On Wednesday May 16th, we launch “Dream Time” for our Lake George boating season. We leave the Bolton Landing Marina at lunch time, and there is not a cloud in the sky. Fortunately, all boat systems are working and we are ready to cruise; (except for the search light, which is waiting to be replaced).
Gabi docks the boat in Red Rock Bay, and we have the bay and the lake to ourselves. We have a nice lunch, with a beer from last year and it still tastes o.k. Gabi knows my aversion against old food, but this is an emergency. We have to celebrate the “dolce vita”. We sit on the boat and read, until the relaxing atmosphere is rudely interrupted by thunder. We are looking to the east and can not see the brewing storm in the west. We cast off and, as we come out of the bay, we see a black wall of clouds approaching over Bolton Landing. In order to get back to the marina, we are heading right into the thunderstorm front. Today, we have better luck than last year, and we reach the safe harbor before the clouds let loose.
Gabi and I spent the rest of the day under the awning of the marina’s upper deck and watch nature’s spectacle. We are the only members here today, and enjoy the reading and, after the storm passes, the peaceful view of the lake.
It is April 30th, and Gabi and I are on “Lucky Devil”, Southern Cross Club’s dive boat. The boat is a Sea Horse 32 foot vessel and we are only 7 divers on board. Mike from Holland is the captain, Christian, our dive master is from Melbourne, Australia. We are 5 divers: Gabi, 2 German guys, one American and myself. We take a morning cruise around the eastern tip of Little Cayman. We sail through a heavy down pour, but it clears before we take a mooring along Bloody Bay. “Marilyn Cut” is our first dive site. Gabi and I jump in, but a few feet down, I notice that our dive computers had turned themselves off, after I had tested them this morning. No problem: we surface, turn on the computers and begin our dive. Bloody Bay Wall has a lot of soft coral with visibility of around 100 foot and no current this morning. The high lights are a large grouper being cleaned by gobies, with mouth and gills wide open. We also see a drum fish, turtles and a large crab.
Our second dive at “Annie’s Antic” has more turtles and we see several stingrays, each one having a jack as a dive buddy right on it’s back side. The sun comes out as we are in the shallow coral garden and the colors look much nicer. Along the wall, at times there are hardly any fish, and the next minute we are surrounded by large schools of reef fish. The groupers seem to like human company and stay with us. This is my 186th dive, having spent 130 hours in the “deep”.
This morning, Gabi and I are taking to the skies again. We are flying from Grand Cayman to Little Cayman, on board a 17 passenger DeHavilland DHC 6 Twin Otter. Our STOL Turbo Prop climbs to 7000 feet and we cruise at 140 knots, heading 78 degrees. It is 74 nautical miles to Little Cayman. There were no announcements before take off. Our pilot only looked over his shoulder, to make sure that everybody was sitting down and that the passenger door in the rear was closed! We are sitting right behind the pilot
(1B,1C) and I can watch all the action and gauges. The plane and controls look pretty well used. Later, I read on the internet that the production of the Twin Otter ended in 1988.
It is raining for the duration of the flight, and the tropical rain drops are pelting the windshield until just before landing.
I watch the runway coming closer, with the 2 red and 2 white runway approach lights lined up. I am disappointed that the promised grass strip has been improved to a cement runway. We land smoothly at Edward Bodden Airfield (LYB), and are now at Latitude 19 degree 66′ North and Longitude 80 degree 09′ West.
Gabi had noticed during the flight that the pilot looks awfully young, but does not mind when I take her picture together with our pilot (27 years “old”), after the successful touch down.
On Tuesday, April 24, we fly from Newark to Miami to Grand Cayman. Before landing in Miami, we get a scenic sight-seeing tour of the coast from West Palm Beach to Fort Lauderdale and Miami. We have a 3 hour lay over in Miami, and watch the UEFA Cup game Chelsea against Barcelona. Chelsea wins and is in the final against Bayern Muenchen. We take off from Miami at sunset and have some nice views of the Everglades’ swamps below us. We cross above Cuba and arrive in Grand Cayman at 7:45 PM, 5 minutes after we had left Miami( thanks to the 1 hour time difference). Immigration goes quickly and we pick up a red Suzuki Celerio rental car. It is pitch dark in the tropical night, but the road sign are excellent. We arrive at the East End 45 minutes later and listen to the “Barefoot Man” singing his old scuba songs. The condo at the Reef Resort is very nice, with an upper floor large balcony overlooking the pool and the ocean. We spent our first night on a rock-hard bed, but get a new mattress for the next 3 nights.
On Sunday, February 26, Gabi and I fly from Albany to Vail, Colorado. Our flight is scheduled to depart at 6 AM and we grab a quick breakfast from McDonald’s on our way to the gate. It never fails, trying to fly from Albany: our flight is delayed again. We leave 45 minutes late and have 15 minutes between flights in Chicago. I am not very hopeful, that we will make it to Vail today.
Then luck is on our side: United gives us an upgrade to First Class. We sit in 1A and 1B, and get another full breakfast on our flight to Chicago. Our Airbus pulls into gate C22 with 15 minutes to spare, but we make our flight to Denver at gate C23. In Denver, United 451 is another Airbus A320, and we have a sunny flight across the Continental Divide from Denver to Vail. I can see the Vail mountain ski slopes from our plane. Gabi manages to take one picture, before the camera’s battery is dead!
We land in Vail-Eagle at 12:15 PM and have a nice Sunday lunch at the “Dusty Boot” in Eagle.
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On our trip through Bavaria, we feel like eating Weisswurst. But no such luck. The Autobahnraststaette Hofoldinger Forst outside Munich does not have Weisswurst on the menu. We make a detour and stop at the Erdinger Weissbraeu in Erding, but it is 1 PM. They stop serving Weisswurst at 12 noon! At least, they did not run out of my favorite Weissbier! We are back in Wuerzburg at 5 PM and relax in the Novotel pool and sauna. On Saturday morning, we sleep in and miss Weisswurst breakfast. In the evening, we are invited to dinner at Maria and Rolf’s house in Rodenbach. Maria is spoiling us with a tasty Sauerbraten and we spend a nice evening together. It is late when we check into the Novotel Frankfurt Niederrad. I leave our suitcases on the luggage cart in our room. We are only here for 7 hours. On Sunday morning, we are back at the Frankfurt Airport. Gabi is disappointed with the security check. We do not have to take off our shoes and even though we fly on Continental, there is only one check, where there used to be two.
Continental 119 takes off at 9 AM, and our 777 flies all the way north to Bergen, Norway, before we head west across the Atlantic. We have strong headwinds and fly further north. 8 hours later, we see Saratoga Lake, Albany and the Hudson River right below us. We could parachute from the plane and would land right on our property. Unfortunately, the airlines do not offer this drop off service!
We land in Newark at 12 Noon and drive back to Clifton Park, where we arrive at 3:45 PM. There is still no snow here this winter!
This is the motto for our ski week in the Hotel Gran Ciasa in Colfosco, Italy. The sun only rises over the mountain at 8:30, shining every morning on our bed. We rise with the sun, but on most days are still the last guests at the breakfast buffet. At 10:30, the sun finally shines on most of the ski trails, and it is not until then that we hit the slopes. It is pretty cold in the shade and the snow is hard. We have 5 days of perfect sunny weather, but no new snow. At lunch, we stop at one of the Uetias (huts). The mountain huts are more like full size restaurants. We go back to Uetia Bioch (remembering the beach chairs from our last trip 5 years ago) and after lunch, enjoy sunning in the beach chairs. Piz Arlara and La Branchia are 2 other favorite lunch stops, with good food and good views. It is only January and the days are short. By 3 PM, the sun disappears behind the mountains and we are done skiing. Usually, Gabi and I are the first guests back at the Gran Ciasa hotel and heat up in the sauna and steam room. The indoor pool is nice and warm, and we do some cross-training before dinner. The Declara family runs a first class hotel and our dinners are gourmet style 4 courses, with salad and desert buffet on top of that. Diego, our waiter, is our guide. Besides serving us food and wine, he can enlighten us about all kind of topics, from local school education to language and the Italian income tax system. Most people here speak 3 languages: German, Italian and the local “Ladinisch”. Interestingly, the school classes are in German, but we are in Italy. Although Alto Adige used to be the Austrian “South Tyrol” until WWI.
On Friday, January 20th, we have to leave our Gran Ciasa paradise. From Corvara, we drive the many curves along the Gader river back to Bruneck and then north on the Brenner Pass Autobahn. The weather in Austria has not changed from last week. After one week of sunshine in the Dolomites, we are back in Austria and drive in a snow storm!
Gabi is on my tail, skiing faster than ever. We are back in Kolfuschg/Colfosco in the Dolomites. Today we ski on rock-hard slopes under a sunny blue sky. We start in Colfosco, head up Boe and cross over to Pralongia. There are no lift lines and we cover a lot of slopes. It is very cold and we warm up in one of the numerous restaurant/huts. In the afternoon, our skis take us down Col Pradat and Stella Alpina or Edelweiss Tal. After all this work, we are the first guests in our sauna at the Hotel Gran Ciasa, warming up our cold bodies. From our balcony, we can see the sun setting over an impressive rocky Alpine panorama. The vertical cliffs surrounding us should be called the Rocky Mountains!
“Es passt?” or “it fits?” is what our Austrian waiter asks us at every meal. We are in Kirchberg and everything fits.(is ok) After 2 days of alpine skiing, we are taking a break and spend the day in the WWW. No, not the internet, but a spa: Wörgl Wasser Welten. Gabi and I have the outdoor pool and bubble beds all to ourselves. Later, we work our way through several aroma saunas. A new experiènce is the salt water pool: we float in the high saline pool and listen to underwater music. After serious skiing, we deserve some serious relaxation. Besides, it is snowing again in Austria!
The Kitzbuehel mountains have ten feet of snow. It snows for the first three days of our vacation and a lot of lifts are closed due to “sturm”. Finally we ski on Wednesday and Thursday. Two picture perfect days with blue skies and good powder on groomed slopes. We begin our mountain assault on the heated chairlift of the Maierlbahn and continue on Ehrenbachhoehe, Steinbergkogel and Pengelstein.On our second day, we take the 3S Gondola across a very deep valley to Wurzhoehe. The views are breathtaking and we breathe a big sigh of relief, after we are back on terra firma. It is time for suntan lotion and lunch break on Baerenbad Alm (hut). After lunch, we ski as far as Gauxjoch, before we head back to our Hotel Willms in Kirchberg. The sauna and steambath revive us before dinner. Then it snows again! At least, we had 2 days of great skiing here this week. On Friday and Saturday, the lifts close again due to another winter storm!
