I am still working on pictures and stories from our Africa trip, but life goes on in Rochester as well. We have watched a couple of interesting old movies. After touring Grand Canyon and other National Parks we are well aware of the Fred Harvey Company now Xanterra which provides accommodations and food in the parks. The Harvey Company’s hotels  were built at the depot of the train serving the parks and they were noted for the caliber of wait staff and food they provided. A movie, “The Harvey Girls” was made in 1946. Somehow we had never seen it. It is a wonderful musical and among the songs that Judy Garland and others sang is “On the The Atcheson Topeka and the Sante Fe” There is also a wonderful tap dance number with Ray Bolger. We really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who appreciated the old musicals. While I was cruising the shelves in the library I saw “Oklahoma!” and decided we needed to watch some more cliches. But they aren’t really cliche because this is the source.

We have had dinner out with many friends and dinner in with others. Our lunch times and even breakfasts are filled with social events and some business things too. As comfortable as we are in our apartment and gathering with our friends here, I am beginning to experience “itchy wheel syndrome”. I miss our life on the road and the delights of wandering across the US with very little plan. We have a thought schedule, sort of like a thought experiment in physics. Carol has planned to go to  a Jewish Community Women’s event on November 1 and, assuming the coach is ready for us we should be rolling no later then November 15. Following a visit to our Charlottesville family we will move on west, trying to stay in the 70 degree zone or at least well south of the snow line as we move. There are many people we hope to visit as we make the crossing.

For those who wonder where we will venture next as we try to visit all the parts of the globe we have signed up for “The Stans of Central Asia Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan plus Kyrgyzstan & Kazakhstan” This trip doesn’t leave until mid May so we have plenty of time to make other trouble for ourselves between now and then 🙂

Oh dear, way too much time has past since this was written and I still haven’t gotten around to posting. Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur have come and gone. this computer has suffered a major hard drive crash and I have been restoring all my software – no data loss thanks to double backups. So I will post this without further editing.