1953 in Prairie City -- Joan taught school and Don was a local farmer.

During their marriage they have lived in Prairie City, Ames (Pammel Court for those of you ISU grads who remember the post WWII "temporary" housing that lasted for 40+ years), Mason City (also known as River City thanks to it's most famous resident, Meredith Wilson, creator of the Music Man) and now Des Moines (birthplace of Bill Bryson, one of the author's favorite authors).

The family, which now includes 5 kids, 10 grandchildren, 4 great-grandchildren and a host of in-laws  got together for a weekend in July.

The mirror in this photo allows a simultaneous front and back shot of Doug's head to verify how much hair he really has.  

Don, Joan and Grandkids

One final note on the trip to Des Moines.  We always check out the local restaurant scene in towns that we visit.  One of the highly rated Des Moines stops on Trip Advisor was Tasty Taco, a local, family run group of about 4-5 restaurants.  Since we suffer from a severe shortage (as in zero) of good Mexican food restaurants, it seemed like the place to go.  Unfortunately, we went on a Sunday ---- Closed!

Grant & I left the next morning for my Mom's home in Illinois; Lori stayed behind to work from her parent's home.  She went to Tasty Taco that day.  It was so good, she went again later in the week.  Looks like the Trip Advisor folks were right, we'll put it on the list for the next anniversary party.  

Summer 2013

I guess summer vacation is over so I have run out of excuses to update the blog.  That plus the fact that I am getting tired of my daughter complaining about seeing nothing but the Leiden Marathon for 6 months.  So what did we do this summer you ask.  The short answer is nothing too exciting.  I'll try and stretch this into a couple of posts with lots of dog pictures for filler.

The summer started with a visit from Kate.  In early June she finished her second year at Med School and had to take her written board examination.  It was one of those tests where her life was pretty much burrowing into a carrell at the library and studying full-time for over a month.  She came up for air once in a while, but not often.  She took the exam on June 10 and two days later was on a plane to Amsterdam.  It would have been 1 day but she had a mountain of laundry to do after a month of ignoring it.  And no, don't think that just because she took a big test that she's done.  It's just a big test after their two years of class room work.  There is lots more medical schooling ahead of her. 

When Kate arrived Grant was taking his finals which included significantly less studying and no visits to the carrells at all.  Regardless, she and Lori thought it best to leave so they took off for 5 days of relaxing, eating, touring and drinking fine wines in the Loire Valley, France.  It would be nice to post some photos of their trip along with some pithy commentary.  But, alas, my repeated invitations for a guest posting have been unanswered.  So all you get is a stock photo of a Loire Valley Chateaux.  

After the girls returned to Holland, Doug flew over from the US.  He and Kate spent a few days in London (again, no pictures or commentary) to visit Doug's haunts from when he did a summer session there.  

We celebrated Doug's birthday -- he chose the ever popular Tuxedo Cake.  

At the end of the visit, Kate and Grant returned to the US together.  Kate began her two years of clinical rotations (no more summer vacations for her) and Grant visited Don and Joan for several weeks.  So Lori and I had the summer in Europe with no kids!   Think again.   Her work travel schedule seemed to peak right then (somewhat suspiciously I might add) so we ended up with a only a weekend in Europe with no kids.  And Graber and I had lots of quality time.  

Grant & Kate before they left for the US.   At the beginning of the summer, Grant always gets a haircut that will last all summer.  

At the end of the summer, Lori, Grant & I had our annual trip to Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt for a week of very hot weather, warm water and fantastic scuba diving.  Not many shark sightings this year, but we did see a manta ray.  As you remember, things were (and continue to be) a little unsettled in Egypt, so the resort was about half full.  And not many of those were European. But we felt safe, the staff was great and we had a fun week.  The week after we returned the Dutch government put out a security warning, all flights to/from Egypt were cancelled and they really haven't restarted since.  Lucky timing on our part.   Bad luck for some really nice people who make their living off of tourism.   

The lifeguard at the beach had to carry towels to his station.  Looks like he's done this before.  

He never dropped one

After our dive at Ras Mohammed, a pod of 15 dolphins played around the boat for 10 minutes.  

In September (which is still summer by my calendar) my Uncle Ralph and Aunt Barb finished up a Rhine River cruise in Amsterdam.  I hadn't seen them since Lori & I were married (30 years this year -- see future blog posting); it was great to catch up.  They lived in Germany in the 50's so it was interesting to hear their stories of Europe back in the day

Ralph, Barb and I in the lounge of their cruise ship.  

A filler photo of the dog.

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Leiden (Half) Marathon

In late May I ran my first half marathon.  I don't know if it will be my last, but I do know that it will be a while until I do another one.  21 km or 13 miles.  2 hours (plus some).   It's like running from Hillsdale to Port Byron and then back to the farm (granted, there weren't any hills)   It was a lot of running.  

I was very happy to finish, but perhaps not as happy as the gentleman to my left.  

It was all part of the Leiden Marathon event.  They run the full and half marathon together in the morning.  After about 10 km there is a Y in the road.  The half marathoners go left and the full marathoners go right.  You can be sure that I was paying attention to that sign.  In the afternoon, they hold a 5k and 10k run.  All together there were over 10,000 runners.  The entire event was well organized and the townspeople really came out to support us.

I was part of a group from my office that did the 21 km run.  Obviously this photo was taken prior to the run

This was our competition.  Guess who won.  

Whenever you run for 2 hours with several thousand people some interesting things happen.  This day was no exception.  An example was the pre-race buffet.  They provided bananas, oranges and sandwiches.  Unbelievably some people actually ate a cheese or meat sandwich within an hour of the run.  I did see a few people barfing during the run, but I didn't ask if they had eaten a sandwich beforehand.  One poor guy didn't see an approaching temporary fence that was parallel to the route.  He ran right into the end of it.  Ooopf!  He simply bounced off and kept going.  It had to hurt.  Another man was holding his cell phone up and taking a movie of himself running through the country-side.  I hope that he had the anti-bounce turned on his camera.

The Leiden Running Club had several "pacers".    These folks ran with a ballon tied to their waist.  The balloon indicated the time they would run so you could follow them to meet your target.   If you look closely, this person will run the 21 km in 1hr 45 minutes.  Needless to say, I never saw that balloon during the race.  

There was a wide variety in the amount of clothing worn by runners.  Race time temperatures were in the 50's so I had on long pants, a winter running shirt and a windbreaker.  And it felt good to have all that on.  Some of my colleagues (and many other runners) had on only shorts and t-shirts.  I only took my windbreaker off at the end so the camera could recognize my race number for the pictures.

Here we are all queued up for the start. 

Leiden's a beautiful city to run through  

We ran through 3 or 4 small towns and they all had their "town brass band" out playing for us.  These bands are a Dutch tradition -- almost all towns have one.  It was very nice.  At one point our route had to cross a canal, but there was not permanent bridge.  No problem, the Dutch army had built a pontoon bridge for us to cross.   In a run like this, everyone is given a number to pin to their chest for record keeping.  For this event, the paper also had your first name on it.  As you approached the finish line, there was an announcer who would shout encouragement and announce people.  At least I think he was shouting encouragement ---  it was in Dutch so to me it was blah blah blah Mark blah blah blah.

Members of the Leiden (American) football team led the pack to start the run.  I have no idea why.    

Someone eating the sandwiches.  It looks like it is after his race. 

The Marathon is a nice party for the town of Leiden. 

Visit to Limburg

The Dutch celebrate Ascension Day (always a Thursday) as a holiday and then have a "forced" vacation day on Friday so we had a 4 day weekend in May.  We drove to Limburg, the southernmost province in Holland.  If you look at the map, it is a long, narrow section of land sandwiched between Belgium and Germany -- often referred to as the appendix of Holland.  In some places Limburg is only 6 km wide.  Due to it's proximity to those countries the culture tends to be somewhat different than the rest of Holland, much more Catholic and a place where "everyone is related".  The geography is different as well, with rolling country side, flowing rivers and real hills.  Holland's highest point at an elevation of 1060 feet is located in Limburg.

The highlight of the trip was a visit to the National Asparagus and Mushroom Museum.  It was also the first stop which explains why there are so many more photo's than our other stops.   We expected some little building with a few 4-H style displays.  It turned out to be a series of reconstructed authentic Dutch farm houses and barns with historical farm and Dutch life displays from the past 100 years.  All of this was topped off with a welcome center that opened only last month....complete with a small eating area where we ate vlaai, a baked fruit pie that is a Limburg tradition and asparagus soup.   We weren't the only ones absorbing all this culture;  this place even had a tour bus in the parking lot.

The museum had some old-time hair dryers.  

And they also had examples of what happens when you used the hair dryer.  

The labels were all in Dutch, but as best as we could tell, this was a training device to learn how to milk a cow.  

A potato picking device.  

Mushroom growing display.  I have no idea what the electrical instrument is measuring.  

The beer wagon

An example of growing white asparagus.  As you might have guessed, the technique is to keep it out of the sun by covering it with dirt or plastic.   

This photo shows the built up asparagus bed (about 12" tall).  Shoots are planted in the bed where the dirt and plastic keep the sun away.  White asparagus is sometimes called "white gold", referring to the price.  Early season crops fetch over 20 Euros per kg.  By now prices are down to 5 euros per kg.   

Like all small towns, they have a queen....in this case it's the asparagus queen. Luckily they didn't make her wear a green dress or a hat designed to look like an asparagus head.  

In addition to the queen, there is a patron saint of the asparagus, Saint John the Baptist, or in Dutch...

......Sint Jan the Doper. 

Lori enjoys the asparagus soup.

Big crowd at the Asparagus and Mushroom Museum.  We lowered the average age a bit.  

An asparagus field nearby

We spent the first night in Valkenburg at an estate that began as a monastery in the 1200's.  The next day we toured the town cave at Valkenburg.  The caves are man-made, not natural, and were created by digging out the limestone for use in buildings.  It started with the Romans over 2000 years ago and it's been going on almost ever since.  Now there are almost 70 km of cave paths!

When the Allied forces liberated the town in 1945, over 3000 people stayed in the caves for 10 days.  In the 70's an atomic bomb shelter was built that could house 10-15,000 people, complete with toilets, beds, etc.  Throughout the years people have drawn pictures on the walls or created sculptures.  Charcoal on limestone is similar to tomato sauce on your favorite shirt, it stays forever.  

The monastery on the left is now the restaurant (where we ate more asparagus).  The church on the right has beautiful fresco paintings on the walls and ceiling.  

The tomb of Saint Gerlach.  The sand above where he is buried is purported to have healing powers.   They have small plastic bags and a shovel so that you can take some for whatever ails you.  What happens when the sand level gets low?  Do they run to Home Depot to get more?  

The hotel portion of the estate.  

Grant and Lori on our way to dinner.  

In the Valkenburg cave, this "sculpture' was about 2 meters in diameter.

The only American Cemetery in Holland is at Margraten, where over 8000 soldiers from WWII are buried.  The names of the missing are on the wall at the left.  

We spent the last day in Maastricht, the capital of Limburg.  With a rich history, beautiful river setting and good shopping Maastricht attracts a lot of tourists.  It has everything from Roman ruins to fine dining...complete with even more asparagus.  In 1991, representatives from 12 European nations met here to sign the agreements to form the European Union and establish a common currency.  Some folks may be having second thoughts on that meeting today.  

In Maastricht, the Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek, Basilica of our Beloved Lady.  It looks more like a fortress than a church.  Construction began in 1000

Our hotel in Maastricht was an old church from the 1500's. There are more old churches than there are church goers, so they need to find new uses for the buildings.   The monks must have been much quieter than the current guests -- we found it quite noisy.  

The Maastricht Town Hall.  

The carnival in the town square.  Years ago the square was the site of executions -- I'm not sure the carnival was much of an improvement.